Students in foster care were consistently about three times more likely to be suspended than all other student groups, with rates reverting to pre-pandemic levels by 2022–23¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associationalr2·q2
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · recheck by 2030: baselines and conditions change
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Roughly 14 percent of students in foster care were suspended annually versus about 4 percent of all students, with pandemic-era decreases reversing once schools reopened. → Ximenes Barrat 2025
Evidence¶
Ximenes Barrat 2025¶
Ximenes Barrat, V., Diercks, C., Berliner, B., Derby, K., Chen Gaddini, M., & Pivnick, L. (2025). Revisiting California's invisible achievement gap: Trends in education outcomes of students in foster care in the context of the local control funding formula. WestEd. https://www.wested.org/resource/revisiting-californias-invisible-achievement-gap/
q2 · i? · associational · r2
Analysis of CDE CALPADS suspension data, 2014–15 through 2022–23, across four student groups. Suspension rates dropped during pandemic remote learning but had reverted to pre-pandemic levels by 2022–23.
"students in foster care were consistently three times more likely to be suspended than all other student groups, meaning that an average of about one in seven students in foster care received exclusionary discipline that limited their learning time"
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- Academic achievement of students in foster care improved before the pandemic but lost all gains afterward, with only 19 percent meeting ELA standards in 2022–23 — related
- The number of California students in foster care declined by over 13,000 on Census Day between 2014–15 and 2022–23, with enrollment concentrated in a small number of districts — related
- Students in foster care were consistently more likely than other high-need groups to attend a low-performing school — related
- School stability for students in foster care improved from 62 percent to 66 percent but remained far below the roughly 90 percent rate of other groups — related
- Students in foster care were increasingly identified with disabilities, reaching nearly one in three by 2022–23 and far exceeding other high-need groups — related
- Chronic absence among students in foster care peaked after the pandemic, with nearly half chronically absent in 2021–22 — related
- Students in foster care are more than twice as likely to be chronically absent and more than four times as likely to be suspended as non-foster students — related
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
foster-care-suspension-three-times |
title |
Students in foster care were consistently about three times more likely to be suspended than all other student groups, with rates reverting to pre-pandemic levels by 2022–23 |
description |
Students in foster care were consistently about three times more likely to be suspended than all other student groups, with rates reverting to pre-pandemic levels by 2022–23 |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2025 |
recheck_by |
2030 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-09 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — ximenes-barrat-2025 |
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