UCLA, WestEd, and FES Announce New Study on Highly Mobile Youth Across the United States
The Fund for the Education Success of Students Experiencing Homelessness, Child Welfare, and Juvenile Justice (FES) and UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools (CTS) announced today a first-of-its-kind study to better understand the educational and other needs and experiential patterns of highly mobile youth. The study will focus on youth experiencing homelessness, youth in foster care, youth impacted by the juvenile justice system, and migratory youth in a select set of geographic regions across the United States.
The yearlong study, funded by a $200,000 FES grant and led by UCLA CTS and WestEd, seeks to understand the similarities and differences between the characteristics of highly mobile youth across the United States and uplift models that are most effective at serving young people who are historically furthest from opportunity.
“We need to work across student populations and in more collaborative, strategic, and integrated ways that prioritize the education, health, and well-being of young people who have been overlooked or historically not served well in our country,” said Dr. Joseph Bishop, Executive Director of UCLA CTS and a lead researcher on the study.
“We are hopeful that this study can shine a light on strategies that are producing positive results to advance our broader goals of equity and justice for marginalized youth, preparing them to thrive in adulthood,” said Jason Willis, WestEd’s Director of Resource Planning and co-lead of the study with Bishop.
The research intends to identify positive outcomes from the selected regions that can inform policies, funding, and practices at the state and local levels and help multiple child-serving agencies consider how to improve systems integration, cross-sector collaboration, and resource coordination to ensure more equitable student learning and well-being outcomes.
On the important intersectional nature of this new research endeavor, Barbara Duffield, Executive Director of SchoolHouse Connection, said: “Too often, educators, service providers, and researchers operate in silos, without consideration for how disruptive experiences such as homelessness, foster care, or juvenile justice overlap in the lives of vulnerable students. In order to effectively serve students with similar or intersecting needs, we need a better understanding of the practice, policies, and resources that have produced positive outcomes across these student experiences.”
Kristin Kelly, Assistant Director of Education Projects for the American Bar Association’s Legal Center on Foster Care and Education, shared: “This effort presents an important opportunity to document the disconnected data and research about the educational experience and outcomes of students experiencing foster care, homelessness, and juvenile justice. Establishing a baseline of current data on these students across the country will inform the need for collaboration and advocacy for significantly improved data and information sharing. More consistent data will surely demonstrate the need for significantly increased support for all of these students.”
“Education is the key for most marginalized children to break the cycle of poverty,” stated Yali Lincroft, Vice President of Philanthropic Services at the Walter S. Johnson Foundation, a member of FES. “FES was created to address the common experiences of school instability and a lack of coordination between local, state, and federal educational entities to address this population of students. FES is proud to support research by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools and its research partner, WestEd, on the intersections of these three populations so we can improve and reform policies and programs.”