Western Educational Equity Assistance Center

Publication

Revisiting California’s Invisible Achievement Gap: Trends in Education Outcomes of Students in Foster Care in the Context of the Local Control Funding Formula

This report sheds light on the persistent and troubling academic disparities faced by students in foster care—one of California’s most vulnerable and underserved student populations. Despite some gains in areas like school stability and graduation rates over the past decade, the report reveals that many educational outcomes for foster youth remain among the lowest compared to other high-need groups, with setbacks in areas such as chronic absenteeism, college readiness, and suspensions—some of which were worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This new report follows up on a landmark 2013 study that first linked California’s education and child welfare data to reveal the stark educational challenges faced by K–12 students in foster care. It is the first to revisit these outcomes, assessing progress since major policy reforms intended to improve education for foster youth.

Aimed at educators, policymakers, child welfare professionals, and the broader public, this resource also examines how foster youth are often overlooked in local education plans, where support is typically grouped with broader high-need categories rather than tailored to their unique needs.

Instructional Practices That Integrate Equity-Centered Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning: Updated Research-to-Practice Brief

To elevate ways in which SEL is embedded in regular instruction, educators need culturally and linguistically sustaining scaffolds to integrate SEL into existing instructional practices and educator professional learning systems.

Integration of SEL allows educators and students to move away from the traditional compartmentalized “SEL time” to an understanding that SEL is a core ingredient to teaching and learning in identity-affirming spaces.

Produced by Harmony SEL at National University, Transforming Education, the Center for Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety, and the American Institutes of Research, this brief refines pioneering work on the integration of SEL with academics and specifically addresses 10 educator practices that promote social, emotional, and academic development.

The authors have updated the 10 practices to be more inclusive of the multiple spaces in which students learn and develop and to reflect recent learnings on culturally responsive practices, trauma-informed instruction, and the science of learning and development.

 

Reimagining School Safety: A Guide for Schools and Communities

While school safety ideas and practices have evolved over the last several decades, the variety of school safety tools, policies, and degrees of success highlights a need for more conversation about the very concept of safety: what it is (and isn’t), who gets to define it, how it’s achieved, and at what cost.

In shifting how safety is defined so that it is not the absence of violence but the existence of systems and structures that support mutual care, belonging, and interconnection, schools’ policies, practices, and values shift towards creating strong communities and places of collaborative learning.

The purpose of this guide is to support education professionals reimagine and redefine school safety such that safety is not the absence of a negative but rather the existence of positive elements like interconnection, belonging, voice, and agency. Further, working from this paradigm of safety and centering the lived experiences of students and families—especially those who have been kept furthest from institutional power—can be a key component of designing systems that are more equitable and sustainable.

This interactive guide pulls from different frameworks and concepts, including complex adaptive systems, restorative justice, co-designing, and design thinking, to provide educators, school leaders, and district administrators with mindsets, strategies, and grounded examples of what is possible by reimagining school safety.

Community-Based Workforce Engagement Supports for Youth and Young Adults Involved in the Criminal Legal System

Stable employment is associated with significant short- and long-term benefits for youth and young adults (ages 16 to 24), but juvenile or criminal legal system involvement can create significant employment barriers, especially for young people. Engaging with supportive services in a community-based setting can help young people navigate and mitigate these barriers by accessing support to meet basic needs and set and achieve professional goals. This report summarizes findings from an exploratory study of community-based workforce development programs that involved a nationwide survey and a series of 15 follow-up interviews with staff members from a subset of surveyed programs serving youth and young adults who have been adjudicated for or convicted of serious offenses. The programs examined use a variety of strategies to serve their participants, including engaging in multisector partnerships, offering a wide range of workforce- and non-workforce-related supports, blending funding from multiple sources, and measuring progress and success. Though many programs are actively serving system-involved young people, they varied as to the extent to which services were tailored for this population. The findings highlight the importance of providing flexible service models that can be adapted to meet participants’ unique needs, particularly as they pertain to the barriers associated with legal system involvement and the young adult life stage. By developing a responsive program structure, building the organizational infrastructure to support program success, and engaging in strategic partnerships and collaborations, community-based programs can help young people involved in the legal system overcome barriers and identify and meet their employment and career goals.

