Policymakers from Congress to the state and local levels are sharpening their focus on the educational needs of children in foster care, a population that can exceed 700,000 nationally in the course of a year and which has doubled in the past two decades. In many cases, their strategies coincide with recommendations outlined in a recent report on California's massive foster-care system: access to preschool for foster children, specialized training for teachers, and making sure child-welfare agencies have educational liaisons. "A focus on school readiness and school success may not heal all the damage already inflicted early in the lives of foster children, but it can give these children--and many of their peers--the fighting chance they need and deserve to thrive as adults," says the report, released last month by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz, California, and Mental Health Advocacy Services Inc., a Los Angeles-based public-interest law firm. Among the signs of renewed attention to the educational needs of foster children are: (1) Reauthorization of the federal Head Start preschool program last fall lists children in foster care as one of the groups designated to receive priority for enrollment; (2) Efforts are under way in Congress to include foster children in the federal McKinney-Vento Act, which is meant to provide school stability, transportation, and other educational services for homeless children; and (3) Six-state project launched by the National Governors Association last month includes improved school performance for foster children as one of its goals in an effort to cut the number of children in foster care by 50 percent in the next 12 years.