JOYCE: Thank you so very much
and welcome to the Child Welfare Information Technology Systems
Managers and Staff webinar series,
brought to you on behalf of the Health and Human Services
Administration of Children and Families Children's Bureau
and presented by ICF International.
Today's roundtable features a distinguished panel
from three states
who will discuss their experiences and challenges
of developing and implementing an Education Data Exchange.
I am Joyce Rose, your host and facilitator
for today's discussion.
Attendees are encouraged to participate in the roundtable
with questions or comments.
All of the participant lines are muted now,
but we will open them for the Q&A session
at the end of the discussion.
However, please be aware that you can
submit questions at any time using
the GoToWebinar chat feature on your screen,
and those will be queued up and addressed
during the Q&A session.
Once today's roundtable has ended, you may submit
additional questions to the email address listed
on the slide, or to your federal analyst.
We have a very large virtual roundtable that
actually extends from Wisconsin to New York to Kentucky.
So let's meet our panelists.
Starting with Kentucky, would you please introduce yourselves?
GRETCHEN: Hello, my name is Gretchen Marshall.
I'm an Assistant Director
with the Division of Protection and Permanency.
JEFF: I'm Jeff Howard. I'm the IT Project Manager.
KEITH: Keith Flora, IT Business Analyst.
SUDHARSAN: Sudharsan PJ, TWIST Development Lead.
JOYCE: And New York?
JASON: Good afternoon, this is Jason DeSantis.
I'm a Program Manager
with the Child Welfare and Community Services Division.
VAJEERA: Good afternoon, my name is Vajeera Dorabawila.
I'm the Assistant Director for Research, Evaluation,
and for Performance Analytics at OCSF.
EILEEN: My name is Eileen Mardon.
I'm the Assistant Director for Information Systems Solutions.
LISA: And I'm Lisa Ghartey Ogundimu,
Assistant Commissioner for Child Welfare
for the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.
And I believe we have someone from New York City,
the Administration for Children Services on as well.
KARYN: Hi, this is Karyn Bautista,
ACS Office of Education Support,
just standing in for my boss
Assistant Commissioner Kathleen Hoskins,
which will be joining a little bit later.
She apologizes for her delay.
JOYCE: Thank you, and Wisconsin?
JOHN: This is John Elliot.
I'm the Deputy Administrator for
the Division of Safety and Permanency
at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families,
and we have oversight, supervisory responsibility
for child welfare and youth justice
in the state of Wisconsin.
JOYCE: Okay, thank you so very much.
So our panelists will be answering
a series of questions related to the following topics:
the background and history relating to their data exchange
with their Education Department,
the primary challenges associated with it,
certainly data security, data use and issues,
current and future plans,
and, of course, lessons learned.
And I trust both topics will give rise
to an informational as well as a lively discussion.
Let's begin by asking Kentucky to start the discussion,
and the first question is:
Describe the background and history of your data exchange
for your Department of Public Education or Public Instruction.
Which agency initiated the exchange?
What were the information needs that prompted that effort,
and did you immediately have the support
of your counterpart agency
and the leadership of both agencies as well?
GRETCHEN: So, requirements gathering began in 2011
when the Department of Education
requested an interface with Child Welfare
to receive information
on the children in our foster care population,
so they could be automatically enrolled
in free and reduced lunch.
The exchange became bidirectional in 2016
when the Child Welfare Agency requested educational data back
from the Department of Education.
And we started gathering requirements in 2015.
Agency leadership from both entities
was immediately supportive.
JOYCE: Fantastic, and Wisconsin and New York,
would you like to add on to what Kentucky had to offer?
JOHN: This is Wisconsin and I can talk about our history.
Our history with our Department of Public Instruction,
which oversees our K-12 system in the state of Wisconsin,
started back in 2012, where we were awarded a federal grant,
joint federal grant to improve the infrastructure of
information sharing with Child Welfare and Public Education,
and also to improve education for our kids in home care.
So that's where we kind of started and developed exchanges
for research purposes to really understand
how our kids in home care are doing,
but also for operational purposes.
JOYCE: And New York?
LISA: Hi, this is Lisa from New York State,
and I'm sure ACS will jump in as well.
