At Risk Students: Students at Risk of School Failure with an Emphasis on Students Placed in Foster Care - Research Paper Example

At Risk at risk of school failure with an emphasis on placed in foster care. At risk refer to those learners who are not experiencing any success in their educational undertakings and hence they are potential drop puts. Generally, these students are low achievers and do not have a high self-esteem. Foster care refers to a system in which minors who have been placed under legal care are placed in the home of a foster parent, a state certified care giver. Children are normally placed under foster care when chronic or serious problems do not allow for their safety in their homes. Such problems necessitate the removal of a child from their home for the purposes of their emotional and physical safety. At any given time, approximately 10,000 children are under foster care, 35% being in the care of their relatives. . How students in foster care become at risk students There are many factors that contribute to students placed in foster care becoming at risk students. These include the frequent school moves which result to disruption of their educational progress. This is mainly because such children are normally forced to leave their communities and schools on entering into foster care due to limited residential resources within the present district of the child. Such transfers force these children to join other students in their new schools despite the disparity in syllabus coverage between the two schools. According to Riley (1986), the impact of school transfers is great because most of such transfers take place mid of the school year and the mobility rates are higher for those entering into foster care for the first time. By the time some of these students go through the curriculum, they could have change schools up to five times. According to a 1996 study done in Chicago Public Schools, students who had changed schools for about four or more times had lost about a year of educational growth by their 6th year. If such student’s do not receive enough attention to orient them to the new school and remedial services to catch up with the rest, they end up lagging behind the rest all the academic years (Pecora et al, 2003). Some of the students under foster care attend to medical appointments or court cases. Such activities usually take the student out of school and could even result to emotional upheaval (Pecora et al, 2003). This means that the student will always have class work or content gaps due to frequent unavoidable absenteeism. This makes these students become at risk students because they may never cope successfully with the rest of the class leading to a general low performance. This causes the student to loose self-confidence leading to a continuation of the trend. Green (1986) notes that students placed under foster care have higher rates of inappropriate behavior like truancy, drug addiction or impulsive behavior. This could be due to lack of proper and continuous monitoring because social workers and care givers may change several times during the stay of a child in foster care. This makes their margin of suspended and/or expelled students wider compared to that of students who are not out of home. A combination of such suspensions and/or expulsions, and inappropriate behavior results to high school failure and drop out rates among them students placed under foster care. Help and support to at risk students At risk students need a lot of help and support from parents, teachers and counselors in order to enhance their educational levels and achievements. As noted earlier, these students experience more failure than the rest of the class and hence they fall behind their peers. This causes them to have low self-esteem which negatively affects their attitude towards education and to underestimate their potentialities. Beveridge (2010) states that the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), supports educational reforms that are standards-based. This is based on a belief that establishment of goals and setting of high standards can improve the educational outcomes of individual students. In regard to the above, the role of counselors, teachers and parents is to help at risk students develop a high self-esteem then set for them better educational expectations. High self-esteem will cause them to respond positively to any good educational goals set for them and work towards their attainment. They will also be motivated to set these goals individually. Teachers should also concentrate on the strengths of the students who are at risk of failure. They should use this as a basis of encouragement and setting of educational targets. The teachers should comment about any positive experiences by the students so as to boost their morale of working towards more improvement. A focus on the student weaknesses is more likely to trigger low-self esteem, truancy, or even worse, school drop out. Choice et al (2001) explain that at risk students should be encouraged to participate more in school activities. This will cause them to gain some identification which will boost their self-esteem. Correct treatment can only be given to an already identified and diagnosed patient. This means the teachers and parents should collaborate to identify those students who are at risk and their specific areas of difficulty so as to help them accordingly. Due to high rates of truancy among at risk students, teachers, counselors and parents should see to it that anything that can trigger truancy is eliminated. For example, punishing students who have performed below average in school or labeling them. The teachers should instruct the parents on how to help the at risk students at home for example, giving them time and motivation to focus on their academic work. The NCLB holds states and schools accountable for the progress of their students (Beveridge, 2010). Therefore, teachers should develop remedial programs and tutorials for students who are at risk of failure so as to enable them to receive more