2024 National Data Toolkit
Education is a critical, yet often overlooked, issue for youth experiencing foster care – one that deeply affects their stability and well-being. Educational success can be a positive and stabilizing counterweight to abuse, neglect, and family separation. Collecting, evaluating, and sharing education information of children in foster care is essential to improving their educational outcomes. The information gathered and shared across systems allows us to track trends, deficits, and improvements for students experiencing foster care. It can help shape education and child welfare policies, programs, and practices and support increased funding for effective programs. Moreover, bi-directional information exchanges between agencies are crucial to supporting individual students. Schools require important information from child welfare agencies about placement changes and caregivers while access to an individual student’s education information is critical to both the child welfare and education agencies providing the student with appropriate services and supports.
About This Toolkit
With the funding and support of the Hilton Foundation, the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education, a project of the ABA Center on Children and the Law, created this Data Toolkit to encourage child welfare and education agencies to work together to improve the quality of their information and data sharing practices.
In This Toolkit
Why Sharing Foster Care and Education Data is Important
Data shows us students experiencing foster care face frequent school changes, delayed enrollment when school changes occur, higher rates of school suspensions and expulsions, lower achievement in reading and math, higher levels of grade retention, and lower high school and college graduation rates. Child welfare agencies and education agencies can securely share limited, critical information about students experiencing foster care to facilitate better cross-agency collaboration and support improved educational outcomes.
Legal Framework for Data and Information Sharing
State and local governments have a critical role to play in ensuring that high-quality data linkages are being implemented. Furthermore, there have been several significant changes to federal policy that support data collection and information sharing between child welfare and education agencies.
State & Regional Resources
Several state and local governments across the nation have enacted or implemented laws and policies that support more comprehensive or more frequent data and information sharing between agencies. Jurisdictions seeking to improve their data practices can look to states and local agencies that have established sound processes for insight into successfully sharing information across systems.
*FEATURED RESOURCE* "Foster Care and Education Data Guide: A Process and Tools for Collection, Analysis, and Collaboration"
This Guide supports child welfare agencies, education agencies, and third-party partners in improving educational outcomes for youth in foster care through effective data collection, sharing, and reporting. It provides actionable steps to assess data capacity, address gaps, and encourage cross-system collaboration, offering practical tools, examples, and strategies tailored to diverse contexts and goals.
Tools and Resources
In this section, you will find several helpful tools and resources to support improved data and information sharing practices, including a comprehensive guide on collecting, sharing, and reporting data. You will also find interactive tools and assessments to evaluate your jurisdiction’s data sharing processes.
Inter-Agency Collaboration
What is Required
What is Needed
What is Possible
The Importance of Sharing Foster Care and Education Data
The data on the educational success of students in foster care makes clear that many of these students are in an educational crisis: they exhibit lower academic achievement, lower standardized test scores, higher rates of grade retention, greater absenteeism and truancy, and higher dropout rates. Only one-third of students receive a regular high school diploma within four years, and only three percent graduate from college. Collecting, evaluating, and sharing information on the education of children in out-of-home care is essential to improving their educational outcomes.
At the individual student level, data sharing allows educators and child welfare agencies to serve individual students more effectively and appropriately by identifying students in need of support, informing interventions for those students, and tracking their progress over time and through system involvement. These students are often highly mobile and need the coordinated help of both agencies to make smooth transitions between schools, identify and meet educational needs, resolve attendance and discipline issues, ensure student engagement and successful progression toward a high school credential and beyond.
At the aggregate level, data sharing helps us understand the systemic challenges that students in foster care face, inform collaborative solutions to identified problems, and track progress toward improving outcomes for students in foster care. Data sharing can also increase accountability among state and local agencies, fulfill reporting requirements, make the case for resources and targeted/increased funding, and guide cross-system collaboration.
More Resources on the Importance of Data Sharing
Data Points Article 1: Understanding Why Data Matters and the Foster Care ESSA Data Requirements by the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education
Introduction to the Roadmap for Foster Care and K–12 Data Linkages by the Data Quality Campaign and the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education (See the full resource here.)
What Data Should be Shared?
Two fundamental questions are at the heart of data sharing: which students are in foster care and how are students in foster care doing educationally?
On the education side, school staff must know which students are in foster care, as these students are entitled to legal protections, including the right to school stability, transportation to their school of origin, and immediate enrollment. Knowing which students are in foster care also triggers several questions that educators need to consider, including: who has the right to make education and special education decisions for this child? Who should be invited to school meetings and who is allowed to access the child’s records? How will the child get to school and who is responsible for ensuring the child has transportation to school?
