K udos to Del. Nancy Stocksdale for standing up for some of the most disadvantaged in the state — foster children. The Republican from Carroll County, a former teacher, recently filed legislation in the General Assembly to make scholarships available for foster children in kindergarten through high school.

They deserve them. Everything else in their lives works against them. Shuttled from home to home, the 11,000 foster children in the state — 7,000 in Baltimore City — lack stability in every corner of their lives. Many move into the system from sexually and physically abusive homes where surviving trumps all other goals. The least the state can do is give them a stable learning environment.

As Stocksdale said, “the upheaval is more than what they should have to bear.”

Studies show foster children score lower on standardized tests, drop out of school at a higher rate and are more likely as adults to become wards of the state — in prisons or on welfare rolls — than the rest of the population. After leaving the system, about 25 percent of foster children become homeless.

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Is that the legacy the state would like to leave for them? And is that the best outcome for the state’s knowledge-worker hungry economy?

Besides, it’s not as if the idea came out of nowhere. It emerges from a policy proposal designed by the Maryland Public Policy Institute in 2005 and adopted by Arizona last year. And current and former foster care parents surveyed by Baltimore Research for MPPI said vouchers would improve the education for foster children.

Many former teachers fill the General Assembly, so they should understand firsthand the plight of these children. They and their colleagues should listen to foster parents, if no one else. And they must use the quickly waning days in the 2007 session to give those with so few opportunities a path to a stable and productive adulthood. Tell James Proctor Jr., D-27A, the chair of the Education and Economic Development Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee in the House, to support the bill by contacting him at 301-858-3083 or at james.proctor@house.state.md.us.