graduation

Big changes may be ahead for the nearly 3,600 foster youth currently enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Last week, the district announced that it will start producing regular data reports on how students in foster care are faring in school and how often they are changing schools — a key issue for foster youth who are frequently forced to change placements far from home.

Later this month, I’ll walk across the stage and receive my associate degree from Santa Ana College. After that, I’ll transfer to the University of California, Riverside, with the goal of one day becoming a professor.

Louisiana, one of the only five states left with no offer of foster care support beyond age 18, took one important step toward extending care during this legislative session. S.B. 129, a bill submitted by State Sen.

As the Los Angeles County Probation Department dismantles a controversial shadow probation program in schools, some county education officials worry that they will be left with fewer resources to work with young people who misbehave at school.

When she was 5, J.R. was already dreaming of going to college. Her father was in jail, her mother was addicted to drugs, and she and her two older brothers were living in separate foster homes.

When Tramischa Cole, a homeless 24-year-old mother of one, stumbled across a Civicorps flier in 2015, she didn’t expect to be accepted into the Bay Area’s only accredited high school and job training program for 18 to 26 year olds.

Xavier Mountain remembers the last look his adoptive mother gave him before leaving him at a foster youth shelter. It was a look of relief. Mountain first entered the foster care system at age 2 because his father was an undocumented immigrant and his mother had substance use issues.

Seattle-based nonprofit Treehouse is planning to scale up its program to boost the high school graduation rates of foster youth in Washington over the next five years. Treehouse’s Graduation Success program matches “education specialists” with foster youth in high schools.

The Juvenile Law Center and the Education Law Center are co-hosting a “tweet chat” about supporting educational success for youth in foster care. The chat spins off a recent issue of the Philadelphia Public School Notebook that focused entirely on foster youth issues.