“Sharing Data Key to Improving Foster Care Outcomes”
“An average of 32 percent of foster students change schools in a given year, making data sharing imperative to improving their educational success.”
States that share data among child welfare and education agencies have a better chance of lessening some of the barriers foster care students face and improving student success, according to a report by the Data Quality Campaign and the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education.
The report details which states (currently 24, plus the District of Columbia) securely link K-12 data systems with foster care data systems to provide foster care students with crucial supports like assisting with timely enrollment.
“At any given time, there are about half a million students that are in some kind of care such as child welfare services or foster care,” said Chris Kingsley, associate director of local policy and advocacy for the Data Quality Campaign, a nonprofit national advocacy organization. “The mobility rate of foster students is almost four times as high as non-foster students in California alone, and we know highly mobile students face challenges other students don’t.” Please click here to access the full article.