I think everyone started around the same time
around 2011 to 2012,
when the federal government pulled together the teams
for the Fostering Connections work.
That's when we started.
We revised an MOU that we had in development for
quite some time but really had not received any traction,
and started a partnership with our partners in NFCD.
ACS, do you want to add to this?
I know you received a federal grant around that time as well.
KARYN: Yes, we did receive a federal grant,
and we worked with our Department of Education
here in New York City on the MOU.
And then we continue to meet with our agencies monthly
just to provide pointers
on how to use the data that we receive.
JOYCE: Thank you. Any other comments before we move on?
Alrighty then, let's move on to question number two,
which Wisconsin is going to take the lead in responding to.
John, what were the primary challenges faced
from the perspective of governments,
which included negotiating the data exchange agreement and
the shared government structure from a technical aspect:
designing, building, testing, implementing the interface?
And from an administrative perspective,
your change management process.
And then I would like you, in particular,
to discuss your education grant
and testing of the portal in one county.
JOHN: Okay. I'll try to get some of that together
in a comprehensive way.
So, when we applied for this grant,
part of it was that we saw a lot of research nationwide
that showed the educational outcomes from kids in home care
were poor, graduation rates were low,
other things, absenteeism were high.
We did not have any good data from a Wisconsin perspective
to show how our kids were doing.
So that grant really gave us the opportunity to work together
with our Department of Public Instruction.
And just a kind of nuance or background about Wisconsin
that I want to say makes it interesting
or could be more difficult
is that, first of all, I think most people know
we're similar to New York in that
we're a state supervised county administered system,
and so we have 72 counties.
We are responsible for the county of Milwaukee.
The state runs that Child Welfare System
because of a federal lawsuit several years back.
But the rest of the 71 counties
are administered at the county level
from a child welfare perspective.
And then from a public education perspective,
there's actually 432 school districts in Wisconsin.
And again, they probably have a little bit less
policy authority over those school districts
than we do over county child welfare agencies
in a sense that they can make
policy guidance to school districts,
but policy is really left up to individual school boards
unless there are state laws that dictate that.
And also an interesting piece about our Public Instruction
is that they have a separate elected official;
the superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction
is not part of the governor's cabinet,
and is a separate elected official.
So that adds a little bit of a nuance in there.
They're both from different parties.
With that as a backdrop, when this grant came about,
we approached them and DPI was very interested in this too
because one of their goals
is to increase graduation rates overall
for the state of Wisconsin,
particularly in at-risk populations,
and we would look at the foster care population
as an at-risk population.
At the same time, they had just put in a request
in their budget process to develop
a more unified data collection system
throughout the state of Wisconsin.
So right now and at that time,
each individual school district had their own data collection
and they only reported their data
to the Department of Public Instruction twice a year.
So they did not have real time data, those types of things.
So they were moving down a direction
to have a more centralized data collection system,
management system for all their educational data,
similar to what we already have.
We have a SACWIS system for case management and data collection
in the Child Welfare system.
So this grant came at a perfect time for us
to kind of really do two things.
We developed a data-sharing and a MOU,
as I alluded to before,
number one is to do research.
We went and entered a data-sharing agreement with them
to have the University of Wisconsin
Madison Institute of Research of Poverty
match our data at an administrative level
so that we could see how our kids are faring
from graduation rates to test scores
to absenteeism to those types of things.
And the second component that we worked on,
since DPI was working with a lot of different school districts
in implementing a data system
throughout their local school districts statewide,
they put a process in where they had
a data exchange or interface
where they could develop different portals
for different user groups to get access
to educational information.
At the time that we were doing this grant,
the Uniform Scholar's Act had not passed yet,
so we work closely with Dane County
here in Madison's school district.
And with DPI, we work closely with local partners
to help them develop an MOU and a data-sharing agreement
where they would then be able to share --
basically they developed off their IT system
a different user group for child welfare workers,
where they could get access to their particular caseload,
the children on their caseload information
from absenteeism to suspensions to expulsions
to reasons for those expulsions,
historical information about their grades, their absenteeism,
those types of things.
So we developed a very specific portal
that child welfare workers would have access to.
