Youth are positioned in foster care via no fault of their very own. Proper now, in each nook of Washington, these younger persons are attempting to make it via highschool whereas navigating challenges most adults would discover overwhelming. They dwell with uncertainty and nervousness — questioning the place they’ll sleep subsequent week, whether or not they’ll see their mother or siblings, and the best way to begin over at yet one more new college. Each certainly one of them deserves a good likelihood to graduate and construct a future crammed with chance. But for much too many, that likelihood is slipping via the cracks of the very techniques meant to guard them.
Many college students in foster care change colleges and/or residence placements 5 occasions or extra throughout highschool, falling additional behind every time as a consequence of lack of coordination between colleges and the foster care system. Consequently, they carry out worse than their friends on each instructional measure. Whereas Washington’s total highschool commencement fee now exceeds 82%, solely 51% of scholars in foster care graduate from highschool on time.
That hole isn’t just a statistic — it’s a purple alert. When college students in foster care don’t graduate from highschool, the results are devastating and long-lasting. They’re way more prone to expertise unemployment, poverty, homelessness and incarceration. A highschool diploma is without doubt one of the strongest predictors of long-term success. Each younger one that ages out of foster care with out one represents each a private tragedy and a preventable public value.
The state is aware of the best way to change this trajectory; they’ve been doing it for over a decade in partnership with Treehouse’s Graduation Success program. It’s not an experiment. It’s a mannequin that delivers outcomes and accountability.
By way of one-on-one educational teaching, advocacy and wraparound help, Commencement Success has empowered greater than 1,400 younger folks in foster care to earn their diplomas. Because the program’s inception a decade in the past, the statewide on-time foster care commencement fee has elevated from 36% to 51% — twice the speed of enhance of their friends not in foster care. College students served by Commencement Success for 2 years have an prolonged commencement fee 1.7 occasions increased than these by no means served.
Commencement Success works as a result of it’s relationship-based, data-driven and youth-centered. Instructional specialists meet weekly with college students to set objectives, monitor progress, advocate for wanted companies and keep related via each placement and faculty change.
Equally essential, the state’s funding in Treehouse leverages hundreds of thousands in non-public philanthropy every year from particular person donors, companies and foundations. It’s a fiscally accountable funding that yields each human and financial returns.
And let’s be clear: College students in foster care should not simply one other weak group amongst many. They’re the solely college students for whom the state of Washington is legally accountable as their guardian. Federal and state legislation cost each the schooling and baby welfare techniques with making certain their instructional stability and success. However past the authorized obligation, investing of their schooling is morally the precise factor to do.
When the Legislature reduce $7 million in state funding for Commencement Success earlier this 12 months, the consequence was rapid and painful: Greater than 400 younger folks misplaced entry to the individualized help that would have modified their lives. Each Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal and Division of Youngsters, Youth and Households Secretary Tana Senn are urging the restoration of state funding for this program.
As Gov. Bob Ferguson prepares his finances proposal and lawmakers prepare for the 2026 supplemental legislative session, restoring this funding should be a high precedence. Younger folks in foster care didn’t select their circumstances — to dwell other than their households, to maneuver from college to high school or to navigate advanced techniques on their very own. They’re already enduring extra instability and uncertainty than any baby ought to. However we, as a state, can select to face with them.
The least we will do is guarantee they’ve the constant, caring help they should keep on monitor to graduate. In doing so, we will affirm a easy fact: When the state takes a baby into foster care, it takes on each a authorized and an ethical obligation to assist that baby thrive, not simply survive.
Washington’s college students in foster care have proven extraordinary resilience. What they want now’s the steadiness of a state that retains its guarantees.
Let’s restore this funding. Let’s restore their hope and chance.
