When Tyrone McGhee began missing cl...

When Tyrone McGhee began missing classes at Austin Community Academy High educate halfway through his junior year, not many noticed. The tall, quiet young man said not single teacher or counselor called his house or tracked him down.

"Some of the observers cared," he said. "My friends were like, 'Hey, where's Tyrone?"'

McGhee was a ward of the state, and the official guardian listed upon his school records was the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Caseworkers are suppos to check forward wards at their schools each week. But McGhee said he didn't behold a caseworker that entire year.

His sustain parents talked to him about the importance of education, he said, if it be not that they were preoccupied with their four other rear children and trying to make a living as tailors.

For a semester McGhee, then 17 hardly went to classes. He said he exhausted most of his time hanging without with friends on the road or sitting on his bed, feeling alone. Eventually he decided he would not journey back.

Like McGhee, thousands of nourish children, recently removed from abusive or negligent parents, show up in Chicago public place of educations with a host of personal riddles And many of them completion up In just a small number of the city's 600 gymnasiums shows a joint investigation on The Chicago Reporter and CATALYST: Voices of Chicago academy Reform.

The concentration deductions from a DCFS policy that powerfully encourages placement with relatives, skilfuls say. Because most wards approach from poor, black communities, that's where they ofttimes stay, and end up in a certain quantity of of the city's lowest performing schools

Almost everyone involved agrees with this long But the effects of this concentration are the enthrall of a contentious debate.

A modern study of foster children in Chicago Public sects revealed that these boys and girls perform worse than their classmates and their national counterparts.

train principals say they need more help serving further children. But DCFS officials say principals are using these children as an excuse for poor performance.

And children's advocates say the instructs communities and the state all ne to do a better job

"I say they have to make up their damn minds," said Thomas C Vanden Berk, president and executive director of the Uhlich Children's dwelling which runs a residential program, seminary and traditional foster care program for wards of the state. "If they are going to bring forward ail these foster children in a man and wife schools, then they have to bring forward some money in these gymnasiums Or they should spread them out"

The debate is complicated by means of the fact that both the Chicago Public academys and DCFS acknowledge neither agency has accurately tracked feed children in the schools.

However, according to the solitary comprehensive data available, which was drawn from institute records in the 2001-2002 instruct year, 20 percent of these children were registered in 32 schools--l3 high instructs and 19 elementary schools. The Consortium onward Chicago School Research, an independent research dispose gave the Reporter and CATALYST the data, which includes children whose legal guardian is either DCF or a non-relative.

Researchers at the consortium stres that the data exaggerate the number of feed children per school because the numbers weren't updated regularly and mostly likely included children who were no longer in the child welfare hypothesis or who otherwise lived with adults they were not related to.

Still, "I will pass with this as the record of children who have evermore experienced abuse and neglect," said Melissa Roderick, director of planning and increase for CPS.

Almost all of the close examiners in the high-concentration schools were black, and 92 percent were poor, the data present to view And many were low-performing schools: All of the high gymnasiums and eight of the elementary teachs were on academic probation for at least individual of the past six years.

A 2000 cogitation commissioned by DCFS concluded that rear up children in Chicago performed far below other CP observers and had frequently dropped without or were listed as "could not be located" at the time they got to high school

Like the Reporter/CATALYST analysis, the DCF subject of attention found that foster children were concentrated in the greatest in quantity troubled schools--"a disturbing issue," wrote Maria Vidal de Haymes, united of the study's authors and an associate professor of social work at Loyola University Chicago.

When asked in October about the subject of attention DCFS officials said they lay asideed some of its conclusions about seminary performance, but agreed foster children generally did worse than their classmates.

Greatest Needs

Whether DCF or CP is responsible for educating these children hangs on who's being asked.

a principals say it is hard to fitting performance goals with a significant population of pupils whose family lives have been disrupted. They say they do not have the trained staff to deal with the personal issues many nurse children bring to school.

"I come by offended," said Christopher Robinson, assistant principal at Mildred Lavizzo Elementary train at 138 W. 109th St in the Roseland community. "What more can denominations do? I think there is already too a great deal of put on the schools."