California’s Contribution to National Educational Opportunity for Foster Youth Movement

By. Daniel Heimpel

On January 1^st, the House passed the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, a bill that marks another important step on the longer road to increased educational opportunity for students in foster care.

Beyond the immediate significance to the more than 50,000 children living in foster care in California, Uninterrupted Scholars builds on a larger, national movement towards educational opportunity for foster youth largely born in the Golden State.

The act, which had passed in the Senate unanimously on Dec. 17^th, 2012, will amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to ease child welfare agencies’ access to foster children’s student records.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who as the most senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee was critical in getting the bill to the floor, explained the bill’s importance during a Dec. 30^th session of the house.

“Foster children are some of the most at-risk students,” Miller said. “Throughout their young lives they may change care placements multiple times…. Each move can put their educational success in jeopardy. That’s because the caseworkers who advocate for them as they move from one school to another often do so without critical information.”

As the law stands, child welfare agencies must have a court order to be granted access to student records. This legal hurdle not only slows down the transfer of records as students bounce from school to school, but also creates missed opportunities for social workers to intervene when a child struggles academically or celebrate academic success.

Jetaine Hart is a former foster youth who now works as an educational mentor for foster youth in Alameda County, Calif. California took a lead on the education of foster youth in 1981, launching Foster Youth Services, a statewide program that brought educational liaisons and mentors like Hart to county offices of education.

In California, educational mentors and liaisons are critical to making sure that records follow students in foster care, but there is no mirror program in non-county aligned school districts.

“A lot of time the social worker is the only person who keeps of track who knows the history,” Hart said.” Now social workers won’t have to wait to access this information – they will know what attendance looks like, know what’s going on with grades and disciplinary action in real time.”

Teri Kook, the child welfare director for the San Francisco-based Stuart Foundation and a national expert on education and foster care, concurs. “Ultimately, I believe this ability to share information, craft individualized academic plans and build upon the resiliency and strengths of students in foster care will improve high school graduation rates and college access and success for this vulnerable population,” Kook said.

In addition to the launch of Foster Youth Services in 1981, state legislators passed Assembly Bill 490 in 2004 to increase school stability for foster youth. The law gives students in foster care the right to stay in their school of origin even if a changed foster care placement forces them into a new school district, and ensures the rapid transfer of their records when a school move is deemed necessary.

In 2008, the federal government followed suit with strict provisions around the educational stability of foster youth in the landmark Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. In 2011, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) passed an amendment to the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) calling for the Department of Education to consider the educational stability and success of foster youth.

The bi-partisan, bi-cameral Uninterrupted Scholars Act bolsters the strength of this movement. This issue – that of leveling the educational playing field for our most vulnerable children – is one that ever more leaders are focused on solving. Their success in improving the educational achievement of foster youth could light the way for the broader education reforms this country so desperately needs.

Daniel Heimpel is the founder of Fostering Media Connections and the publisher of The Chronicle of Social Change. 

Congress Passes Key Foster Care Education Bill

By. Daniel Heimpel

2013 started with both houses of Congress passing a bill focused on improving the educational outcomes of foster youth.

The Uninterrupted Scholars Act (USA), submitted by the bi-partisan co-chairs of both the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth and the Senate  Foster Youth Caucus, was approved in the Senate by Unanimous Consent on Dec. 17th, and made it through the House on January 1st.

Among a handful of Members of Congress who took the floor to discuss the bill on Dec. 30 was Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), who introduced Uninterrupted Scholars alongside Caucus co-founders Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) in May. ”We have a responsibility to foster youth and children who we removed from their parents’ care,” Bass said.  ”Youth who we promised to keep safe and help to succeed. The Uninterrupted Scholars Act will help help us keep this promise.”

If signed by the President, Uninterrupted Scholars will amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to allow child welfare agencies access to foster student records. When FERPA was written in 1974, lawmakers’ intended to protect parents’ control over their children’s student records. But, the unintended consequence for children whose parent is the state — like those in foster care — were time-consuming legal hurdles social workers had to jump for access to foster student records.

Jetaine Hart, a former foster youth who now works as an educational mentor for foster youth in Alameda County, California, says that slowed access to student records for child welfare agencies means missed opportunities to celebrate a foster child’s academic success or to help overcome educational challenges. ”Now social workers won’t have to wait to access this information – they will know what attendance looks like, know what’s going on with grades and disciplinary action in real time,” Hart said in an interview. “That will help them make better decisions about the educational needs of the kids.”