And we also developed a security protocol
with our SACWIS system
and their system that would match that information and data,
so that, A, gave confidence at the local school district level
that that information was provided in a secure manner
and they only had access to students
that were on their caseload,
so they didn't have access to all students
in the Madison school district,
but only those students that were not in home care.
And so that was the basis of developing that system,
and I can talk later about where we're evolving,
where that system now has evolved
and where we're going in the future.
JOYCE: Alright, thank you, John.
Kentucky, tell us about your primary challenges
in relation to perhaps the technical side of this,
as well as your administrative change management process.
GRETCHEN: In terms of challenges,
I think that what we discussed in preparation for this meeting
was the time that it took.
We did a lot of stakeholder meetings
to decide the data elements, the frequency,
how the matching would take place.
That took some time to do.
We did testing; testing was completed
with both departments working together
to create test cases with sample data
to make sure the matching in data returned
was formatted correctly and could be read on both sides.
TWIST formats the data as a report
for child welfare workers.
History is maintained to show trends
in behavior, GPA, course information,
demographic information on the child,
and for the child welfare workers,
that's displayed in the child's specific case record
that the case worker has access to.
Then, some of the programmers may want to chime in,
it's an XML schema that's used to interface
the file format with MOVEit FTP for transfer.
As far as the administrative process and the change process,
any changes to the independent systems
that don't affect the interface
can be made without involving the other department.
Monthly meetings are available to discuss needs
for any changes in the interface data
with an annual review meeting to discuss lessons learned
or any new needs on either interface side.
JOYCE: When both agencies are involved,
how do you prioritize the changes?
JEFF: We have a release meeting every couple of months or so
where we define, we are usually two releases ahead,
and we define all the changes that are going to go in,
unless there's something that is really high priority
where we have to have emergency releases.
But all of those change requests from Kentucky,
the Department of Education and with our Child Welfare
all matched up and they're prioritized
and applied to releases as they go forward.
JOYCE: And New York, what might you have to add
to this discussion?
JASON: In regards to the change management process,
we also have a Change Management Committee
made up of about three dozen members that meets monthly.
And we have a standard change request form
that we use for any requested change
for our Child Welfare Information System in general.
So the committee kind of reviews them
and will ask questions and try to determine what effect,
if any, that change will have
on a different, various other components of the system.
Once that committee approves the change,
it goes up to the executive level for program and for ITS,
who will review the changes and prioritize them.
JOYCE: And Jason, was that you?
JASON: Yes, it was.
JOYCE: And while I have you front and center,
thank you, and let's move on to how data security is addressed.
Jason?
LISA: Actually, we're going to turn to Eileen for that.
JOYCE: Perfect. Eileen?
EILEEN: Our Child Welfare System
already had an education module,
which allowed for user entry of education information.
So all the security was already in place
for who had read and write access to that information.
So, we were able to add a link to that window
to access the state education data and
use all the existing security that was already in place.
We did have one element of the MOU
was that we had to keep track of what workers
had access of data and for which child.
So we met that requirement by creating a table in the database
that audits all of the users and tracks
the data, the agency, the child,
and the worker that performed that access.
We actually found that that allowed us to monitor
which agencies and districts were using the data.
JOYCE: It sounds like yours was pretty straightforward
and rather easy I might say.
EILEEN: Actually, we skipped New York technical,
and that was one of my comments,
that we really didn't have any issues
with design, building, and testing.
We really thought one of our hurdles would be
coming up with a matching algorithm for the child,
and it turned out that New York State Ed
was already using a software called ChoiceMaker,
so they did all the matching for us.
And that had already been tested
and was in production on their side,
so we were able to use that.
LISA: I think for New York,
the greatest challenge was sitting down
and developing the terms of the MOU
and getting everybody to the table.
But once we were able to iron that out,
it was relatively smooth from that point to today, I think.
JOYCE: That's great. So John Elliot of Wisconsin,
would you like to tell us about how you
addressed the data security issues?
JOHN: Sure, and ours has been evolving.
I'm not a tech person
so I'm not going to talk about the technical aspects of it,
but I can talk about it at a high level.
