Beyond Dropout: Foster Care Experience, Educational Disconnection, and School Persistence during Adolescence

Background and Purpose: Attaining a high school diploma represents a pivotal developmental milestone during adolescence, yet youth with foster care experience frequently encounter heightened risks of educational noncompletion. Conventional research paradigms predominantly focus on school dropout, potentially obscuring a subset of students who maintain school connection beyond their expected graduation date. This study identifies these adolescents who remain enrolled without a timely diploma as "persisters."This study addressed two questions: whether foster care experience was associated with Year 4 high school exit pathways and whether, among foster youth who did not graduate on time, foster care timing differentiated persistence from dropout.

Methods: Using linked statewide administrative data from MD, we estimated a multinomial mixed-effects model predicting Year 4 exit status (diploma, dropout, persister) for 256,927 public school students in the 2013–2016 cohorts as a function of foster care experience, adjusting for gender, race/ethnicity, cohort, special education, English learner status, homelessness, free or reduced-price meal eligibility, school mobility, and county-level clustering. We then estimated a foster youth-only mixed-effects logistic model among 1,704 Year 4 non-graduates to test whether foster care timing categories indicating early exit, exit during high school, or remaining in care through expected graduation predicted persisting rather than dropping out, including race-by-timing interactions.

Results: Youth with foster care experience had substantially poorerYear 4 outcomes than peers without foster care experience: 69.3% earned a diploma, 8.5% dropped out, and 22.2% persisted, compared with 93.1%, 1.5%, and 5.4%, respectively. In adjusted models, foster care experience remained associated with higher odds of dropout versus diploma (OR = 2.41, 95% CI [2.07, 2.79], p < .001) and persistence versus diploma (OR = 1.76, 95% CI [1.59, 1.96], p < .001). Among foster youth who did not graduate within 4 years, remaining in foster care through the expected graduation date was associated with greater odds of persisting rather than dropping out for White youth, relative to youth exiting care during high school (b = 1.868, p < .001), but this association was substantially weaker for Black youth (timing × Black: b = -1.526, p < .001).

Conclusions and Implications: Foster care experience was associated with dropout and continued enrollment without a diploma at the end of Year 4. Among foster youth who did not graduate within 4 years, remaining in care through expected graduation was associated with greater persistence rather than dropout; this association differed by race. These findings suggest that systems that recognize persistence as an important option may be able to assist an important group of foster youth who remain enrolled beyond their expected graduation date. Policy and practice should identify Year 4 persisters as a distinct group for monitoring and support, strengthen coordination between schools and child welfare around care exits, and pay closer attention to racial differences in who appears to benefit from extended connection to care.