Poster #11 - School Mobility and Educational Outcomes for Students in Foster Care: A Longitudinal Analysis

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

Each year over 300,000 children and youth are in foster care in the United States (Administration for Children and Families, 2024). These students often experience neglect, abuse, and/or abandonment and face significant barriers to school success, including frequent school moves due to place changes, trauma from separation from families, and developmental delays (U.S. Department of Education, 2017). Existing studies have found a strong link between mid-year school moves and educational outcomes such as high school graduation for students in care (e.g., Clemens et al. 2017); however, there has been limited evidence how the effect compares to other forms of school mobility, such as between-school year mobility (structural and non-structural). Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly shaped school mobility for students in foster care (Gao et al., 2025), calling for new evidence on whether the relationship between school mobility and educational outcomes has changed before, during, and after the pandemic.

In this paper, we use a unique longitudinal dataset from California to examine how different types of school mobility (mid-year, between-year nonstructural, and structural moves) affect educational outcomes for students in care. The dataset draws on a statewide match between the California Department of Education and California Department of Social Services and includes detailed information about foster care experience (e.g., length in case, placement type) and educational outcomes (e.g., test scores, attendance, and college enrollment). Our analytical sample includes 133,127 students who were in foster care between the 2017-18 and 2023-24 school years. 

We employed a value-added model that includes lagged student outcomes (e.g., test scores) and controls for student (such as race/ethnicity), family (such as residential moves), foster care (such as placement type) and community (such as urbanicity) characteristics.

Our preliminary findings show that both mid-year moves and structural between-year moves (such as moving from elementary to middle schools) are associated with a significant decrease in test scores, with larger negative effects observed in the post-pandemic period. Notably, prior to the pandemic, moving from elementary to middle schools had a larger negative effect than mid-year moves. In contrast, nonstructural between-year moves show no discernible effects on test scores. 

Our ongoing analysis will consider an instrumental variable approach, such as timing of the residential move, to address the endogeneity of school moves. We will also examine additional outcomes such as attendance, high school graduation, and college enrollment, and perform subgroup analyses based on student race/ethnicity, gender, age/grade, and foster care placement. 

The role of structural moves has been relatively under-studied in the literature and received little policy attention. Our findings suggest that these transitions play an important role - comparable to mid-year moves - in shaping educational outcomes for students in foster care, underscoring the importance of targeted supports during key school transitions.Our future work will leverage a longitudinal case study of 11 counties to understand why structural moves may affect student outcomes and spotlight successful local programs to support a successful transition.

Authors

• Kelsey Nicole Berryman, University of Wisconsin System
  Presenting Author

• Katherine Canniff, American Institutes for Research (AIR)
  Non-Presenting Co-Author