“It’s a right for folks to continue their high school education while they’re in a juvenile justice facility,” states Jennifer Falzerano, the statewide education coordinator for Oregon Youth Authority (OYA), the state’s organization for juvenile justice. “That doesn’t matter if you’re here in Oregon or if you’re in West Virginia, you still have that right to K-12 education.”
The juvenile justice system, which includes county and state-level facilities, provides educational opportunities to youth in custody. Education for youth committed at a state-level through OYA is overseen by the Oregon Department of Education, with some hands-on learning programs implemented in partnership with BreakFree Education. At the county level, programs are typically administered by local school districts and education service districts.
OYA runs nine secure close custody facilities — five correctional facilities, four transitional facilities — that currently provide services to approximately 365 youth aged 12 to 24 who are involved with the juvenile justice system. Additionally, Oregon’s 12 county detention facilities typically serve youth who are awaiting adjudication, one outcome of which would send them to an OYA facility. Thus, most youth in county facilities do not remain there for long. These facilities have a statutory obligation to provide K-12 education.
“If you came in the early 2000s, it was a lot of worksheets [in] juvenile justice in general. There was more of a sense of, ‘Well, we have to provide education. So we’ll do that to the minimum,’” says Falzerano of previous education policies in the juvenile justice system. That method has since been recognized as insufficient to support youth. “In Oregon, it is the law that we have to provide an equal level of quality. It might look different, but wherever possible, [education should be] an equal level of quality to what is available in public schools,” she explains.
As of early January 2026, 316 youth in OYA facilities “were under 21 and therefore eligible for state reimbursement for high school or GED attendance,” explains OYA Communications Director William Howell. As of November 2025, roughly 200 youths in OYA facilities were attending high school or General Education Development (GED) classes; the other 116 youths had already received their high school degree or GED, and use school hours to work an on-campus job, attend college, or attend vocational classes, according to Howell.
“My students are very transitional. They are only in my classroom for an average of nine days. Sometimes they are only here for a day, other times up to a month,” explains Nate Young, a teacher at Douglas ESD’s Juvenile Detention Education Program (JDEP). “My classroom is usually just small enough that the day is very individualized for each student.” The individualized nature of JDEPs is important, as subject classes may have students of different ages, levels, and educational goals; for Young, a day in the classroom is spent teaching individualized lesson plans to “engage or re-engage [students] in their learning process” just as often as it includes “enrolling new students and exiting [other] students.”
“For most county-level facilities, 30 days is considered a long time for youth to be in custody,” says Trevor Walraven, associate director of policy and outreach for the Oregon Justice Resource Center. “So, while there are high school-oriented classes, … [students are] not always going to be there long enough to really accrue much in the way of credits.” Depending on the length of their time in custody, some students may aim to complete a high school diploma or GED, while others aim to minimize disruption to their progression or get on track.
A math support teacher at Donald E. Long, Multnomah County’s juvenile detention center, who prefers to remain anonymous for their privacy, explains, “There isn’t a lot of curriculum like you have in the specific public school setting, where all the students are working on one subject,” as many are “at extremely varying levels.” Instead, credit recovery — an area this teacher focuses on — allows time for “students all working towards a specific credit that they may be very, very behind on. This could be health, English, history, science — really anything they need to graduate.” A traditional model of public schooling, which provides uniformity across grade levels, often isn’t conducive to supporting youth who come from different educational experiences.
The variety of educational opportunities is not solely contingent on a student’s progressional needs; programming at county facilities can depend on their educational partners. Shorter-term facilities may not provide full GED programs or post-secondary opportunities. “If you’re incarcerated or detained in custody in a larger county facility, then you’re more likely to, arguably, have better access to resources,” explains Walraven. “Donald E. Long, in Portland — Oregon’s largest city — has multiple teachers as opposed to just one teacher, whereas in [less populated] counties, they have just one teacher that teaches the classes.”
