UCLA

Black families have historically experienced state sanctioned family separation for decades, originally via the institution of slavery and currently through the present-day child “welfare” or carceral family system. Schools act as an agent of surveillance for this system and report more Black families for suspected child maltreatment than families of other races. While in schools, Black foster youth disproportionately experience disparate educational outcomes in comparison to both their foster youth and non-foster youth peers, such as high rates of suspension, expulsion, special education placement, chronic absenteeism, and low graduation rates. Building upon carceral studies, critical education literature and social work scholarship this study provides a more complex understanding of the ways that the schools often collude with the carceral family system using over surveillance, hyper-criminalization, and disproportionate reporting, to impact the educational journeys of Black foster youth students in K-12. This qualitative study explores the experiences of Black foster youth students in college as they reflect on their educational trajectories. Much of the research on the foster youth community lacks a racialized lens and views the community as monolithic. This study builds on emerging research by centering the voice of Black foster youth students and by illuminating how they describe their schooling experiences, and how, if at all carceral systems work collaboratively with schools to shape their lives.