Home REL West About REL West Measuring and Improving the Education Outcomes of K–12 Students in Foster Care in Los Angeles County
Measuring and Improving the Education Outcomes of K–12 Students in Foster Care in Los Angeles County
The Foster Youth Services Coordinating Program at the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) and REL West are partnering to reduce school mobility and absenteeism of K–12 students in foster care. The partnership uses data and evidence to improve education outcomes given that high rates of school mobility and chronic absence are related to disruptions in learning, relationships, and supportive services for these students. Partnership activities focus on examining and strengthening LACOE’s Educational Passport System (EPS), a data system that links information across child welfare and education agencies to better serve students. By building LACOE’s capacity to use the EPS, the partnership will increase its use of data for policy and practice decisionmaking and will generate new evidence to address school mobility and attendance challenges for students in foster care.
Current Projects
As a group Students in foster care have among the poorest education outcomes and are often highly mobile, changing home placements and schools multiple times during a school year, disrupting learning. REL West and Foster Youth Services staff at the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) are examining how many students in foster care across the county’s 80 school districts are enrolled in traditional or one of the alternative school types. They are also examining the school mobility and transfer rates from traditional to alternative schools for students in foster care. This project uses existing data in new ways to look at the rates of students in foster care enrolled in alternative schools that typically have more limited curricular and student support offerings and higher dropout rates than traditional schools.
No past projects at this time.
REL West Logic Model (File pending)
