It’s officially fall, which means for the children of Hampton Roads, the school year is in full swing. This time of year can be both exciting and stressful for students, but it can be especially difficult for those in foster care. Nationally, only a little over half of youth entering foster care graduate high school, while the general population has a graduation rate of over 84 percent. Whether it’s due to placement instability, lack of foundational educational development or absence of supportive adult advocates, foster youth are facing barriers that prevent them from prospering. They deserve a network of support to help them succeed.
This support is exactly what Norfolk Friends of Foster Care provides through our Tutoring Program. One of the objectives of this program is to improve high-school graduation rates among foster youth and help prepare them for post-secondary education. We have contracted an exceptional group of highly qualified tutors, with the experience and training to work one-on-one with foster youth that need special attention and intensive support. These tutors remain paired with the youth wherever they go, so if they are moved from one foster home to another or are returned to their biological families, our tutors remain a constant source of academic, and in many cases emotional, support.
One-on-one instruction is one of the best methods of educating students, and that is why we’ve adopted it as the basis of our program model. We are overjoyed with the results we have seen from those who have received ongoing tutoring through the NFFC Tutoring Program. Here are some of the highlights:
- We have tutored over 100 foster youth in the program’s history, and provided over 2,700 hours of one-on-one academic instruction.
- Reading proficiency is up across the board.
- 100% of high school seniors in our program have graduated.
- 94% of our students have promoted grade levels.
- 88% of our students passed all tutored subjects.
- These outcomes far surpass the national statistics for foster youth and show that with the right support, foster youth can perform on par with the general population, in spite of their challenging circumstances.
We are thrilled to see the foster youth of our community succeed and are thankful to those who have invested in their future by donating to our tutoring program. With your help, we will continue to provide educational resources for foster youth and work to have an even bigger impact by expanding our program participation to more areas in Hampton Roads. Find out how you can get involved through our website.