attention and time to tackle work taught in class. Such an intervention will enhance their understanding of the subjects and hence an improvement in their performance. This is important because some of them can be upgraded to middle achievers if more time is spend on the same content taught in normal classes. The school should also develop special programs that will cater for the special academic needs of at risk students. These programs should be flexible and should tailor the existing curriculum to the educational needs of the individual at risk student. This means it should provide an alternative to the traditional policies and restructure the curriculum in nontraditional ways. These programs should have a low student-teacher ratio to ensure that individual at risk student gets sufficient teacher attention during the intervention program. Generally, the program should provide positive experiences that boost self-esteem (Choice et al, 2001) The current trend of raising educational standards and achievement levels affects at risk students adversely. This is coupled with the unrealistic goals outlined in the NCLB and its incentives against students who are low-performers. This calls for teachers to shelter these students from such educational expectations that serve to remind and emphasize on the weaknesses of the at risk students. This includes giving them a parallel standardized but low-level test or that which focuses more on vocational skills. The role of counselors includes giving at risk students counseling that will address matters that can boost the level of drop outs or worsen the educational outcomes of at risk students. The counseling sessions should therefore address peer relationships, unwanted sexual behaviors and pregnancies, drug abuse and addictions, impulsive behavior, family problems and other specific issues that may be raised by the individual at risk student. The counselors should include programs that address anger management the teacher and the counselors should maintain good dialogue so that they are all informed about any changes in the student (Green, 1986). The foster parents of students under foster care should ensure these students enroll and remain in their new schools. This will help to reduce the rate of drop outs as a result or disruption of education progress (Green,1986). Some students under foster care could have gone through some form of abuse and this can make them to be withdrawn or feel neglected or rejected. An engaging environment should therefore be created by the foster parent so as to make the student feel included, safe and comfortable. Teachers and the school administration should also do the same. This will result to psychological stability which is highly needed for educational advancement and good achievement (Riley, 1986). The teachers and foster parents of students under foster care should take note of those medical appointment and court proceedings that cause emotional upheaval in the student so as to consult with the necessary stakeholders on how to deal with the situation. The parents, especially those of students placed in foster care, should give accurate information regarding the behavior and performance of the student. This will help the teachers in the new school develop the most appropriate intervention and mitigation measures. Teachers should link at risk students especially those placed under foster care with any chances of scholarships for further education because most of them come from poor socio-economic backgrounds. This will increase their chances of achieving financial independence while encouraging those in school to strive to achieve good grades so they can also get the scholarships. According to (Riley (1986), teachers should identify one amongst themselves who has the most positive rapport with the at risk student whose responsibility will be to help the student work through any difficult sports. This teacher will also be able to identify best strategies that can be employed to help such a student. Chronic absenteeism is the best contributor to school failure and consequentially, drop out cases. The teachers should therefore collaborate with the parents to ensure that these students are never out of school without any good reason. Out-of-school suspension for at risk students favors them more than it achieves the intended outcome. This is because their affinity for classroom work is low. Teachers should therefore negotiate with the school disciplinary committee for in-school suspension or other modes of punishment for discipline (Riley, 1986). Conclusion At risk students experience low levels of achievements in education and are at more risk of dropping out of school. This situation is even worse among those students under foster care due to the challenging situations surrounding this way of life for example constant disruptions, emotional disturbance and feelings of neglect and separation. Therefore the most potential positive counterweight to the neglect, abuse, impermanence and separation faced by students in foster care is educational success. This will enhance their well-being, increase their chances of attaining economic sufficiency and personal fulfillment, and transiting into adulthood in a more successful way. This requires that parents, counselors and teachers come in and offer every necessary support for these students to progress in all aspects of life, especially academically. References Beveridge, T. (2010). No Child Left Behind and Fine Arts Classes. Arts Education Policy Review. (1) pp 4–7. Choice, P. et al. (2001). Education for foster children: Removing barriers to academic success. Berkeley, CA. Bay Area Social Services Consortium. Green, B. (1986). “Lower the Risk for At-Risk Students.”. Alexandria, VA. National School Boards Association, Educational Policies Service. Pecora, P. et al (2003). Assessing the effects of foster care: Early results from the Casey National Alumni Study. Seattle, WA: Casey Family Programs. Riley, R. (1986). “Can We Reduce the Risk of Failure?” PHI DELTA KAPPAN. (68) pp 214-219. Read More