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Foster Care and School Performance

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Foster Care and School Performance
Foster Care Youth and School Performance

The issue under review is the academic under-performance of foster care youth and the possible interventions that are available to improve school performance of foster care youth. Foster care youth are not only at risk of academic failure- they are in fact performing far behind their normative peers (Zetlin & Weinberg, 2003). Foster care youth are faced with many risk factors and a lack of protective factors that lead to their lower school performance. Common risks factors include frequent moving and the experience of prior abuse and neglect (Sullivan, Jones, & Mathiesen, 2010). In addition to examining lower school performance of foster care youth and its causes, this review also discusses intervention strategies aimed at improving school performance. Specifically, this research review was aimed at investigating the use and effectiveness of mentoring programs with foster care children in upper elementary. After a review of the recent and pertinent literature on this topic this paper will finish with a discussion about why this research is particularly relevant to social work practice. Over half a million children are in foster care in the United States at any given time (Zetlin & Weinberg, 2003). The foster care population disproportionately consists of racial and/or ethnic minorities, with almost 40% being Black, despite the fact that the general US population is only about 13% Black (Zetlin & Weinberg, 2003). Studies show that youth in foster care are more likely to have academic problems, which are probably due in part to their higher rates of absenteeism. Foster youth also have higher rates of disciplinary referrals and behavior issues at school (Zetlin & Weinberg, 2003). According to one study, 75% of foster youth “perform below grade level and more than 50% have been retained at least 1 year in school” (Zetlin & Weinberg, 2003, “Educational Effects”, para. 1). Additionally, foster youth receive much
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