Further, lawmakers and advocates argue that the new law will help smooth the transition to new schools for foster youth who are used to bouncing from one school to the next as they move from foster home to foster home. Nearly two thirds of former foster youth surveyed by Casey Family Programs in a national alumni study experienced seven or more school moves from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Coupled with the existing barriers in FERPA, educational and child welfare agencies struggle to ensure student records rapidly follow foster youth through school moves. This often results in an unnecessary loss of school credits, which contributes to a dismal foster youth high graduation rate of roughly 50%, according to data compiled by the National Working Group on Foster Care and Education.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) discusses the Uninterrupted Scholars Act on the House floor, Dec. 30, 2012.

“Foster Children are some of the most at risk students,” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), and the senior democrat on the House Education and The Workforce Committee, said during the floor debate. “Throughout their young lives they may change care placements multiple times. Each placement means adjusting to a new family; often to a new community, new friends and a new school. Each move can put their educational success in jeapordy that’s because the caseworkers who advocate for them as they move from one school to another often do so without critical information. Though current law rightly requires foster care workers to move children’s educational records in their case plans, another federal law limits the ability of caseworkers to access those records in a timely manner.”

R.J. Sloke was a 2012 summer intern with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) as part of the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute‘s Foster Youth Internship Program. Sloke had bounced through a dozen schools in the five years before he aged out of foster care at age 18 and lost many school credits along the way. This caused him to be held back in ninth grade three times. On July 20th, Sloke sat down with Sen. Blunt and told him his story. Touched, the Republican Senator decided to sign on as a sponsor of the Senate Bill, which was soon after introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Upon hearing about Uninterrupted Scholar’s passage in both houses of Congress, Sloke felt encouraged and empowered.

“I feel like all the pain and suffering I went through transferring all those schools wasn’t for nothing,” he wrote in an email. “Now that USA is passed, foster youth have a much better shot at graduating high school, thus helping them to become more self sufficient in their lives.”

Daniel Heimpel is the founder of Fostering Media Connections and the Publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change.

Bachmann on Being a Foster Mom, the Foster Youth Caucus and Uninterrupted Scholars

The day before Congress went into summer recess on August 3rd, Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) sat down with FMC’s Daniel Heimpel to discuss her experience as a foster mother, the formation of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth as well as the Uninterrupted Scholars Act.

The bill, which would ease access to foster kids educational records, had been introduced by Bachmann, and Caucus co-founders Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif), Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) on March 31st. The Senate followed suit on August 2nd.

- Daniel Heimpel

Sen. Mary Landrieu on Foster Care, Education and a Growing Movement

On August 2nd, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mark Begich (D-Ala.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced  the Uninterrupted Scholars Act.

The bill would amend education policy that currently precludes many adults and institutions from access to an individual student’s records. This makes sense in most contexts , but for foster children, who do not live with their biological parents, not having access to school records can create major hurdles in their educational success.

In this interview Sen. Landrieu discusses the importance of the law and the increased attention on foster care and children’s issues in Washington D.C. and around the country.

- Daniel Heimpel

Post-Partisan; the Power of Foster Care Politics

While the nation bemoans a “gridlocked” Congress and Comedy Central’s Messrs. Stewart and Colbert aptly ridicule both Presidential candidates for a disregard of specificity on one hand and hubris on the other, I have borne witness to a very different vision of our elected leadership.

2012 Foster Youth Intern R.J. Sloke with Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.). Sloke played a key role in a collective effort to maintain momentum behind the Uninterrupted Scholar’s Act.

Instead of obstruction and partisanship, at least around one issue – foster care – I have seen members of Congress from both houses and sides of the aisle move at notable speed to introduce important, thoughtful legislation; respectfulness between ideologically disparate leaders; and an ability to transform the recommendations of experts in child welfare and foster youth themselves into cogent policy.

This story begins in Miami on March 31, during the second stop of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth’s National Listening Tour. Caucus co-founder Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) sits aside Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) and Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) at an enormous rectangle of tables peopled with Florida’s child welfare leaders. Mary Cagle, Director of Children’s Legal Services for Florida’s Department of Children and Family Services, describes how the Family Educational Records and Privacy Act (FERPA) – intended to protect against disclosure of student records to parties other than school officials or biological parents – creates difficulties for foster children, who are no longer in the custody of their biological parents.