On the child welfare side, staff need to know how students in foster care are doing educationally to effectively meet their needs- including any social-emotional or behavioral challenges, attendance issues, school discipline, unmet special education needs, or other issues that might lead a student to experience school drop out or pushout, not promote to the next grade, or be off-track to graduate. With access to accurate, up-to-date data, caseworkers can assist with school transitions, ensure continuity of special education services, and provide increased supports for students—including tutoring, counseling, mentorship, or other student-centered supports.
High-quality, secure data linkages ensure child welfare and education agencies have the most complete picture of these students’ experiences and needs. Child welfare agencies can share information about the student’s foster placement and history of placement changes, the education decision maker and caseworker contact information, and the student’s eligibility for Title IV-E services and funds. Education agencies can share student-centered data like attendance, behavior and disciplinary records, extracurricular engagement as well as data on student outcomes for students in (and not in) foster care. Together, having high-quality data linkages between foster care and K–12 data systems allows states to answer questions such as:
Are students in foster care remaining in their school of origin? If not, are they immediately enrolled in a new school? How often do students in foster care change schools each year?
What percentage of students in foster care are receiving special education services? What percentage of students in foster care are enrolled in advanced coursework compared to students who are not in foster care?
What are the academic outcomes and on-time high school graduation rates of students in foster care compared to those of their peers?
What percentage of students in foster care are suspended and expelled from school compared to students who are not in foster care?
Are students in foster care consistently receiving services they are entitled to, such as free and reduced-price lunch?
How should state policies be revised to help students in foster care successfully complete high school and prepare for college and careers?
New Resources
To learn more about the educational outcomes of students in foster care, see the 2022 National Data Sheet.
Student Information Confidentiality and Privacy
Confusion around confidentiality and information sharing in the child welfare context exists both for student-specific and system-level information sharing. Student-specific information sharing can be vital to ensuring that each child gets the support they need from education and child welfare agencies. System-level information, both quantitative and qualitative, is vital to developing a comprehensive picture of the educational problems children in out-of-home care face and the policies and supports they need. Each presents a different set of legal issues and practical approaches.
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Data sharing must be balanced against important privacy and confidentiality protections. Child welfare records contain a great deal of private information about system-involved children and families, only some of which may be necessary for schools to know in order to support the educational needs of students in foster care. Thus, it is important to understand who needs data and which data they need to be able to access.
To best protect a student’s privacy, limited information should be shared with only those who need to know. Agencies seeking to share information and data on students in foster care must develop strong, multifaceted, and transparent processes to ensure that shared data is safeguarded and consistent with federal and state information-sharing law. For more information, see Focus Area #7 of the DQC Roadmap for Foster Care and K–12 Data Linkages by the Data Quality Campaign and the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education.
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FERPA outlines the responsibility of schools to protect the privacy of a student’s education records, including parental consent to access educational records.
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The Uninterrupted Scholars Act (USA) amended the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to clarify that child welfare professionals can access educational records of youth in their care, even without parental consent. For more information about the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, read a factsheet about USA and the Federal Joint Letter and Guidance on the Uninterrupted scholars Act.
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Legal Framework for Data and Information Sharing
Federal policy has shifted in recent years, adding protections and supports for students in foster care related to education. Additionally, several states have passed legislation that aims to build collaborative practices between agencies and improve cross-system data and information sharing. At the local level, counties and school districts are coming together to improve data practices not only to meet reporting requirements, but to target individual students with the support they need to succeed in school and improve the overall educational outcomes of students in foster care.
Federal-Level Data
Over the past two decades, there have been several significant changes to federal policy to support data collection and information sharing between child welfare and education agencies. This includes: record-keeping requirements under Title IV-E and reporting requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS), National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD), and Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS).
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Title IV-E of the Social Security Act requires that child welfare agencies keep certain education records for students receiving a Title IV-E foster care maintenance payment, including: the most recent contact information of the child’s health and educational providers, the child’s grade level performance, the child’s school record, and any other relevant health and education information concerning the child determined to be appropriate by the child welfare agency. (SSA section 475(1)(C)). A child’s case plan must also include a plan for ensuring educational stability, including an assurance that the State agency has coordinated with appropriate local educational agencies to ensure that the child remains in their school of origin or, if remaining in their school is not in the child’s best interests, is immediately and appropriately enrolled in a new school. (SSA section 475(1)(G)). The child welfare agency must regularly review and update each child’s education record and supply it to every foster parent or foster care provider with whom the child is placed. (SSA section 475(5)(D)). Finally, the child welfare agency must provide a copy of the child’s education record to every child who ages out of foster care. (SSA section 475(5)(D)).
