Vol. 11, No. 2 • May 2007

Why School Matters

“Of all the difficulties foster children experience, low academic achievement may have the most serious consequences for their futures.”

If you’re a foster parent, you may be surprised by this statement. If you’ve seen with your own eyes how powerfully some children are affected by abuse and neglect, you may even be tempted to dismiss this statement as just plain wrong.

Yet before you jump to conclusions, consider the severe and far-reaching consequences academic failure can have for any child. For example, school failure has been linked to:

• Poverty in later life
  
  
• Early involvement in sexual intercourse and increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases
  
  
• Higher health care costs, mortality rates, and incidence of suicide; more frequent admissions to state mental hospitals
  
  
• Increased use of social services, including economic assistance.

School failure also hurts society as a whole by contributing to increased crime, reduced political participation, loss of national income and tax revenues, and general waste of human potential.

Copyright � 2007 Jordan Institute for Families