Amending FERPA would allow social workers access to student records, she says, helping them make critical decisions in how to best mitigate foster children’s educational challenges and celebrate their successes.

“Education is one of the biggest indicators for the happiness of our kids, so we really want the federal government to take a look at the tension in this law,” Cagle says to the assembled members of Congress.

Two short months later, on the last day of May, National Foster Care Awareness Month, Rep. Bass and Foster Youth Caucus Co-Founders Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) introduced a bill that would eliminate that tension by allowing child welfare agencies direct access to the records of students in foster care, and allow for aggregate data to be used in studies intended on improving educational outcomes for students in foster care.

“This was an issue waiting to be resolved,” Rep. Bass said in an interview on the eve of the bill’s introduction, which would eventually take the name of the Uninterrupted Scholars Act. “The thought had already been put in, all we did was take advantage of the thinking and the work that was in place.”

Through the summer, foster care advocates and hill staff worked behind the scenes to elevate the issue and make sure it carried momentum through an increasingly static legislative season. As is so often the case with child welfare issues, it was a combination of expert analysis and foster youth perspective that moved the Uninterrupted Scholars Act into the Senate, increasing the likelihood it will become law before the end of this Congress.

On July 20, R.J. Sloke sat down with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to tell the lawmaker his story of growing up in foster care. It was the last day of Sloke’s internship through the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s Foster Youth Internship (FYI) Program, which places foster youth in the offices of Members of Congress.

The 2012 Foster Youth Interns immediately following their briefing on July 31, 2012.

“It felt really good,” Sloke said after a briefing in the Senate Visitor’s Center where he and 12 other of this year’s Foster Youth Interns released a report entitled “Hear Me Now” filled with their policy recommendations. “I told him about my high school situation and how the bill [Uninterrupted Scholars] would have helped me.”

According to the report he contributed to “Hear Me Now,” Sloke lived in 25 foster care placements in the five years he was care before his 18^th birthday. All the bouncing through foster homes and group homes resulted in his attending a dozen different high schools.

“My caseworkers and schools failed to communicate with each other as I would transfer schools resulting in my not receiving credits to go on to the next grade,” he wrote in the report. Despite taking ninth grade three times, Sloke managed to graduate at 19.

Sloke’s story touched Blunt, who signed on as a co-sponsor of the Uninterrupted Scholars Act. On August 2nd, Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mark Begich (D-Ala.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced the law into the Senate.

In an interview just minutes before the bill was run to the Senate floor, Sen. Landrieu, Co-Founder of the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth, described just how important hearing from youth like Sloke is to legislators.

“This kid, even after having to go through ninth grade three times, not because he couldn’t do the work but because the system had lost his records, now he’s gone on to graduate…. He will be a phenomenal leader in our nation but you know this is just way beyond what should be required. That is R.J.’s situation and there are thousands of other cases like it.”

Much like the House bill, Uninterrupted Scholars will: give child welfare agencies access to foster student records; allow for the use of educational records in studies related to promoting the educational success and stability of foster youth; and eliminate the need for duplicative, time-consuming notice when transferring records.

On August 3^rd, the day before Congress took its summer recess, I had a chance to sit with Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth co-chair Michele Bachmann. After explaining her experience as a foster mother to 23 foster children and five “biologicals,” Bachmann took a moment to explain the significance of having caucuses on Foster Youth in both houses.

“A lot of people think we can never talk about anything in Congress, that everything is gridlock and everything is partisan, and it isn’t at all. So both Congresswoman Bass and myself have come together. We created the Foster Youth Caucus, a bi-partisan caucus to elevate the issue of the problems and challenges that families deal with, with foster care, because we want solutions. That’s what we are about. Positive solutions to actually help the life situations for families in challenging situations.”

While Bachmann — like Landrieu had the day before — repeatedly referenced the goal of finding “forever families,” she noted the importance of Uninterrupted Scholars.

“We filed our bill in the House, now we see the Senate’s followed suit. We do have time yet in the remainder of this year to advance the cause of children in challenging circumstances that is what we are here to be about…. Our goal is to place children in forever families, but along the way, along the path of that journey we want them to have the best possible educational [opportunities], because if there is anything I learned personally as a foster mother its that our foster children needed a leg up.”