Unlocking Futures: Youth with Learning Disabilities & the Juvenile Justice System

Imagine you’re a student with a disability that impacts how you interact with others and process situations. In an instant, that disability may be criminalized, and you could find yourself thrust into a juvenile justice system that offers little support and few education resources. This scenario is all too common. Thousands of young people are punished every day for what is often typical adolescent behavior, or behaviors related to their disability.

As the public continues to raise attention to issues of school climate and youth mental health, it’s important to acknowledge another social system that runs parallel to education, with significant, widespread impacts on the outcomes of those young people involved: the juvenile justice system. Spending even a short time in the juvenile justice system as a young person can have effects that last into adulthood. Yet conversations about youth well-being rarely include this typically overlooked and underserved group. Students with disabilities in particular are more likely than their nondisabled peers to find themselves engaged in the juvenile justice system, with
learning disabilities as one of the most common disability types.

LOCKED OUT: Improving Educational and Vocational Outcomes for Incarcerated Youth

Policymakers across the political spectrum agree: all young people should have access to a high-quality public education. Within the past two decades, particular emphasis has been placed on ensuring that students receive instruction that prepares them for college and careers, and that schools are held accountable for realizing these goals.
There is perhaps no subset of young people whose need for a quality education is more acute—and whose situation makes them especially challenging to serve—than incarcerated youth. Of the more than 60,000 youth who are incarcerated on any given day in the United States, nearly 36,000 are committed to state custody, two-thirds of whom are youth of color. The majority of these youth are over-age and under-credited, several grade levels behind their peers, more likely to have a disability than their peers, and have been suspended multiple times and/or expelled from their local schools.

Similarities in Reentry Planning of Students Involved in the Juvenile Justice System and Postsecondary Transition Planning for Students with Disabilities

The field of special education has developed evidence-based practices (EBPs) to promote positive postsecondary outcomes for youth with disabilities. Postsecondary transition planning is comparable to the planning processes needed for reentry of previously incarcerated youth to educational and community settings. Common practices for transitioning students with disabilities and for those returning to the community setting include career/technical/vocational education, interagency collaboration, career
assessment and exploration, student-centered planning, high expectations, real-life problem solving, and assessment-driven goals. Transition planning has the potential to reduce recidivism, the key measurement of successful programs and interventions in the carceral setting. There is little empirical evidence of best practices in correctional education; however, there are some programs and resources within special education transition literature that may be useful in the development of prerelease planning for adjudicated youth. Programs focused on improving self-determination skills such as being aware of abilities, needs and preferences, problem-solving, self-control, cognitive reasoning to address problems, self-efficacy, and self-advocacy can increase the level of preparation youth have for returning to the community. Other efforts
geared at systemic change can be beneficial, as well, including improvement of interagency collaboration, enrollment/re-enrollment requirements, training for educators and administrators to prevent stigma, and hiring one person in charge of the prerelease planning and records. Resources and suggested applications are included in summary.

Is Educational Achievement a Turning Point for Incarcerated Delinquents Across Race and Sex?

Research has linked the role of education to delinquency, but much of the focus has been on general population samples and with little attention to demographic
differences. Employing a cumulative disadvantage framework that integrates elements of informal social control and labeling theories, this article examines whether academic achievement serves as a positive turning point and re-directs juvenile delinquents away from subsequent offending. Attention is also given to race/sex contingencies. Using a sample of 4,147 delinquents released from Florida correctional institutions, propensity score analysis yielded two findings: youth with above average academic achievement while incarcerated were significantly more likely to return to school post-release, and youth with above average attendance in public school were significantly less likely to be re-arrested in the 1-year post-release period. While the academic gains were pronounced among African-American males, the preventive effects of school attendance are similar across race and sex, suggesting that education can be a part of a larger prevention effort that assists juvenile delinquents
in successful community re-entry.

Toward Social and Emotional Learning for Justice-Involved Youth: A Conceptual Framework

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has been used in many K-12 schools across the United States to improve academic and nonacademic outcomes. Extensive research affirms SEL’s benefits for students in educational settings. However, there is a research gap in adaptations of SEL for alternate settings. This article conceptualizes a SEL framework for justice-involved youth on community supervision to support rehabilitation efforts in the juvenile justice system (JJS). Integrating SEL into JJS may reduce recidivism and help justice-involved youth develop the skills to reintegrate into society successfully.