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ESSA (2015), which reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), requires each state education agency (SEA) to track and report annually on students’ educational performance, including students in foster care. This was the first time federal education law included specific rights and protections for students in foster care and requires collaboration between education and child welfare agencies. ESSA shines a light on students in foster care and other mobile student populations by requiring states— for the first time—to disaggregate by foster care status and publicly report information. Each SEA and local education agency (LEA) that receives Title I funds must prepare and disseminate an annual report card, and the report cards must be posted annually on SEA and LEA websites. LEAs/school districts must also report their data to the SEA, which then generates a statewide ESSA report card. SEAs must utilize the EDFacts initiative to share their data with the U.S. Department of Education.
ESSA report cards must include data on student achievement (i.e., performance on statewide assessments) and high school graduation rates for students. While achievement rate and graduation data have been collected since the 2017-2018 school year, states recently began reporting enrollment data for students in foster care in the 2023-2024 school year. This report card must include both information on the state as a whole, and on each LEA and public school in the state.
The need to disaggregate data on graduation rates, academic achievement, and enrollment for students in foster care offers states a chance to build critical data linkages and ensure ongoing, accurate, and appropriate data sharing between child welfare and education systems. While ESSA created a minimum for data sharing, some states, both pre- and post-ESSA, have gone further to require the exchange of additional key data.
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AFCARS is a child welfare data collection system designed to collect uniform and reliable information across the states on the experiences and characteristics of children who are in foster care and children who have been adopted. AFCARS requires Title IV-E agencies to collect and report on certain case-level data for children in foster care and those who have been adopted or are in guardianship. Local child welfare agencies must report their AFCARS data to their state and tribal child welfare agencies. State and tribal Title IV-E agencies are then required to submit their data to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) twice a year. Under a 2020 AFCARS Final Rule, beginning in FY 2023, Title IV-E agencies are required to report on several education-related elements for students in foster care, including a child’s involvement in special education (i.e., whether the child has an IEP or IFSP), current school enrollment, and last grade or education level completed. In addition to these required elements, Title IV-E agencies may collect additional education data to implement the child’s case plan, including information on attendance, grade performance, and school stability.
Learn more about AFCARS here. The National and States AFCARS Reports (TARs) are available here. The most recent National AFCARS Report for FY 2022 is available here.
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The Foster Care Independence Act of 1999 established the John H. Chafee Foster Care Independence Program, known as the Chafee Program. This law provides states with flexible funding to carry out programs that assist youth in making the transition from foster care to a healthy and self-sufficient adulthood. The law also requires the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to develop a data collection system to track the independent living services States provide to youth.
The accompanying Final Rule, published in 2008, established the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD). States are required to collect:
Information on each youth who receives independent living services paid for or provided by the State agency that administers the Chafee Program.
Demographic and outcome information on certain youth in foster care whom the State will follow over time to collect additional outcome information.
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Title IV-E agencies can access federal funding to develop a Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS), which is a case management information system designed to promote high-quality data exchanges. While using CCWIS is optional, Title IV-E agencies that choose to operate a CCWIS are required, if practicable, to implement bi-directional data exchanges with educational agencies to collect and share data to support educational planning for children in foster care. If an agency elects to build a CCWIS, the federal government will provide a more favorable reimbursement than provided for non-CCWIS data systems. The CCWIS Final Rule (2016) replaced the original Statewide or Tribal Automated Child Welfare Information System (S/TACWIS) regulations, which were issued in 1993. The key differences are that CCWIS allows state and tribal agencies greater flexibility to design and implement an information system to meet their unique needs and includes fewer federal requirements. For the first time, the CCWIS Final Rule requires agencies building these systems to exchange data with other health and human service agencies, education systems, and child welfare courts, if practicable. (See ACYF-CB-IM-16-02, p. 2, paragraph 1.)
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education funded a study to better understand the ways that state education agencies and state child welfare agencies share information and data about students in foster care. The study was conducted by American Institutes for Research with its partners at Westat Insight and in consultation with the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law. The study team conducted interviews with eight states, resulting in the state snapshots below. Learn more about the methodology of the study.
Brief: Key Federal Laws Supporting Students in Foster Care
This summary of federal law and guidance provides a brief overview of the relevant federal provisions that support the educational rights of system-involved children and families.