Congress will reconvene in early September, just as hundreds of thousands of American students start a new school year. If momentum carries Uninterrupted Scholars through, students in foster care may have that much needed leg up on the road to educational success.

Daniel Heimpel is the Executive Director of Fostering Media Connections and the Publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change. 

Senate Takes up Charge on Foster Youth School Records

WASHINGTON D.C. –  Down on Capitol Hill, the air is hot, wet and gummy. With recess around the corner and the political parties settling in for a bitter election cycle, few bills of substance are moving or being introduced, save a seemingly small tweak to privacy laws that promises to dramatically change the educational cards for students experiencing foster care.

Yesterday, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) introduced the Uninterrupted Scholars Act, which would amend educational privacy law to allow foster care administrations’ access to student records.  The bill was co-sponsored by Charles Grassley (R-Iowa.), Mark Begich (D-Ala.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.),  Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protects students’ records from most parties other than parents or schools. A broad array of advocacy and other groups from around the country have long argued that an unintended consequence of FERPA is that foster care social workers, administrators and even foster parents have a hard time accessing educational records, which are critical to assisting children successfully navigate school.

“There are some real horror stories from the field that we have heard about how this is really impeding our ability to help nurture and love these children and get them to a safer place,” Landrieu said in an interview.

One such story is that of RJ Sloke, an intern with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption

RJ Sloke and Uninterrupted Scholars co-sponosr Sen. Amy Klobochar.

Institute’s (CCAI’s) Foster Youth Internship Program. Sloke bounced through 12 high schools and repeated the 9^th grade three times, something he attributes in large part to long delays before his records were transferred. At a Hill briefing on July 31, Sloke and 12 other of CCAI’s Foster Youth Interns released a report highlighting the changes they would make to federal foster care policy.

During the briefing, which was attended by Sen. Landrieu and Rep. Karen Bass’ (D-Calif.) co-founder of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, Sloke told the story of how he had the opportunity to share the merits of the proposed legislation with the Senator he interned for: Roy Blunt.

“I told him my high school story and why the law would have helped me,” Sloke said in an interview after the briefing. “Every time I moved schools my social worker had a hard time obtaining my records. If you remove that barrier, you will see more youth graduate.

Sen. Landrieu said that Sloke’s story was just one of many examples of why Uninterrupted Scholars needs to move.

“That is RJ’s situation and there are thousands of situations like it,” she said. “This bill will hopefully — and the education we are going to do around it — eliminate this problem and ensure the records flow seamlessly with the child and there is a cooperation between the schools and child welfare agencies.”

In May, Rep. Bass and the co-founders of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth introduced legislation to remedy this same problem. Like the followup on the Senate Side, Bass’ bill had bi-partisan support.

As most of D.C. looks to escape the heat and groans about electoral, partisan gridlock, a small but growing cast of legislators from both sides of the aisle and both the Senate and House side of the Hill are working together to improve the educational opportunities for foster youth.

Daniel Heimpel is the Executive Director of Fostering Media Connections and the Publisher of the Chronicle of Social Change. 

Isn’t it Ironic, Don’t you Think?

By. Daniel Heimpel

As the federal government works toward eased flow of information between the foster care system and education, the state that led the charge now aims to dam up the spring. 

SACRAMENTO – As California stumbles into the oncoming fiscal year, a yawning deficit is forcing wrenching cuts. It is an environment wherein hard fought protections for the state’s most vulnerable are felled at a dizzying rate.

“What is sad is that somehow anything that might potentially have a cost is just being swiped away without any close analysis,” said Laura Faer, Public Counsel’s Education Rights Director.

Faer and an unrelenting group of advocates have been fighting proposed changes to California’s education code under Governor Brown’s 2011-12 budget.  These changes would save two hundred thousand dollars but the cost to the state would be far greater, hurting its status as a national leader in policy promoting the educational success of foster children. Not to mention the educational cost to foster youth who already bounce through an average of nine different schools from kindergarten to senior year. This all happening while Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.) – who was California’s Assembly Speaker in 2010 – promotes federal legislation she introduced last month facilitating the exchange of information between schools and foster care agencies to support foster children’s education.

But, the irony of federal advancement on foster care and education is lost on California administrators too deep in the budget hacking woods to see the forest.

