With the support and funding for education dwindling, so is the support for students with special circumstances. Youth in foster care face the struggle of instability, meaning work needs to be done to create a stable future for them.

After reading an article about the difficulty of foster kids in college, I realize that youth in foster care face some of the same difficulties as youth who have incarcerated or absent parents. Like youth with incarcerated parents, foster youth rarely have the financial resources they need to attend college. As stated in the article “[O]nly 20 percent of foster-care youth nationally will seek education beyond high school, and fewer than 3 percent is expected to graduate from college.” The article also talks about how a girl in foster care who ended up dropping out of high school, who was able to earn a high school equivalency diploma and obtain a nursing assistant certificate.

Although some youth can become self-sufficient with the support from government resources, more effort needs to be put into creating better lives for struggling youth. Foster youth are among the many youth that are unable to rely on their parents for support. Without the natural support of their parents, youth with one or both parents absent must seek this support somewhere else. It is impossible for a youth to become self-sufficient on their own. We need to examine the reasons why some of these students succeed in school and some don’t.

I think that foster youth, youth with incarcerated parents, and youth with parents absent from their lives, have the preconceived idea that they do not have the ability to attend and graduate college. I believe this is because of the lack of financial stability and the discouraging lack of support in their homes. The education system makes limited effort to accommodate youth that need resources in order to succeed in both school and their own lives.

As a youth with a parent incarcerated, I have to find motivation within myself in order to function on a daily basis. At school, teachers are unable to create a stable and secure space for youth to be. As a result of the constant criticism and negativity that students receive from both teachers and peers, youth are further discouraged from having a successful future. If we really want youth who have absent parents to succeed, we should reassess how we think we are supporting them. If youth are living in unstable homes, we need to make sure that we create stable spaces for them everywhere else.
—Dorauis Lacy

This blog was written during a New America Media Education Reporting Fellowship for Youth, which was funded through The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.