Districts should target funds to foster youth to improve progress, report says

California’s foster care students have improved their high school graduation rates since 2013, but have barely improved, or even lost ground, in rates of suspension, attendance and prompt college enrollment, according to a new report.

And, in the 10 districts with the most foster students, only a fraction of 1% of the targeted money was directly spent on that group. The report, by WestEd, a nonpartisan education research agency, attributed the discrepancy to a disconnect between the administrators who drew up the spending plans and the staff who work directly with students, the report found.

Published this week and titled “Revisiting Californiaʼs Invisible Achievement Gap: Trends in Education Outcomes of Students in Foster Care in the Context of the Local Control Funding Formula,” the report details how state policies have affected outcomes for foster youth over the past decade, at times positively, but often in ways that limit their ability to succeed.

The authors conclude that while those changes facilitate school stabilization and other educational supports, challenges remain, including ensuring that planned school expenditures dedicate some funds to foster students’ unique needs.

“The report suggests that the implementation of foster care supports remains difficult and that funding for tailored interventions to the unique situations and challenges of students in foster care is not yet a common rule even for districts with large numbers of students in foster care,” said Vanessa Ximenes Barrat, WestEd senior research associate and co-author of the report.

Tailoring support to specific student populations

The report’s authors noted that tailoring support to each student group is critical given their varying needs.

For instance, in the school year immediately preceding the pandemic, which erupted in March 2020, foster students’ chronic absenteeism rate was 28% versus 12% for the overall student population across California. The rates sharply rose during the pandemic and have since steadily decreased. But data from 2022-23, the most recent school year included in the report, shows that discrepancies remain: 25% of all students were chronically absent versus 39% of foster students.

The wide gaps indicate to school staff that foster youth might need stronger interventions than other student groups in addressing why they are missing so much instructional time.

Similarly, suspension data shows continuing disparities, despite policy changes in recent years. Whereas suspension rates for all students have largely lingered between 3% and 4% since 2014-15 and through the pandemic, the rate for foster youth was between 13% and 15%.

“All the things that make students in foster care have all the worst outcomes across the board — their instability, their trauma, etc. — means that they need more of the interventions than everyone else, and they need different interventions based on their unique needs,” said a child welfare and education professional who was interviewed for the report.

Improved graduation rates, but concerns remain

One area where foster students have slowly made strides is with graduation rates. Rates have steadily increased for high-needs students, including foster youth, since the 2016-17 school year. That year, 51% of foster students graduated from high school in four years. By 2022-23, 61% were graduating.

A possible reason for the improvement, according to the report’s authors, is the passage in 2013 of Assembly Bill 216 which allowed some foster students to graduate after completing the state’s minimum requirements.

School staff who were interviewed for the report said that the law prevented some students from dropping out as they were moved from one placement to another, and encouraged them to complete high school even if they had fallen behind in some courses.

Other staff noted that the extension of foster care services to age 21 occurred during the same period in which graduation rates improved. The extension, they said, probably prevented students from leaving school because they were receiving added support to avert homelessness and other instabilities common among youth leaving foster care.

But even with that improvement, school staff interviewed for this report saw areas of concern. Of those foster students who graduated, for example, less than one-fifth had completed the A-G coursework required to qualify for admission to one of the state’s public four-year universities.

Other takeaways from the report include:

• While dropout rates among foster youth remain higher than their peers’, they have lowered by 5 percentage points since 2016-17.
• More foster youth are attending only one school each year, rather than moving between schools, which advocates say causes personal and academic instability — 66% in 2022-23, up from 62% in 2017-18.
• More foster students are attending high-poverty schools — up from 56% in 2014-15 to 59% in 2022-23.

As California’s general student population has dwindled, so has the state’s foster student population. State data shows that nearly 45,000 foster students were enrolled in the K-12 grades during the 2014-15 school year on census day, the first Wednesday in October. Eight years later, the state enrolled about 31,700 foster students.

About a quarter of the state’s foster care students attend school across just 10 districts: Los Angeles Unified, Fresno Unified, Lancaster Elementary, Long Beach Unified, Antelope Valley Union High, Palmdale Elementary, San Bernardino City Unified, Moreno Valley Unified, Kern High, and Hesperia Unified.

Local-control dollars rarely targeted solely to foster students

The dip in enrollment of foster students in K-12 coincided with the state’s overhaul of the school finance system and the implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula, commonly referred to as LCFF. One of the changes under LCFF was that districts receive supplemental grants based on the number of high-needs students, which includes foster youth, English learners and low-income students.

Each district must also complete a Local Control Accountability Plan, known as an LCAP, and provide details on how it intends to help students succeed, including actions and expenditures related to the three groups of high-needs students.

Equity across the state’s student population was part of the intent of implementing LCFF.

But the report showed that of WestEd’s review of the 10 LCAPs, only 10 of 482 anticipated actions to support overall student populations were specific to foster students. Over half of the actions referenced foster students in some way, but mostly lumped all high-needs students together.

Foster youth, for example, have alarmingly high rates of chronic absences and increased school mobility. If a service offered by a school requires students to be present in class, foster students may not always benefit; they might instead need greater access to transportation to help them travel to school regularly.

The question of whether to target more funds specifically to each student group, rather than combining them, persists, given changes at the federal Department of Education and how they may impact foster students.

Ximenes Barrat said, “As a relatively small and highly vulnerable population with distinct needs, there is a real risk that their concerns could be overlooked amid broader policy shifts.”

WestEd CEO Jannelle Kubinec is president of the EdSource Board of Directors. EdSource’s editorial team maintains sole editorial control over the content of its coverage.