When we had the grant, of course, one of the barriers
I think at the local level was again, for them,
because the Uniform Scholar's Act had not been passed yet,
and we also had to codify that in state law --
had not been done yet,
they were obviously worried about it from
a corporate perspective about who got information.
They started basically with a paper-based system
and used their end user agreement.
But we knew longer-term we needed a more automated solution
or it would not work.
So at that same time, we were able to develop
an automated solution,
work with our Department of Public Instruction,
where they go through a CAKE [phonetic] site
where it does match information.
And that has been evolving and improving over time,
so we did have to develop a matching algorithm
which looks at mother, date of birth,
kid's last name, and those types of things.
So that matches nightly, and I think we initially had
a 95 percent success rate/match rate,
so it was fairly successful.
Since then, we are evolving where
our Department of Public Instruction,
every student in the state of Wisconsin
has what they call a "Wise Dash ID."
So they have a specific ID.
We are now able to get that ID into our system also,
so that makes the matching easier.
So our matching success rate has gone up,
and again we're able to do that nightly.
I will say, for future direction,
we are now moving in a direction where
we're moving away from that portal, that individual portal,
and integrating it into our SACWIS system.
Now that our Department of Public Instruction system
has evolved where they now have developed
basically a data warehouse
that the individual schools can report their information,
Seventy percent of the school districts
report on a nightly basis,
and the other 30 percent I think are on a monthly basis;
they have much more real-time data.
And that data warehouse does the manipulation
to make it compatible statewide.
So we're now able to start working with
the Department of Public Instruction
and start integrating that data directly into SACWIS
with that matching protocol
so that all workers statewide would have that information.
And we're starting right now on a very small pilot project
where we're going to integrate disability status information,
so whether they have an IEP, a 504 plan,
what their primary and secondary disability is,
and what school district the student goes into.
We're implementing that from the initial assessment phase
all the way through ongoing.
JOYCE: Great. Kentucky?
SUDHARSAN: We're lucky to have both systems statewide.
We don't have to worry about county-based systems.
Our security is two-fold.
Between the two, education and child welfare system,
we use MOVEit FTP for file transformation
and it's secured that way.
Each application is controlled,
and authorized users are only allowed to access
their applications and their caseloads.
And the data is within each application's portal.
Child welfare workers will go to child welfare systems
to see their data,
and education users will go to their system
to see child welfare data.
The data transmission is protected
and databases are encrypted,
so that's how we manage our security.
We did have the same matching issues initially,
but now our matching rate has improved
after significant improvements to the algorithms.
The biggest thing we found out was children in private schools
and underage children like children under five
are not found on the education system.
So that's something for you to consider
when you start this interface
to see how you can eliminate those populations.
JOYCE: Very interesting and thank you very much.
As we move to the next question --
VAJEERA: Before you go, this is New York, Vajeera.
I just wanted to add something more for knowledge security.
We brought in all the data into our data warehouse.
In there, we have created
a separate role for education data.
We are the only people that actually work on the data
and have access to the data.
And using the data warehouse,
we're creating some reports that we're getting to later.
But with those reports,
we are planning to create security
where only those that actually need to see the data
will see it.
So it's an enhanced level of security for the education data
compared to some of the other data.
JOYCE: Fantastic, thank you, thank you for adding that.
We are moving on to the next question
which is more about the specifics of the data exchange.
I noted that as we moved through the first three questions,
we actually have been talking about
both the child welfare data elements
and the education data elements.
Tell us how the flow of information --
is it bidirectional one way,
and what is the frequency and method
that triggers the data exchange?
And let's start with Kentucky.
SUDHARSAN: Our system is a bidirectional interface,
we categorized our data into three broad categories.
We have the school data itself,
which gives details about the school,
location/address of the school,
the principal, that type of stuff.
And then we have student information,
which is more related to the student,
their scores, their grades, and their behavior data,
if they had any suspensions or absenteeism,
that type of stuff.
From a child welfare perspective,
I think we share the county of placement,
the child's demographics and stuff,
which helps with the matching on the education side.
That's how we start our interface is
we send the children,
they match, and then we get back education data
for the children that are in our care.
