Some 30 years ago, my first job out of college was as a child welfare investigator for the state of Tennessee. Occasionally, I had to pull a child out of squalor or away from a perpetrator. Sometimes, things would go easily, and I could tuck the child in my red Volkswagen and roll off to a safe place. Other times, I was backed by a SWAT team. In my role, I opened the gate for these children into a system of social services and foster care.
Unfortunately, these necessary changes in residence often translated into educational disruption. The brutal reality for children in foster care is that they are relocated frequently and all too often fall behind academically and socially. This dynamic contributes to the cycle of generational family dysfunction as low academic expectations and school failure severely limit the life opportunities of these children I was trying to protect.
