Numbers Don't Lie

originally written for "Education Nation's The Learning Curve blog."

At the end of tenth grade, Barbara Bell was about to get kicked out of school. She was getting D’s and F’s on her report card and was lashing out at her teachers and
friends.

But unlike other teenagers struggling with school, Bell didn’t have her own home to go to at the end of the day. She was living in foster care.

“I always thought I was dedicated to school, so it was hard when things didn’t go my way,” said Bell, now 23. “I would get so mad at my grades that I would go off on
my teachers.”

At that point, Bell was on the road to joining the 50 percent of foster kids who don’t graduate from high school – amounting to approximately 200,000 drop outs, according
to a 2010 study from the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall. (By comparison, the national drop out rate is 4.1 percent, according to the National Center for Education
Statistics.) Of those foster kids who do graduate from high school, only 3 percent will go on to receive college degrees, according to Casey Family Programs.

Bell entered foster care when she was only one year old.

“I was always praying for my mom to get off drugs, praying to make the grandmother I never met proud,” Bell said. “And I didn’t really have any communication with my
[foster mom] so I didn’t really feel support.”
Kids in foster care are more likely to have mental health problems than other students, according to Mark Courtney, a researcher at the University of Chicago.

"We have to recognize that there is going to be a lot remediation and they may not finish at 18, but give them the time to do so,” Courtney said.

The summer after her sophomore year, Bell checked into a hospital to find ways to cope with her destructive feelings. The experience gave her the motivation she needed
to tread a different educational path.

“I didn’t want to be there,” she said. “I was crying all the time. But I looked at it like what didn’t kill me could only make me stronger.”

Armed with a new perspective, she “did a whole u-turn in school.” She enrolled in a new high school, went to the college and career center when other students were at
lunch, enrolled in a local Independent Living Skills Program for foster youth, and spent more time on homework.

By the end of eleventh grade she was on the honor roll. She graduated from high school in 2006 and in May she received a Bachelor’s of Arts in Criminal Justice, with a
minor in Africana Studies, from San Francisco State University. The accomplishment made her the first in her family to receive both a high school diploma and a college
degree.
“Not everyone has a successful story, so what happens to those youth who have no support?” asked Bell, who is now an advocate working with foster kids.

Instability is a major reason why students have trouble doing well in school, Bell says. Because foster kids are often placed in many different homes while in care, they
change schools frequently.

“Some people go to 40 different schools over 17 years, so there is no stability, and on top of that you’re dealing with so many different emotions,” said Bell. “I don’t think
there is enough support.”