When a child drops out of care,
we inform them and we no longer have access
to the education data
when they're no longer in our custody.
JOYCE: Thank you. New York? Additions?
LISA: Basically, it's kind of a semi-bidirectional data feed.
We send over basic demographic information
for children in foster care,
and SED returns course and grade data,
statewide standardized testing assessments,
educational programs for special populations,
attendance records, and enrollment.
The frequency of that data,
I think we have some challenges there.
Since the data is only due to State Ed
at certain points of the year,
we don't have really up-to-date data.
The first Monday in September,
State Ed starts receiving the data
from the end of the previous school year,
and they continue to receive that until January.
So we get that once a year.
Then the enrollment and grade-level data
we receive twice a year in November and January.
And then if new children come in to foster care,
we can send an on demand request
to get information for those children.
Our data is exchanged through a BizTalk Orchestration.
BizTalk is a middleware system
that enables us to automate processes
that allow communication between the two systems.
All of the interfaces are triggered
based on an entry and an Oracle table
with the dates and every year of when we should
send over requests, what we're looking for.
So we assemble a flat file and send the request to SED,
and the data exchange is accomplished
using SFTP and pre-defined file format.
Each data request includes the request type,
whether it's end-of-year data,
enrollment and grade level, whatever they're looking for.
When the request is complete,
SED sends 15 data files back to our educational data set.
We import those into staging tables
and then prep them for insertion into our production database.
KARYN: In New York City, our file transfer
with the New York City Department of Education
follows the same model.
We send them over a match file monthly,
and then they'll send that back.
So we get the attendance monthly.
When courses and grades come out,
it's added to the match when available.
We also get the special education information.
We don't get what type of
special education class setting they're in,
but just if they're flagged as special education or not.
And then when the DOE indicates
that students are promotion in doubt,
we get that information in February.
So when students enter care,
they'll be added to the next match.
And then if a student drops off, they'll come off the match.
LISA: This is Lisa from New York State.
I wanted to point out as I stated earlier,
New York is state-supervised, county-administered,
and we have over about 500 school districts.
And as Eileen pointed out,
the information we get from the state office
is what's reported up to our State Education Department
from the locals.
The data arrangement that ACS has
with the New York City Department of Education
allows them to have information
that's a little more real-time
and more detailed information
that's not necessarily reported to State Ed.
So one of our challenges is that we, from the state,
only see what State Ed receives from the locals.
But there's additional information
that would require some additional MOUs,
similar to what ACS has developed
with the New York City Department of Education.
But it's challenging because
you have ACS and one city Department of Education,
but then you have 56 other counties
and hundreds of other school districts.
So we're trying to figure out
how to help the local districts navigate
all of these partners that completely can become
overwhelming for a local district.
JOYCE: Well, you have a colleague,
John Elliot from Wisconsin,
which is also a state managed county administered state,
so perhaps he can help you out with some of those challenges.
JOHN: So, what we're doing,
and like I said, it has been evolving,
but when we had the Education grant, we had to work at
an individual school district to county level,
which is not ideal because one county can have
probably five plus school districts within that county.
So the pilot date in this case
only had access to one individual school district.
We knew longer-term that's not an ideal solution
to have individual counties basically get permission
from individual school districts
to get access to their information
and still have to not get it all electronically.
So, as our State Department of Public Instruction System
has evolved to where now they are getting
nightly and monthly feeds from their local school districts,
we are now working with them to do that data exchange.
There is some downside.
The state level doesn't have a lot of
the detailed information about suspensions and expulsions,
like the reasons why.
So why somebody was expelled, what behavior reasons was it?
Same thing with the suspension.
It just tells us whether they're suspended or expelled.
Where at a local school district level,
the portal that we tested had that information,
so there is some useful information at the local level
that you won't get at the state level.
So there is some downsides with that.
But longer term, operationally that is going to be
a more amenable solution for everybody
and an easier solution to populate in statewide systems.
Like I said, operationally, we're moving in that direction
and that's mostly one-directional
that we're matching our data and bringing education data in.
As I mentioned before,
we're starting with the disability information.
