The goal of the foster care system is to protect children from maltreatment, neglect, and abuse by removing them from unsafe home environments to temporarily place them in family-like settings until a safe, permanent home is found (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2021). However, meeting the educational needs of students in the foster care remains a significant challenge in the United States. One key issue is that, as a group, these students frequently face instability (i.e., entering and exiting the foster care system), which increases student mobility, decreases stable school enrollment, and affects schooling outcomes (Berger et al., 2015; Ferguson & Wolkow, 2012).
Consequently, over the past several decades, federal policy has increased its focus on increasing educational continuity and stability for students in foster care in educational institutions (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2019). For instance, recent federal legislation has prioritized reducing disproportionate mobility rates of students in foster care. The passage of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 required collaboration between child welfare and education agencies to promote permanent placements to improve child healthcare and educational stability. It stipulated that students could continue to remain in the school of their best interest even as they switch guardians and those who change schools have a prompt and seamless transition. Further, to address academic outcomes, Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) through the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015. This legislation specifically promotes school stability for students in foster care by providing guidance on how state education agencies could support students in foster care by allowing students to remain in their school of origin, allowing for immediate enrollment if not in the school of origin, supporting quick transfer of school records if switching school, and implementing cost-effective transportation options for students. Therefore, federal policy has established baseline requirements and guidelines vis-à-vis federal funding for states to develop their own programs that address the needs of children in foster care and their families that reduce school mobility.
Even before this noteworthy set of federal legislation, California – the site of this current study – has prioritized supporting and improving educational outcomes for foster youth. In 2003, the state became the first in the nation to pass legislation that guarantees educational rights to students in foster care. Since then, California has built upon these rights by adding further requirements for districts to provide additional support and resources specifically targeted toward foster youth. For example, California law dictates that children in foster care and the person with the right to make educational decisions on behalf of the child are to consult with the local child welfare agency and school district to make the best decision about school enrollment. Based on state and federal law, the process gives preference to the school of origin whereas a school change requires a written explanation (Burns et al., 2022) – all of this for the sake of addressing (and reducing) instability. Additionally, the cost of transportation should not be used when making enrollment decisions. As such, California has a system that seeks to learn more about the educational experiences of students in foster care and has made reducing school mobility a goal.
Background
School Discipline
How students are disciplined in school has lasting consequences. Research has established the existence of the school-to-prison pipeline where student disciplinary actions are associated with a much higher likelihood of future engagement with the judicial system (Novak, 2019). Exclusionary discipline, such as out-of-school suspensions and expulsions has already been linked to a host of negative future outcomes and student disengagement from educational institutions (Noltemeyer, et al., 2015; Lui et al., 2023). Students who attended schools with more exclusionary discipline policies were more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults, more likely to drop out of school, and less likely to attend college (Bacher-Hicks et al. 2019; Davison, 2022). Though research has discussed the gendered and racialized dimensions of the school-toprison pipeline, there is also concern for students in foster care. In a 2016 profile of prison inmates in the United States, around 9% of all prisoners had lived in a foster home at some point growing up (Beatty & Snell, 2016). Better understanding and addressing disparities that exist while students are in school can help diminish other systemic disparities.
Foster Care Instability
As described in the previous section, this present study seeks to extend current research in two ways. First, our sample allows us to examine discipline not just for students in foster care, but relative to their peers. Second, as described in this section, we build upon exiting research by looking at how transitioning into and out of the foster care system influences student discipline. To our present knowledge, we have not found existing work that goes beyond comparing students in foster care to their peers by investigating the instability of entering and exiting the foster care system on educational outcomes – i.e., the instability inherent in many foster students’ lives.