Daniel Heimpel / commentary
Jan xiii, 2013

Daniel Heimpel

Daniel Heimpel

(Update: The Uninterrupted Scholars Act was signed into law by President Obama on January. 14, 2013)

The Uninterrupted Scholars Act, which sits on President Obama'south desk awaiting signature, marks some other of import step on the longer route to increased educational opportunity for students in foster care.

The human activity will amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Human activity (FERPA) to ease kid welfare agencies' access to foster children's student records.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who as the most senior Democrat on the Business firm Committee on Education and the Workforce was disquisitional in getting the bill to the floor, explained its importance during a December. xxx session of the House.

"Foster children are some of the most at-take chances students," Miller said. "Throughout their young lives they may change care placements multiple times. …  Each move tin can put their educational success in jeopardy. That's because the caseworkers who advocate for them as they move from 1 schoolhouse to another oft practise and so without disquisitional data."

Equally the law stands, kid welfare agencies must take a court social club to gain access to student records. This legal hurdle non only slows down the transfer of records as students bounce from school to school, but as well creates missed opportunities for social workers to intervene when a child struggles academically, or to celebrate academic success.

In 1981, California launched Foster Youth Services, a statewide program that brought educational liaisons and mentors to canton offices of didactics to help ensure that records follow students in foster care. But communication nevertheless varies from canton to county, and from school district to school district, creating an information gap that the Uninterrupted Scholars Act can assistance fill.

"A lot of time the social worker is the but person who keeps track, who knows the history," said Jetaine Hart, a sometime foster youth who now works as an educational mentor for foster youth in Alameda County. "At present social workers won't have to wait to access this data – they will know what attendance looks like, know what'due south going on with grades and disciplinary activeness in real time," Hart said.

Teri Kook, the child welfare manager for the San Francisco-based Stuart Foundation and a national good on didactics and foster care, concurs. "Ultimately, I believe this power to share information, arts and crafts individualized bookish plans and build upon the resiliency and strengths of students in foster intendance will ameliorate loftier school graduation rates and college access and success for this vulnerable population," Kook said.

Across the immediate significance to the more than 50,000 children living in foster care in California, Uninterrupted Scholars builds on a larger national motion towards educational opportunity for foster youth – a move largely started in the Golden State.

In addition to the launch of Foster Youth Services in 1981, state legislators passed Assembly Pecker 490 in 2004 to increase school stability for foster youth. The police gives students in foster care the correct to stay in their school of origin even if a changed foster care placement forces them into a new school district, and ensures the rapid transfer of their records when a school move is deemed necessary.

In 2008, the federal authorities followed suit with strict provisions around the educational stability of foster youth in the landmark Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. In 2011, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Instruction, Labor and Pensions (Assist) passed an subpoena to the federal Elementary and Secondary Educational activity Deed (ESEA) calling for the Section of Education to consider the educational stability and success of foster youth.

The bipartisan, bicameral Uninterrupted Scholars Act bolsters the strength of the movement. This issue – that of leveling the educational playing field for our most vulnerable children – is one that ever more than leaders are focused on solving. Their success in improving the educational achievement of foster youth could light the way for the broader education reforms this land so desperately needs.

A version of this story originally appeared inThe Relate of Social Change.

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Daniel Heimpel is the founder of Fostering Media Connections and the publisher of The Relate of Social Modify.

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