On June 12^th, the Senate Budget Fiscal Review Committee held a budget hearing in Sacramento. Michael Cohen, Chief Deputy Director of the Brown Administration’s Department of Finance explained the rationale behind converting 18 state mandates on Local Educational Agencies and School Districts to a $200 million “block grant.” This would eliminate the cumbersome process wherein local level school authorities must file reimbursemnt claims to recoup costs on  mandates imposed by the state, Cohen said. “We moved to a block grant approach where you eliminate those mandates, which in retrospect were never needed or are no longer needed.”

But, two of the mandates that would be eliminated under Cohen and the Administration’s plan are essential for foster youth struggling to make it through the state’s faltering public school system.

The first deals with the need for all social workers to have access to foster children’s educational records. Over the years, public child welfare agencies in California have increasingly contracted with social workers employed by private Foster Family Agencies to handle day-to-day casework. This means that private social workers are often the person closest to the foster children. But until 2000 when then-Assemblymember George Runner introduced legislation to fix the problem, these social workers did not have direct access to the educational records that would help them make decisions in the best interest of the child.

“The direct link between foster families and social workers is often weak,” the analysis filed in the statehouse reads. “Therefore it can be cumbersome to obtain student records, transmit them to the agency who then transmits the foster family.”

Roberto Favela, Vice President of a large California Foster Family Agency, says that this information is critical to ensuring that school records follow the child. “His personal life is traumatized by a living change,” Favela says, “and now you have an educational change that doesn’t facilitate or accommodate his needs.”

This was one of many examples of California’s progressive policy on the education of foster youth, which in 2003 culminated in landmark legislation to ensure foster youth had at least a fairer shot at at an education. A key mandate embedded into the broader law (AB 490) compelled Local Education Agencies to transfer a foster child’s school records within “two business days” of being moved. The common sense idea of timely transfer of records has since been engrained in federal child welfare policy as well as proposed federal education reform.

Despite a report from the California State Controller in 2011 that this mandate costs nothing, it still ended up on the Brown Administration’s chopping block, leaving advocates like Faer incredulous.

But for Cohen and the Administration, block granting and the subsequent elimination of code sections — which were created through thoughtful consideration and deliberation — is a win-win. “The block grant offers an opportunity for everyone to win by saving the administrative effort and providing flexible funding within the broad parameters of the state’s requirements,” Cohen said in the June 12^th budget hearing.

While in agreement with some aspects of Cohen’s argument, Senator Mark Leno lead the Budget Review Committee in a 10-5 vote modifying the Administration’s block grant scheme, setting the stage for a state-level drama with national implications.

In Washington D.C., the attitude towards the education of foster youth is markedly different.

On May 31^st, the last day of National Foster Care Awareness Month, Representative Karen Bass (D-Calif.) introduced the A Plus + Act, alongside co-sponsors Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Tom Marino (R-Penn.) and Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.). A + would loosen federal rules on who can access educational records, easing foster care agencies’ ability to get their hands on important school information.

The irony is not lost on Danielle Mole, a Policy Advocate for the Alliance of Children and Family Services, who has been lobbying to save the imperiled educational mandates back in California.

“One of the authors of the A + Act is Karen Bass who not so long ago was an Assembly member here in California,” Mole says. “We have a major California leader moving forward on providing increased collaboration between agencies, while California is potentially putting up addition barriers.”

A + currently sits in the House Education and the Workforce Committee, where staffers are unclear of when it will move forward. But co-sponsor Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) is clear about wanting to see that happen.

“It’s a bipartisan and commonsense bill and it costs nothing,” Stark said in a written statement provided to The Chronicle.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-Sc.), attended the May 31^st press conference when the bill was announced. As a member the Education and the Workforce Committee, Wilson is in a position to move A + to the floor.

“As an adoptive father, Congressman Wilson understands the importance of this issue and plans to review legislation pertaining to it,” said Wilson Communications Director Caroline Delleney in a statement provided to The Chronicle.

So as Washington presses forward on the education of foster youth, Sacramento may be rolling back.

Youth Services Insider: Foster Care Month Goes Out with a Bang in Washington

Former foster youths shadowed local Congressmen in the morning before attending a press conference for the A+ Act and a town hall on foster care in the afternoon

Note: This column was updated on June 7

The Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth brought National Foster Care Month to an end with a day of events yesterday:

-Foster Youth Shadow Day, during which about 40 “alumni” of the foster care system shadowed a member of the House of Representatives that hailed from their state.

