At a gathering of state and federal officials in the U.S. Capitol this summer, former foster youth Ivy Smith described the rocky path she traveled through higher education to earn three degrees from Boise State University.
She recalled the foster mom who couldn’t drive her to college prep classes, having to argue in family court about living on campus before turning 18, and losing her caseworker as she aged out of foster care during her freshman year.
Smith, who now works as a policy advocate for Idaho Voices for Children, then noted another more subtle but just as difficult hurdle: the low expectations others had for her success because she was a foster youth.
“For years I was told my odds of success were low, and they used to be so impressed with me for achieving the bare minimum, like graduating from high school,” she said at the hearing for the Senate caucus on foster youth. “I’m standing here before you all, sharing my story not because the foster system worked, that it did its job. Rather, I think it was a combination of sheer luck and my desire to prove everyone wrong.”
Smith’s experience is common, and underscored in a recently published study.
For years, government agencies, nonprofits and news outlets have relied on a bleak, decades-old statistic that only 3% of foster youth graduate from college. But in a comprehensive review of 17 more recent studies, University of Connecticut Associate Professor Nathanael Okpych and his co-authors found the rate is as much as four times higher. Often, it just takes foster youth a few years longer than their peers to get college degrees.