Educational programming varies at the state level, too. “In general, yes, there’s always going to be [some] mixed age [classes],” says Falzerano. “Our Rogue Valley Facility, which is served by New Bridge High School in Grants Pass, feels very much like a traditional high school,” she explains. “It’s more leveled: like a freshman English, sophomore English, junior English. But then, for example, there are woodshop classes, [where age groups are] going to be mixed.”
Across OYA facilities in the 2024-2025 school year, youth earned at least 59 high school diplomas or GEDs, six college degrees, and 206 professional licenses or certifications. However, many students do not graduate whilst in OYA care; as Howell explains, “youth typically begin high school somewhere else, and also may finish high school somewhere else.” As many county facilities contract with local school districts, “those individuals, in theory, will be transitioning back to those local school districts, and so their credit acquisition is somewhat seamless in that,” says Walraven. Still, there is room for improvement in this process. “We need to increase communication between schools when youth are transferring,” says Falzerano, identifying the process as one that can be challenging. “But improving the ability to move credits so that youth, when they move around outside of their own control, don’t lose steam towards graduating.”
Joy Koenig, principal at Three Lakes High School, which services OYA’s Oak Creek Youth Correctional Facility, explains that when implementing new programs, her mindset is, “If it’s done at a comprehensive high school, why not here?” Oak Creek, which services female and nonbinary youth, offers a variety of vocational trainings, including construction, fabrication lab, and culinary arts programs.
Students who remain in custody after completing high school or GED programs may have access to additional educational opportunities, particularly if they are at OYA facilities. Falzerano explains that OYA works to connect local community colleges to provide college courses and vocational training. Providing programs that imbue skills through hands-on learning can also engage students for whom traditional modes of education have not been successful.
Access to post-secondary and trade learning opportunities can have a significant impact on students. “Earning a high school diploma is one of the best ways to help a youth get into regular employment and [have] a productive life, and not [have] another crime in the future,” states Falzerano, referencing research findings. “Even better than that is an associate’s degree or a career technical pathway to a job. … If we get all the way to a master’s degree, which we get to occasionally, there is statistically zero recidivism.”
Not only can education help create “a safer Oregon,” as Falzerano describes, but it can also connect with and encourage youth. Charlie Nguyen, an undergraduate clerk at the National Center for Youth Law and a student at UC Berkeley, believes that “education [in the juvenile justice system] should be a priority. It should be accessible and offered for what people want to do.” Nguyen earned a high school diploma and four associate’s degrees while in the juvenile justice system in Southern California. He describes, “It was within there that people told me that I was smart, I was capable of all this. [Because of] the people who supported me, I then realized that I could do something with education, or really enjoy it.”
Whether it is in short-term classes in county facilities, high school and GED programs, or career-specific learning, education in the youth justice system is meant as a mechanism of support. Nguyen believes juvenile institutions still have ample room to improve at meeting students’ needs, explaining that more comprehensive systems for identifying learning disabilities like dyslexia can bolster engagement. He stresses the importance of acknowledging trauma, and of working with consideration for the ongoing brain development of youth.
“I think right now there are low expectations for what the students can do, and the emphasis put on credit is really taking away the emphasis that should be put on just learning and building critical thinking skills,” says the math teacher, explaining that it is important to provide skills that benefit students’ futures, not just diplomas. They see this change coming about through how teachers engage with their students. In any system, especially one as complex as the juvenile justice system, continued improvement is necessary.
The feedback processes Falzerano has implemented during her two years at OYA can contribute to this positive evolution. “We’re most successful when we listen to the students we’re trying to serve,” she says. OYA plans to continue collecting feedback from youth and a family advisory council as part of a two-year cycle, implementing and refining programs based on what they learn from the community.
Education programs provide important support to youth; the people who help facilitate these programs strive to respond to students’ individualized educational journeys, to connect them with skills that will help them find employment, to “rebuild for youth a sense of courage,” says Falzerano. Young concludes, “As an educator in the juvenile education system, I feel it is important to meet each student where they are at and see them for who they are, not what they’ve done.”