-A press conference to announce the introduction of the Access to Papers Leads to Uninterrupted Scholars Act (A+ Act), which would amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in an effort to speed up the transfer of education records for children who need to change schools after being removed from their homes.

-A Foster Youth Town Hall, held at the Capitol Building, where Congressional members and staffers were invited to listen to and ask questions of former foster youths who had moved on to college and the work force.

A few thoughts on each event:

Shadow Day

Foster alums and some staffers donned electric blue Foster Care Awareness month t-shirts, and the design was a really compelling concept that other organizers should take note of.  The top half of the shirt was a big white space that took a shape somewhere between the event name-tag you get at fundraisers and a thought bubble in a cartoon.

Below the white space in black graffiti-style writing was scrawled: “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Shirt-donners all wrote a child welfare issue into the white space with a black sharpie: “Future Foster Parent,” “Domestic Human Trafficking,” “Child Welfare Finance Reform,” were the first three I spied.

Other foster youths chose to dress in the more traditional Capitol Hill attire of business suits; all of them were dressed better than this reporter.

A+ Act

We covered the act all day yesterday on The Chronicle website, including pieces on what the legislation says,  its origins, and some local examples of how FERPA had served as an obstacle for caseworkers in child welfare proceedings.

YSI has a few additional musings on A+:

-Obviously, it will need to be paired with Senate legislation to get to the president’s desk. Would President Obama sign it? It seems likely. There did not appear to be any Administration on Children, Youth and Families officials at the event announcing the bill, but two did show up for the Town Hall later: ACYF Deputy Commissioner Clare Anderson and Sonali Patel, a senior policy advisor to ACYF Commissioner Bryan Samuels.

-There is absolutely no doubt that foster youths are getting a raw deal because child welfare systems and school districts do not share records well. The foster alums on hand spoke out ardently for this, and it was not a lot that took the rights of biological parents lightly. By far, the issue most written into the Shadow Day t-shirts was “Family preservation and reunification.”

How much of the problem is due to FERPA protection, versus simple incompetence, is difficult to parse.

Carmen Miranda, a soft-spoken Hill staffer and foster youth alum, told press conference attendees that she spent

Before the event, YSI got to sit down to lunch with Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-Ill.) and two alums from his state, Michael Simelton and James McIntyre. Simelton was moved from his home in Cairo to a shelter in Carbondale, and could not attend school because his records were impossible to find.

McIntyre was adopted, but when the adoption failed and he returned to state custody, nobody could find his academic records or information about his immunizations, which most schools require in order for a student to enroll.

Miranda was held up from attending school because of privacy rights, which is what Bass and the caucus hope to address with A+.

The act will not directly help address the fact that school districts lose records though, although simplifying caseworker access to the records might make it more likely that records would survive and make the trip from school to school with foster youths. There is also the hope that between some requirements the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, along with the looming rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act, foster youths just won’t be moved from school to school as frequently.

-If it passes as presently written, ACYF will have at least one definition to make through guidelines: “a child welfare court proceeding,” in the context of the following change made by the act:

“When a parent is a party to a child welfare court proceeding, and the order is issued in the context of that proceeding, additional notice to the parent by the educational agency or institution is not required.”

It seems to YSI that how one chooses to view a “child welfare court proceeding” dictates the universe of parents who would lose the right to protect their children’s educational records.

Does an investigation of abuse/neglect by child welfare constitute a court proceeding? Would it need to rise to the level of substantiated abuse/neglect before the exemption kicks in? Or even more narrow: Would a FERPA exemption only kick in when a motion is made for removal from the home for any amount of time?

***UPDATE, JUNE 7:
After reading through the bill again, the above clause simply refers to the process of schools notifying parents after a court orders the school to turn over records. There is a bigger amendment to FERPA in the bill that actually creates an outright exemption for child welfare agencies.

State or local child welfare agencies could access records without court orders or parental consent under the law “such agency or organization has responsibility for the student’s placement and care, provided that the education records, or the personally identifiable information contained therein, of the student will not be disclosed by such agency or organization except for the purpose and to the extent necessary to address the student’s educational needs.”

Same deal here: HHS will have some defining to do if the bill passes as it is. “Responsibility for the student’s placement and care” will be the big one: does that mean children who must be actually cared for by the state through an out-of-home placement, or any child for which an abuse/neglect case is substantiated? Many of those youths remain in their homes, but if it’s an open case the agency would have some responsibility for placement and care.

