Maintaining stability is key to improving student access to quality educational opportunities, especially for students farthest from opportunity. But for the 300,000 children and youth in foster care in the United States each year, stability can be hard to come by — as many of these children experience significant barriers to school success, including neglect, abuse or abandonment, frequent placement changes, trauma from separation from family and developmental delays.
To address these challenges, the American Institutes for Research and the California Department of Education formed a research-practice partnership, with support from the California Department of Social Services, to understand and reduce school mobility for students in foster care in California. Here’s what we learned:
School Mobility Declined Over Time in California
School mobility — defined as changing schools during an academic year — among students in foster care declined from 36% in 2017–18 to 30% in 2023–24. This improvement was largely driven by fewer students moving multiple times in a single year: the share of students who changed schools two or more times fell from 14% to 10%. Interviews with education, child welfare, probation and community-based organizations across 11 California counties suggest that local partners have increasingly prioritized school stability. County offices of education have trained educators, social workers and community partners about the importance of school stability. They’ve also developed protocols (such as transportation) to help students remain in the school that they’re used to.
Within the foster care population, Black students, high school age students, students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness are more likely to change schools. Black students experienced mobility at a rate seven percentage points higher than their white peers in 2017–18. This Black–white gap narrowed to 4 percentage points in 2023–24. Over the same period, the gap between high school students and elementary school students decreased from 13 percentage points to 9 percentage points. However, students with disabilities and experiencing homelessness continue to have very high mobility rates: nearly half of students experiencing homelessness changed schools during the 2023–24 school year.
Transportation Is a Key Barrier to School Stability
About two-thirds of school moves are associated with a residential change, often tied to changes in foster care placement. On average, students relocated 22 miles in their first residential move, 27 miles in their second move, and 30 miles in their third move. These distances make transportation to the school of origin logistically complex and expensive. In some counties, it can cost up to $100,000 per child per year to provide transportation. Counties are also developing creative approaches to maintain educational stability. For example, several large counties established countywide agreements with third-party vendors to coordinate transportation. In smaller, rural communities without robust public infrastructure, social workers and educators collaborated directly to arrange transportation so students can remain in their schools of origin.
To support state and local decision-making, we released an interactive map showing school mobility across California counties and districts to help leaders identify hotspots and track progress. Key policy considerations include funding transportation so students can stay in their schools of origin, clear coordination between agencies to make timely decisions and enroll students immediately, and targeted supports for students most at risk of frequent school moves (such as those experiencing homelessness and older youth). These steps can help reduce school disruptions and provide more stability for students in care.