And then hopefully over the next two years,
we'll get a full robust system
in exchanging all the key components
that we believe are important
for child welfare workers to have,
like absenteeism, grades, historical information,
and those types of things.
So that's where we're going, but we have also been
involving some bidirectional exchanges.
One is a little bit more, I think, voluntary
on the part of the child welfare piece,
and another one will be more systematic
between the two state agencies.
So one thing I didn't mention in my opening comments is about
some of the change management challenges that we have.
When we went on that pilot that we've done,
we did some focus groups and surveys and stuff
with Education and with Child Welfare,
and there is definitely a large gap of mistrust
between the two agencies.
On the educational side, there's a lot of mistrust
about how they would use this information.
There's a lot of issues around
"Child Welfare doesn't share information with Education,"
those type of components.
There was a lot of those pieces out there
that we had to overcome.
One of the things we did on that bidirectional,
especially the feedback that we got from Education
that nothing is ever shared with them,
is that we actually utilized something we got out of New York
because they were part of that grant process too.
They developed what they call an Education Passport,
which is voluntary by the child welfare worker,
but it is prepopulated in our SACWIS system
for a lot of the information.
But it is a way for Child Welfare
to share particular information
about that child that may be important,
especially if they're changing schools.
We can't share detailed medical or mental health issues,
things of that nature,
but where they can offer information in there
about who the foster parents are and contact information,
things like that in one easy form.
But they can also then put information about the child
that may be important.
Things like, there may be different trauma triggers
that the child has
that may be important for the school to know about.
The student may be involved in
certain extracurricular activities
that are very important for the well-being of that child,
so letting the school know about those things.
So we've been slowly getting more and more
child welfare workers statewide using that.
I think the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act
is helping with that
by having a point of contact in each county
and each school district.
Educational point of contacts
are now asking for that information,
so I think they're putting some pressure on Child Welfare
to get that information.
So that is one way that is a more voluntary way
that we're bidirectionally saving information.
The other piece where we'll have bidirectional interchanges
as part of the ESSA requirements
is that State Public Instruction agencies
are supposed to report on the educational outcomes
of the kids in out-of-home care.
So we will have a bidirectional exchange there
using the same security protocols as I mentioned before,
where our Department of Public Instruction
will report on their website by school district
the different education outcomes of kids in out-of-home care.
And we will also use that as kind of a
joint reporting mechanism on our website
linking to their website from an accountability perspective
on where those things are at.
JOYCE: Well, I think John just kind of segued us
right to the next question,
and that is basically how is data used in both systems?
And New York, would you like to kick this off please?
LISA: This is a great segue,
and one of the things that I wanted to echo
is the difference in the relationship since the signing,
the implementation of ESSA.
And I want to stress that our state partners
at New York State Department of Education
have been great partners,
but ESSA has really been a big motivator,
not only from the state level,
but from the local level as well
and forcing a different conversation.
It is really at a nascent level,
but we really are changing the conversation
between Child Welfare and Education
around the importance of improving
educational outcomes of children in foster care.
For us within Child Welfare,
we're really focusing on just, A, understanding the data.
That has been the biggest part.
I remember when we first started working on the MOU, we were
meeting with other states, and they were talking about
getting the educational data is just the beginning.
And once we had the MOU signed
and we received that first data file,
I opened it and realized
"Oh my God I don't even know what we're doing,
what do we do with all of this information?"
So that was the start, and then the work really began.
It was then requiring us to, A, on the state level,
figure out how to just present it in a way that's usable.
We have our educational information
in a separate window,
so the data is populated in a folder
within our connection system, which is our system of record.
But you have to go to another tab,
so again it's another piece of work for caseworkers,
which we know when they're doing
all of the other things that they have to do,
this becomes a challenge.
So we're using it right now in a way
to at least start the discussion.
As I stated before, having those points of contact under ESSA,
we've started developing our own points of contact
within Child Welfare,
but having a partner in Education is really helpful.
It has a taken a while.
Child Welfare and SED have been working over the last year,
as SED's data is implementing their state plan
because they had been developing their ESSA state plan,
we have identified points of contact for both systems
and have worked over the last year to develop a toolkit.
When systems get together,
it takes a while to just get
a 20-page document out to the field.