State-Level Data
State Highlights
In 2024, LCFCE met with two states to learn more about how they share data at the state level. Click on the resources below to learn more.
Featured Resource: To help states visualize how their data compares to the national-level data on educational experiences and outcomes for students in foster care, LCFCE developed this State Data Template.
State Snapshots
Each state education agency (SEA) is responsible for collecting required data from local education agencies (LEAs), monitoring compliance with reporting requirements, and sending aggregated data to the U.S. Department of Education (ED). SEAs should collaborate with their state child welfare agency partners to share data on education outcomes and work toward robust bi-directional state data exchange. They should also support LEAs to facilitate data exchanges with local child welfare agencies.
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ESSA Report Cards: ESSA requires each SEA and LEA that receives Title I funds to prepare and disseminate an annual report card. These “ESSA report cards” require certain information to be disaggregated by student groups, including students in foster care, on measures including student achievement and high school graduation rates.
ESSA permits SEAs and LEAs to include additional information on the report card. This may include rates of participation in extracurricular activities, the percentage of students receiving special education services, and the average number of school placement changes. They can also disaggregate students in foster care as a student group within additional required report card data elements, including measures of chronic absenteeism and postsecondary enrollment. Several states have gone beyond the minimum federal requirements in their report cards.
To learn more about ESSA’s reporting requirements, see “Data Points Article 1: Understanding Why Data Matters and the Foster Care ESSA Data Requirements” by the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education.
To learn more about states’ progress on ESSA report cards, see “Show Me the Data 2022” by Data Quality Campaign.
EDFacts: : EDFacts is an initiative led by ED to collect, analyze, and promote the use of high-quality data submitted annually by SEAs regarding Pre-K to 12th grade students. States report aggregated student data at the school, district, and state levels. For the foster care subgroup, states report disaggregated data on: achievement on reading/language arts, mathematics and science assessments; graduation rates; and enrollment counts for LEAs that receive Title I subgrants. SEAs can include additional information about students in foster care in their EDFacts reporting, beyond the minimum requirements in ESSA. The data in EDFacts is published publicly on Ed Data Express.
To learn more about EDFacts, see “EDFacts & Students in Foster Care” by the Legal Center on Foster Care and Education.
To learn more about how to use ED Data Express to view EDFacts data, see this guide.
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For state education agencies:
ED publishes guidance and monitors educational agencies’ compliance with the ESSA report card requirements. Recent guidance for states can be found here.
ED has published guidance to promote robust data-sharing beyond the minimum federal requirements. Updated guidance on ensuring the educational stability and success of children in foster care, including through robust data-sharing, can be found here.
For state child welfare agencies:
The Children’s Bureau (CB) releases resources to assist child welfare agencies in collecting and reporting on data. CB also monitors state child welfare services through AFCARS assessment reviews, the Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs), the National Youth in Transition Database (NYTD) reviews, the Comprehensive Child Welfare Information System (CCWIS) assessment reviews, and the Title IV-E foster care eligibility reviews.
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A memorandum of understanding (MOU) or interagency agreement (IA) is an agreement between two or more parties that outlines how they will work together to achieve a common goal. Entering into a MOU or IA can often be a critical step in ensuring two or more agencies share the same goals and understanding about a particular collaborative effort.
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Several states have passed legislation that implements federal laws related to data and information sharing for students in foster care. Some of these states have passed legislation that require additional data collection and reporting.
To view several state examples of legislation encouraging or requiring data sharing between agencies, click here.
Kids in School Rule! is a multi-system collaboration that utilizes data collection and exchange to ensure educational stability and success of students experiencing foster care in Cincinnati, OH.
NYCPS shares several comprehensive reports every year to dozens of private foster care agencies in NYC. This guide outlines the reports and strategies for data-driven advocacy.
Local-Level Data
Local child welfare and education agencies can collaborate to support students experiencing foster care more effectively by securely sharing limited, critical information about students in foster care. These agencies have a critical role to play in ensuring that high-quality data linkages are being implemented. Data-sharing at the local level enables schools to identify which students are in foster care, which is critical to improved data accuracy and allows child welfare agencies to get a clear picture of a student’s academic strengths and needs.
Local Data Spotlights
EPS is a data sharing system between all school districts within Los Angeles County specifically to share foster youth information. It was developed by the Los Angeles County Office of Education in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, .
