statistics

Case in point

Well, I promised to follow up my last post with some good news, and I know that at least one of my readers will be disappointed that she won’t get to read about the sense of optimism I feel in the air just yet. Instead, I’m gonna hang out on my soapbox for a little while longer because I’m still working through my irritation.

Last night’s Teens in Foster Care panel was very odd. I think the organizers felt like everyone in the room was on the same page regarding permanency for youth in care 14 and older (roughly 3600 of New York City’s 12,000 children in the system). Funny thing though: I don’t think the panel realized how deeply their message conflicted with one of their guest speaker’s most important points. …And then things got even worse.

Let’s do this good/bad/ugly style.

THE GOOD

Cris Beam. CRIS BEAM. I’d seen her give a reading to a group of young writers back in December, so I’d already heard the whole spiel of how a teenaged daughter entered her life with the suddenness of an unplanned pregnancy. Tonight, however, Beam came with a stronger agenda and she prefaced her reading by dropping some data.

Here’s some straight from NYC ACS: Between the ages of 14 and 15 only 17% of young people in foster care wish to exit the system as an independent adult. By the time they reach 17, however, the percentage of youth who wish to age out to independent living rises to 94%. That means that by 17, only 6% of young people in foster care want to be adopted.

(more…)

By Ysette, ago

How race/ethnicity impacts children in foster care

I’m still making my way through the e-training portion of the Casey Family Program’s Knowing Who You Are curriculum, which is devoted to training social workers and other adults and professionals in the child welfare system in how to nurture the healthy racial/ethnic identities of children in foster care. The section on institutional racism identifies key points in the child welfare process where the cases of children of color seem to be handled differently than those of their white peers. These include investigation, child placement, service provision, and permanency planning. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Surprising(?) correlations between job preparedness, reading ability, employment, and college enrollment for youth in foster care

Young people transitioning out of foster care lag behind their peers nationally on measures of employment and college enrollment.

The National Longitudinal Study of Youth (1997) finds that

  • 41% of 19 year olds are enrolled in 2- or 4-year colleges
  • 91% of youth are employed between the ages of 18 and 19

By comparison, a multi-site evaluation of youth transitioning out of foster care finds that

  • 25% of 19 year olds are enrolled in 2- or 4-year colleges
  • 75% are employed between the ages of 18 and 19.

In an attempt to establish a relationship between job preparation programs and employment, the Urban Institute recently put out a brief that tackles the question, Do youth in foster care accurately assess their preparation for work? Specifically, Marla McDaniel and Michael Pergamit want to know if the confidence a 17-year old has about her ability to apply, get, and keep a job is a good predictor for whether she will be employed and/or in college by age 19.

(more…)

By Ysette, ago

Mentoring youth in care

According to a study by the EMT Group, the national outcomes of youth leaving foster care are as follows:

  • 75% work below grade level
  • 60% of girls have a child within 4 years
  • 50% do not complete high school
  • 45% are unemployed
  • 33% are arrested
  • 30% are on welfare at ages 18–24
  • 26% spend time in jail or prison
  • 25% are homeless
  • 10% are on probation

If handled properly, a mentoring relationship can boost the outcomes for youth who have been in the foster care system. Though results are uneven, researchers have indicated that youth who have been mentored for at least two years between the ages of 14 and 18 are more likely than their unmentored peers to report overall health, and are at a lower risk for STDs, violence, suicidal thoughts, and other dangers. Statistics for participation in higher education and vocational training also seem to promise a significant monetary ROI for mentoring programs.

Here is the caveat you knew to expect: program managers should tread carefully, for a mentoring relationship can cause significant harm if set up improperly. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

On Your Own without a Net

Prof. Mark Courtney, director of the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall, a policy research center focused on children, families, and their communities, focuses his work on the adult outcomes of youth involved in foster care. In a 2005 report written for The MacArthur Network on Transitions to Adulthood, Courtney notes Read more…

By Ysette, ago

MASA-MexEd

If you’ve been reading my blog regularly, you know that I have an interest in community centers that cater to the educational and developmental needs of the city’s youth. Yesterday I learned about yet another one. The New York Times recently had an article on how the children of Mexican Read more…

By Ysette, ago

Community college and other options

Darla M. Cooper’s report on how California’s community colleges serve former foster youth repeats a lot of the findings and recommendations that I’ve reviewed in some of my previous posts. But one of the points it brings up that is worth elaborating is the unique role that community colleges play in educating foster youth, for whom four year colleges are often out of reach for a whole host of reasons. Comparatively, community colleges are more easily accessible—especially in terms of affordability—and their focus on technical training and career placement is attractive to students seeking to establish financial stability sooner rather than later.

In the past few months I’ve been thinking a lot about the the type of advice we should be dispensing to young people regarding their post high school plans. (more…)

By Ysette, ago

Multiple Pathways to Graduation

One of New York City’s more innovative educational programs benefiting youth in and emerging from foster care is Multiple Pathways to Graduation, an initiative designed to expand the options and resources available to youth between 16 and 21 (this informational packet says 15 to 21) who have already demonstrated difficulty in completing high school. These are the students whom the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation (OMPG) designates as “overage and undercredited”—those who are at least two years off-track relative to their age and credit accumulation toward a high school diploma. This population includes not only truants, but also students with learning disabilities, English language learners, teen mothers, and of course, foster youth. (The CEO has other programs designed specifically for youth who have fallen into the juvenile justice system.)

Bloomberg’s Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO), whose mission it is to reduce poverty in the city (and which also implemented CUNY ASAP), established Multiple Pathways in close partnership with the DOE (then helmed by Joel Klein). The OMPG has discovered that a staggering 48% of incoming freshmen become overage and undercredited during high school. This is alarming, given that even students who come into high school well-prepared, but who run into problems and fall behind, graduate at lower rates. The following statistics are from 2007: “Only 19% of over-age and under-credited students ultimately receive a high school diploma or GED if they stay in high school; 6% of these graduates receive a Regents diploma, while 20% receive a GED.” The OMPG further estimates that there are “nearly 138,000 young adults between the ages of 16 and 21 in New York City who have dropped out of school or are significantly off-track for graduation. […] Of the 138,000 youth that are over-age and under-credited, 70,000 of them are in school, and 68,000 have already dropped out.” (Appendix B, 116)

As the name suggests, Multiple Pathways offers students, in addition to the option of re-enrolling in their high school of origin, a variety of alternative paths toward either a high school diploma or a GED, along with a career preparation component. The path the student ultimately takes depends on his/her age, credits already accumulated, schedule flexibility, and career goals. The options (especially for the GED programs) are a bit confusing, and they also seem to vary depending where you look for information, but I will summarize what I’ve gleaned so far below: (more…)

By Ysette, ago