Federal level data matching

Data matching is a process that allows the same student’s data to be found in different systems. The population of children in foster care changes daily and these students are highly mobile, and data matching can help ensure we are fully and accurately identifying students in foster care. While data matching is not currently practiced at the federal level, ED and HHS can work together to ensure that the linkages between their data systems are correctly identifying the population of students in foster care and matching their child welfare and education data.