***

-ACYF would be wise to instruct systems on what to do with the education records after use by a child welfare caseworker. Researchers that use personally identifiable academic records have to destroy identifying information as soon as they no longer need it. Would the same apply here, or would the agency get to retain records, even if the child was reunified and the case was closed?

Town Hall
The previous town hall, hosted by Reps. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), led directly to the A+ legislation (click here to read how in a piece by Chronicle publisher Daniel Heimpel). What themes prevailed at yesterday’s meeting?

Fostering for profit
More than one alum made the point that for every good foster parent, there are many in it for a paycheck. Not the most comfortable topic for the caucus, whose members heavily lauded the work of foster parents at the press conference earlier in the day.

Laughable legal help
“How many of you had a lawyer or a guardian ad litem?” Hastings asked the alums on hand.

“Had one, or met them?” someone shot back almost immediately.

Enough said. Improving legal services for youths in the juvenile justice system is part of the larger Access to Justice Initiative of the Department of Justice, a project conceived of by Attorney General Eric Holder.

A Justice Department solicitation went out in fiscal 2010 for a grant to start the Juvenile Indigent Defense Clearinghouse, but it appears that a winner was never selected.

Hastings could look to make legal assistance for dependency court-involved youths a legislative issue. It would likely have to be a scenario where some portion of federal funds are tied to meeting certain guarantees of public defenders for children in child welfare proceedings, perhaps with a caseload maximum included. It would be a tough legislative sell at the moment, because it’s essentially passing more costs onto states and counties who are in no fiscal mood to receive such news.

Into Adulthood with Money

Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) is an adoptive parent, and said his teenage son arrived to their home with a small bag full of belongings and no money. He asked the alums whether any of them were provided any sort of account or money when they aged out.

The vast majority on hand shook their heads “No.” Simelton, the young man who trailed Rep. Schilling earlier in the day, said Illinois did start to set aside funds for older foster youth, a “couple thousand dollars,” he told Marino. It was not nearly enough to meet the bills and costs of adulthood, he told Marino, but crucial nonetheless.

John Kelly is the editor-in-chief of The Chronicle of Social Change

Connecting Data to Improve Education Outcomes for Foster Youth

by Stephanie Ludwig and Anna Jacobi

Despite bureaucratic roadblocks, states and counties across the United States are managing to broker two unwieldy systems- foster care and education- to mine data that will clarify the educational status of children and youths in foster care.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) restricts access to educational records to parents and legal guardians. Researchers attempting to gain access to these records, to determine foster youths’ strengths and deficiencies, often face bureaucratic roadblocks due to privacy concerns.

Some states, such as Florida and Illinois, have succeeded in linking education data to other large systems such as social services, higher education and juvenile justice, while California has begun to catch up with state and county level projects that will match and compare educational and social services data.

Having completed a four-county pilot project, researchers from the University of California-Berkeley’s Center for Social Services Research are now working on creating a statewide social services data link with CAL-PASS (the California Partnership for Achieving Student Success), which uses data voluntarily uploaded by school districts.

Kristine Frerer, a research associate for the California Child Welfare Performance Indicators Project, says that the project hopes to answer some of the many questions about education for foster children that have been unanswered until now due to lack of data.

“We don’t really know how foster kids are doing educationally on a state level,” says Frerer. “We don’t know strengths and weakness of different programs.”

She said that FERPA posed a challenge to getting the project off the ground.

“It was kind of a nightmare,” says Frerer.

Because of FERPA restrictions, she said, they will not be able to update the data on a regular basis because the process of extracting and re-matching the data sample is too time-consuming and labor intensive.

After the process of de-identifying the data to preserve foster youths’ privacy, the project will link social services’ data on foster youth to educational data such as standardized test data, California High School Exit Exam results, free- and reduced-lunch status and post-secondary level coursework and graduation.

“States are mandated that they have to do longitudinal education system data and, even though it’s a federal mandate, they’re woefully behind,” says Frerer. “I think it’s a big effort, Los Angeles for example has 81 school districts that keep their own data.”

Another large project linking data from the California education and social services systems is also underway. The project is a partnership of the West Ed Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, the California Department of Social Services and the California Department of Education.

Beth-Ann Berliner, Senior Research Associate at West Ed, said the agreement took two years to come together in order to ensure the information was kept secure.

