Although some success stories may be found, Brace’s Orphan trains are largely considered a low point in child welfare policy in the U.S./NYC. Brace began the movement toward foster care and away from institutional placements, but with motivations that clearly did not represent the child’s best interests. Brace’s main concern was for the increasing juvenile delinquency in cities and believed that the property, morality and political life was threatened by homeless, delinquent children or what was termed the “dangerous class.” In his appeals for funding, he described his plans as a “moral and physical disinfectant”, which aroused more popular anxiety over the situation then sympathy for the unfortunate children and adolescents. Brace was convinced that the children could only be helped by transplanting them to new environments. He believed that the best of all asylums was the home of the farmer and began his plan to “drain the city” of destitute children to farming families in the West. 1854 saw the first “emigrant parties” where children were brought to a small town in Michigan and handed out to families. Brace never took into consideration the children’s natural families or took time to investigate the substitute family or even follow up in the care received never mind the child’s experience. Estimates are around 50,000 children transplanted from New York City and the City and State continued to subsidize the operation. The abuses of the apprenticeship reappeared as many children were abused, mistreated, overworked, under fed, clothed and uneducated. The complaints from poor families of lost children went unheard. It was not until the Mid-Western states began to refuse to take children feeling like a dumping ground for thousands of delinquent and needy children, which became sources of public expenditure. Although the practices of the Children’s Aid Society ceased, Brace did popularize foster care at a time when the emphasis was on correctional and reformatory methods in similarly abusive institutional settings.  I never heard/read any link between the Orphan trains and education in the US.

Meanwhile I gained the impression also from Brace's writings that his action was very ambivalent. A double vision of the deported children prevailed: they were regarded both as lamb-like beings in an inhospitable and vicious environment and as a nuisance endangering urban security and peace. This strange mix of compassion and fear meant that they were simultaneously victimized as suffering, helpless creatures and demonized as criminals and outcasts.