Schools in Juvenile Justice Get an "F"
New America Media recently posted an article about the failure of California’s juvenile court schools to educate youth in their care. The article cited Youth Law Center’s 2016 study “Educational Injustice: Barriers to Achievement and Higher Education for Youth in California’s Juvenile Court Schools,” which reported that juvenile court schools have very poor outcomes for youth – more than 40 percent of youth who spend time in court schools make no academic gains in reading or math. Additionally, many court schools have extremely high rates of truancy and suspension. More than 47,000 California kids spent time in court schools in 2014 — the average stay for kids in juvenile hall was just under a month, but over a year for kids who were found by a judge to be unfit to be tried as juveniles. The article also reports on positive interventions that are discussed in the report.