FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
INDIANAPOLIS -The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation has awarded a $25,000 grant to the Maryland Public Policy Institute for its innovative proposal to provide school choice to the state’s 11,500 foster care children. The award was given as part of the Foundation’s second annual Innovation in Promoting School Choice competition.

“Since its inception in 2001, MPPI has made tremendous strides in providing innovative solutions for some of Maryland’s biggest challenges,” said Robert C. Enlow, executive director of the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation. “This grant will help them apply that ingenuity toward education.”

Last October, MPPI released a report, School Choice for Maryland’s Foster Care Children: Fostering Stability, Satisfaction and Achievement, explaining the need to provide educational options to foster care children. The report cites instability, persistent low expectations and the lack of life skills and self-sufficiency training as some of the major barriers to the development of foster care children.

“Foster care children are one of the most at-risk and underrepresented segments of Maryland’s youth,” said Christopher Summers, president of MPPI. “Their lives are full of enough challenges and difficulties, education should not be one of them.”

The report also found that adults who were formerly in foster care are more likely to be homeless, incarcerated and dependent on state service than the general population.
“MPPI’s work in Maryland could become a model used all across the country,” Enlow said. “There are over 500,000 foster care children in the United States and for most the current educational system is not working. Educational options would go a long way to help these children transition into adulthood.”

The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation Grant Awarded for Innovation in the Promotion of School Choice was created, in conjunction with the State Policy Network, to encourage inventive thinking on different ways to promote educational freedom. This fall, MPPI will present the results of their work at the national State Policy Network conference, which is attended by national and state think tanks from all over the country. Last year’s winner was the Grassroots Institute of Hawaii for their proposal to create charter schools on military bases.