Her mother deported, her father incarcerated, 6-year-old V. Doe entered Rhode Island’s foster care system in 2005.

By 2017, the girl-turned-teenager had changed residences no less than a dozen times as she bounced through foster homes and treatment facilities. All that jostling meant repeated school changes, an experience faced by many foster youth that is known to hurt their academic prospects.

The most extensive overhaul of federal education policy in nearly two decades, the Every Student Succeeds Act, includes mandates meant to give students like V. Doe a chance at “educational stability.”

So when her district stopped paying her tuition at a school for students with disabilities in September, after yet another change in her foster care address, the state Department of Education ruled the district had violated her rights under ESSA.

That November 21 decision not only required the school district to pay but also ironed out some of the thorniest questions regarding ESSA’s foster care mandates, including transportation.If the district, North Smithfield, doesn’t appeal by January 20, it will be compelled to pay V. Doe’s costly tuition through the end of the school year.

The Rhode Island case could serve as a template for enforcing ESSA in 10 other states known to be failing at, or clearly struggling with, implementation of the law’s foster youth provisions.

Research has shown that more than one-third of all foster youth will experience five or more school changes by the time they turn 18, and each change can cost four to six months of academic progress.

V. Doe’s case “should motivate states” to live up to the law, however, students in foster care “are at risk of getting lost in the larger implementation of ESSA.”

Read the full article youth in foster care and ESSA policies by Daniel Heimpel at The 74.