Beyond the Classroom (BTC) focuses on improving educational outcomes for foster youth through the following services: one on-one tutoring; basic literacy and numeracy skills; GED classes/Credit Recovery, extracurricular/enrichment activities; summer learning opportunities, including summer camps, informal mentoring, back-to-class readiness and encouragement to succeed. BTC will provide foster youth the support they need to have a more hopeful future.
Foster youth often perform several grades behind peers. The average foster youth, with over 3 placements resulting in interruptive school changes, are 3 times more likely to be in special education programs and less likely to be in gifted & talented programs. National studies show great disparity between graduation outcomes of foster students in comparison to the general student population with 49.3% graduation rates in foster care vs. 70.7% general student population (PEIMS 2011)
We've concluded that educational instability prevents foster youth from succeeding as adults. Building on progress we've made in creating partnerships with foster families and programs, we'll take it to the next level with Beyond the Classroom. We're passionate about helping foster youth and their families. Our experience in helping foster families influences and guides how we move forward. It enables us to look at the next opportunities to help foster youth succeed.
The project will allow 30 children: - improve in scores on class assignments based on previous school records - increase number of high school graduates above national average of 49.3% - increase number of participating foster students who enroll in college
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
