Education among Children in Foster Care

Based in Tampa, Florida, Hope Children's Home (hopechildrenshome.org) is a nonprofit organization that helps children from infancy to 18 years old. Housed at the organization’s 55-acre campus in Tampa, the children receive personalized education at an accredited Christian school.

More than 90 percent of the graduates of the school at Hope Children's Home continue to college. This is a stark difference from rates in general foster care systems around the United States.

In 2018, Casey Family Programs, a foundation focused on foster care, noted that 30 to 50 percent of young people lack a high school diploma when they leave foster care and fewer than 31 percent of kids who grow up in foster care graduate from high school. At a college level, the numbers are even worse, with fewer than 2 percent of young people who lived in foster care completing a bachelor’s degree by age 25.

A similar picture is painted by statistics from the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education. In 2019, this organization noted that 32 to 45 percent of young people in foster care pursue higher education. Conversely, 67 percent of the general population enrolls in university or college.