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Former Foster Youth in Education
Children who grow up in foster care have lower rates of completion when it comes to high school and higher education. Using the PRISMA methodology (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses),Gypen et al. (2017) gathered articles from various electronic bases such as PsychINFO, Springer, Science Direct, and Google Scholar and searched the terms “Foster care” or “ Foster alumni” or “foster children” and “long-term perspectives” or “long-term results.” The studies included participants aged 17 years and older (no age cap) gathering data from family service systems and child protective systems.

Dworsky & Courtney (2009) found that in child protective systems, only 64% had completed high school by the age of 19 and Pecora, Williams et al. (2006) found that by the age of 29, 85% had completed high school or completed a GED. Those in family service systems had a 45%  of students completing a high school diploma, which compared to the general population of 73%, is considerably low. By the age of 23, that number increased to 73%, which is closer to the 83% of those not in foster care. Jackson & Cameron (2012) found similar findings. By the age of 18 only 33% had a high school diploma and by the age 24, that number grew to 73%. Gypen et al. (2017) suggests that this means that if given more time, children who grew in foster care, have a higher chance of getting a high school diploma or GED.

When it comes to higher education, research has found the number of students completing a two year, four year, or masters program to be even lower than high school completion rates. They also found that during the first year of college, children who age out of foster care were two times more likely to drop out, although there are indications that women have better outcomes than men (Naccarato et al. 2010). Pecora, Williams et al. (2006) found that 42.7% started education after high school but by the age of 25, only 9.6% were still enrolled. For those in the family service system, only 7.2% completed their bachelor’s and by the age of 23, only 1% had a Master’s degree.

Naccarato et al. (2010) suggested a buddy system to help foster students through their educational journey, just like families provide similar support systems for those students not in foster care.