Spotlight on: Success For All »

Emerging Work

Vulnerable Youth in Continuation High Schools

While inadequate academic and interpersonal skills present formidable challenges to the students’ educational success, it is their turbulent personal lives that create the greatest barrier to learning. Poverty, family instability, homelessness, constant mobility, substance abuse, physical and sexual abuse, incarceration, mental health issues and/or gang activity punctuate the daily lives of most continuation high school students. Many assume adult roles, either working to support their families, or caring for a young child or ailing family member.

California Continuation High Schools: A Descriptive Study.  Lynne G. Perez and Joseph F. Johnson, Jr., National Center of Urban School Transformation, San Diego State University, 2008.

To date, the Foundation’s work with vulnerable populations of youth has centered on youth in foster care.
>>Read more about our work with foster youth.

Because of our belief in targeting resources to young people with specific needs, we are now supporting a detailed look at continuation high schools to determine whether there are policies and practices that can be replicated on a system-wide level to improve opportunities for this special population.

While state legislation has set the framework for alternative schools, there is significant variation in continuation high schools’ quality, mission and student outcomes.  We believe additional attention should be paid to investigating student outcomes and documenting good practices with the intent of providing a higher quality education to these vulnerable youth.