“All of the data transfer was done through a secure server,” says Berliner. “We are currently working with personally identifiable data from both services with the sole intention of making a match and finding every single student in foster care.”

Her partner on the project, Senior Research Associate Vanessa Barrat, says it has been a tricky process that has been eased by a shared commitment from the Department of Education and the Department of Social Services.

“The goal is to be able to report on the achievement of children on foster care compared to the achievement of kids not in the foster care system,” says Barrat.

The project proceeded with few FERPA-related obstacles, according to Barrat.

Other states have used data exchange to implement programs to enable foster youth to succeed in their schools. Illinois uses a system known as SchoolMinder to enable child welfare workers to find children foster homes near their school or district. After implementing SchoolMinder, the average distance of foster home changes dropped from 22.5 to 11.4 miles. Pennsylvania has designated education liaisons in each child welfare office and provides child welfare workers with an educational screening tool.

Some say the future of information exchange lies in creating large state databases so that agencies serving vulnerable populations like foster children can communicate more effectively.

Proposed FERPA Changes “Focus” on Foster Youth

By Tasion Kwamilele

Records for foster youth are often lost as they are moved around. A game-changing database called Foster Focus is helping social workers and school administrators assist the needs of foster youth by keeping all of their records – from residential history to school documentation – in one place.

Foster Focus was established by the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) to maintain residential, health and school records of foster kids. It was only implemented in two counties when it first started in 2000 but since then, 23 local educational agencies have contracted with SCOE to use the database including the San Francisco Unified School District.

Tom McGeorge, planning analyst for San Francisco’s Human Services Agency, is working with SCOE to finalize the implementation of Foster Focus in the School District this upcoming school year.  In the past, updating foster kids records relied data from the social workers monthly visits but the new database will now update records on a nightly basis. 

“Only seeing a child once a month is a long time so this will be used as a case management tool,” McGeorge said. 

By monitoring grades, course schedules and school attendance, “this database will allow us to know much more than we’ve known about our foster youth,” he added.

A new bill was introduced this week and, if passed, would amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA. FERPA gives parents legal control over a child’s school records until the age of 18, hindering school officials and social workers from receiving school records.

Sacramento’s Office of Education had to work around FERPA to allow for its robust data sharing, according to Trish Kennedy, SCOE‘s director of Foster Youth Services.

“Not only do we have a Memorandum of Understanding with our agencies, our database is extremely secure,” Kennedy said. “We can also track who logs into the system, where they go and what they look at. In all the years that we’ve had Foster focus, we’ve never had a breach.”

This week, Representatives Karen Bass (D-CA, Tom Marino (R-PA), Michelle Bachman (R-MN) and Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced the Access to Papers Leads to Uninterrupted Scholars Act (A+ Act). The A+ Act will assist child welfare agencies in “monitoring enrollment, attendance, and school stability of children in their care.”

Jesse Hahnel, director of the Foster-Ed Initiative at the National Center for Youth Law, is a supporter of the Foster Focus system and is working with the Santa Cruz Office of Education to have the program implemented there. To avoid confusion, Hahnel says the county will obtain parental consent for every child in care or will have an order from the presiding juvenile court judge.  This will allow for information sharing with respect to education – a time consuming process that would be averted if the A+ Act were to become law.

Unlike SF Unified School District, the Santa Cruz Office of Education is having a hard time linking school records into the Foster Focus database.

“Sacramento County has created a system that imports data from child welfare agencies into the [Foster Focus] database but the school information is in a different system,” Hahnel said.  “So getting that information into the database is pretty difficult.”

He doesn’t expect the system to be fully implemented until the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

“You can pull a ton of data on a group of individuals but if the information is not collected, disseminated and reported back in a scientific manner, it becomes irrelevant,” said Mike Jones founder of Courageous Connections.

Jones started Courageous Connections, a non-profit that has partnered with Elk Grove Unified School District and provides normalizing activities for foster children in the public school system. While he thinks the Foster Focus database is a “step in the right direction”, he feels it is necessary to track the effects it has in counties implementing the system.

“I am working on a report right now and using the Foster Focus database. I think it’s a great idea, “ Jones said. “But the problem of maintaining a database this size is getting all of the players to input the information that needs to be known on a timely basis.”

Advocates rallied in Washington D.C. on May 31 to support the new A+ Act. The bill will now make its way up the House of Congress, beginning with its review in an assigned committee hearing.