A new report from WestEd, Revisiting California’s Invisible Achievement Gap: Trends in Education Outcomes of Students in Foster Care in the Context of the Local Control Funding Formula, highlights the persistent disparities that young people in the foster care system face while in school.
A follow-up to the 2013 study on the same subject that formally recognized foster students “as a group trailing behind their peers in academic achievement and in need of additional support and resources to succeed in school,” improvements in areas such as school stability, dropout and graduation rates were observed.
Since the original report, WestEd noted some developments in the education landscape for this population, including “the regular matching of education and foster care data, an overhauled school finance system to ensure additional funds to serve high-need student groups, and an accountability system to serve schools and districts with high-need student groups struggling to succeed.”
The pandemic, which disrupted the lives of all students, disproportionately affected the most vulnerable groups, including those in foster care.
For the new report, researchers analyzed data from 2014–15 through 2022–23, conducted interviews with stakeholders and considered the 2022–23 Local Control and Accountability Plans (LCAPs) of the 10 districts serving the largest numbers of foster students.
Findings
Among key findings was a decrease in the number of students in foster care — happening in conjunction with an overall decline in enrollment.
“Between 2014–15 and 2022–23, the number of students in foster care enrolled on Census Day (the first Wednesday in October) dropped by over 13,000,” according to the report. “In 2022–23, there were 31,722 students in foster care enrolled on Census Day. Also, in 2022–23, one in six California school districts reported enrolling no students in foster care and the majority of districts reported having between one and 49 students in foster care. In fact, nearly two-thirds of California students in foster care were enrolled in just a small number of districts, those enrolling at least 100 students in foster care.”
The percentage of foster students who had at least one disability increased from 23 percent in 2014–15 to 31 percent in 2022–23.
“Although students in foster care remained as likely as students in other high-need groups to attend a high-poverty school, they were consistently more likely than other high-need student groups to attend a low-performing school,” the report states. “The percentage of students in foster care attending an alternative school decreased steadily but, similarly, remained high compared to students in other high-need groups.”
The percentage of students in the foster system who attended just one school per year was 66 percent in 2022–23 — up from 62 percent in 2017–18 but still far lower than the general student population at 91 percent. Another positive sign, the dropout rate for foster students fell from 29 percent in 2016–17 to 24 percent in 2022–23. The group’s graduation rate also improved to 61 percent in 2022–23 compared to 51 percent in 2016–17.
However, in 2022-23, students in foster care continued to have a higher rate of chronic absence than their peers in other high-needs groups at 29 percent compared around 30 percent for low-income and English learner students and 25 percent for all students.
“Students in foster care were over three times more likely than students in other high-need groups to be suspended in a given year; their suspension rates dropped during pandemic-related remote learning, but rates reverted to pre-pandemic levels once schools reopened,” the report found. Additionally, “the percentage of students in foster care who met grade-level standards in English language arts and mathematics increased slightly before the pandemic but decreased again post-pandemic.”
The percentage of graduates who met admissions requirements for public universities in the state remained basically stagnant over time, landing at 19 percent in the most recent year observed. “The percentage of students in foster care enrolling in college within one year of high school completion did not improve across an eight-year period,” according to the report.
A quarter of the more than 30,000 foster students enrolled on Census Day attended schools in California’s 10 districts with the highest concentrations of students in foster care, WestEd found.
“This report examined the LCAPs from these 10 consequential districts for the 2022–23 school year,” the report states. “Findings revealed that, among the LCAPs’ planned actions that referenced students in foster care, very few were unique to students in foster care. Rather, nearly all actions were for the three high-need student groups combined: students in foster care, students who are English learners, and low-income students. An even smaller fraction of planned funds was unique to students in foster care.”
View more findings from the report here.