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Local Education Agencies (LEAs): LEAs and schools districts receiving Title I funds are required to report on certain data elements. To comply with the educational stability provisions of ESSA , LEAs need to know which students are in foster care. LEAs also should know who the students’ Education Decision-Makers are to successfully meet their educational and special educational needs.
For more information about federally required education reporting at the local level see the 2024 Joint Non-Regulatory Federal Guidance on Ensuring Educational Stability and Success for Students in Foster Care.
Additionally, several states have passed legislation that require local agencies to collect, report, or share data beyond the federal requirements. Learn more.
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Local Child Welfare Agencies: Local child welfare agencies must include certain education records in the case plan of students receiving IV-E funds, including: the names/addresses of the student’s educational providers; the student’s school record and grade-level performance; and other relevant education information.
Local child welfare agencies must also comply with AFCARS requirements and ensure case-level information is provided to their state child welfare agencies. This includes certain education-related elements, including a student in foster care’s current level of schooling, their highest grade completed, and whether the student has an IEP or IFSP. Learn more about AFCARS.
Additionally, several states have passed legislation that require local agencies to collect, report, or share data beyond the federal requirements. Learn more.
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When local education agencies and local child welfare agencies engage in robust real-time bi-directional exchanges, they can share critical information about students experiencing foster care. Schools can share enrollment and academic history, disciplinary history, special education status, course completion and credit attainment, and transportation. Local child welfare agencies can share information about the child’s living placement, education decision maker, and contact information for the student’s caseworker.
Sharing this data can help agencies determine the relationship between child welfare and education, including how school disruptions and types of foster placements impacts various measures of student performance. Most importantly, frequent or real-time data sharing allows agencies to work together to support individual students.
Learn more about what information can be shared between agencies, what data elements to consider, and how to create a memorandum of understanding or interagency agreement to share data.
Research, Reports, and Promising Programs
In addition to the education and data work being done by government agencies, other groups such as advocacy organizations, services providers, and researchers collect their own foster care and education data or utilize available data. This work sheds light on the challenges students experiencing foster care face and allows programs to share the outcomes and impacts of their efforts. Below are a few key examples of reports, research, studies, and data-driven promising programs on education and foster care.
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The body of research on the educational outcomes of students in foster care continues to increase every year. Public and private agencies, universities, and philanthropic organizations have contributed to this increase in data collection and research at the national, regional, state, and local levels.
See:
“National Data Sheet” The Legal Center for Foster Care and Education (2022)
“Academic achievement among a sample of youth in foster care: The role of school connectedness” by Cheryl L. Somers, Rachel L. Goutman, Angelique Day, Oliva Enright, Shantel Crosby, Heather Taussig (2020)
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Across the country, advocacy groups are looking closely at the available data on education and foster care and reporting on what the data means for students and what agencies, providers, and funders can do to help.
“Destination Graduation: Investing in the Educational Attainment of California’s Youth in Foster Care” The Foster Youth Pre-College Collective (2024)
“Building On Potential: Next Steps to Improve Education Outcomes for Students in Foster Care” Advocates for Children, NYC (2023)
“Why Data Matters for New York Students in the Foster System”Next 100, NYC (2022)
“Educational Success of Colorado Students in Foster Care: What We Have Learned and Future Directions for Actionable Research” Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab at the University of Denver (2018)
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Several data-driven interventions have been developed to to address the significant educational challenges students in foster care face. The programs below have collected data and published reports to measure their impact.
Kids in School Rule! (KISR!) is a multi-system collaboration between Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS), Hamilton County Department of Job and Family Services (JFS), Hamilton County Juvenile Court, Best Point Education & Behavioral Health, and the Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati. KISR! provides a holistic web of supports to ensure the educational stability and success of students under JFS custody attending CPS using data-driven interventions. Since its launch in 2008, robust data collection and exchange have been critical to the project’s success. For more information on current and trend data on student specific outcomes for students involved in KISR!, see the KISR! Annual Report from 2023.
Fostering Opportunities is a data-proven student engagement program for middle school and high school students who have experienced out-of-home care (foster care or kinship care). The goal of the program is to help youth who have had this experience be successful in school and ultimately earn a high school credential. See the 2024 report.
Project Wrap Around is a joint project between the Tennessee Court Improvement Program (CIP) and the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS), with Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) and the Davidson County Juvenile Court as collaborative partners. The goal of Project Wrap Around is to address barriers to secondary education success of MNPS high school students in DCS custody and Extension of Foster Care by providing early collaboration and intervention between MNPS and DCS. See the report.
State & Regional Resources
Click on a state using the map below to see resources by state.
Featured Resources