So we have worked tirelessly
to develop the plan and a training model,
which we are going to share
with both systems starting in January of next year.
I feel that the data has not moved
as far as we would like it to move,
and it's a little different in New York City,
and we can let ACS speak to that,
I think they're much further ahead
than we are across the state.
But what has been good is that
we've been able to develop in a number of counties
these collaboratives that really are modeled on the
collaboratives that the federal government set up initially
with Fostering Connections with Child Welfare,
Education, and the Courts at the table.
We've been able to pull together
in a number of our larger counties
these teams where you have courts asking you about
how kids are doing in school,
Child Welfare coming to the table with an understanding
that this family court judge
is really going to ask me about performance.
And then Education really trying
to partner with Child Welfare also
to understand the needs of kids in foster care
and how we can work differently.
I know over the last few years, we've changed the conversation.
You know there's a different conversation happening,
but still lots of work to come.
From our state office, we've been able to do,
develop initial research reports just to show --
again we've spoken anecdotally
that our kids are not faring well in foster care --
just educationally [inaudible] come up with statewide reports
and also some county reports
to show that it's more than anecdotal.
"Here's the data,
we've pulled it apart to show graduation rates,
performance on state exams, and also promotion rates as well."
So that was really an eye-opener.
It sort of reinforced things that we had known,
but to see the numbers in black and white
really did force a collective understanding
that this is a key element
to our safety, permanency and well-being,
that we have not as a system really addressed.
So, having the data has been a way to change a conversation.
Having ESSA has really -- with Education,
we are still a small subset
of all of the kids that they have to educate.
But looking at how poorly we're faring,
even compared to other vulnerable populations,
foster care youth are still performing far worse,
really did force education to understand that
we have to do something different as a collective.
So, the data and the federal law, as well,
has moved an agenda in a way
that we would not have been able to do
as quickly as we've been able to do it.
JOYCE: You personify the old adage
that you can have lots and lots of data,
but to turn it into meaningful information
is something that I think I hear you have done.
LISA: Still a work in progress.
VAJEERA: And I can add a little bit more,
some of the things we've used.
This is Vajeera.
So in addition to what Lisa described, being able to create
these profiles of children in foster care,
the education profiles looking at disabilities,
comparing grades and/or with the age,
the expected grade for age,
I can make achieve for school exit,
so it would be nice to have that.
But this has also helped us with our federal reporting.
Specifically, some of you are aware of
National Youth in Transition Database, NYTD reporting.
We had two elements based on education
that we just didn't have the data,
and only specifically on sort of grades completed
and special education.
With the data we got from the SED,
we were able to actually achieve compliance
and avoid penalties with that submission.
We also have another file, which is the AFCARS,
Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System,
or AFCARS 2.0 that's coming up,
and we are hoping to use the data we get from SED
to achieve compliance on a couple of items there.
And to extend what Lisa was talking about,
we are also looking at creating reports
within the data warehouse
where we create aggregate reports with drill-to capacity
so a county or agency can go in and look at
their achievements,
the disabilities or different profiles,
and then identify which children
the drill-to capacity will let them go in
and identify the children,
they would need to go and actually choose where,
so allow case management, as well as performance management.
JOYCE: Well, I sense a certain amount of enthusiasm there,
and that's really cool to hear.
Kentucky, Wisconsin, do you want to add something?
GRETCHEN: What I would add from the Child Welfare side
is that the education data for children in foster care
for the child welfare case manager
is displayed for them in the child's case record.
That gives that worker, at their fingertips,
specific information about the child's
enrollment, performance, their courses, their testing,
whether or not they have a special education identifier.
And it's invaluable from a case manager's perspective
with regard to how to support that child in foster care
attain their educational goals.
It's really helpful with case planning;
it's helpful to have that information
and have conversations with foster parents also
around supporting that child
in attaining their educational goals.
And it's helped with rapport, I would think,
between the child welfare case manager and the educator
to ensure that they both have real-time information.
The information about the child's case manager
and the system where they're enrolled
and their educator, that's part of the exchange.
That they have that identifying information quickly.
And we have someone from the Department of Education here,
but I understand it's helped them
with their federal reporting.
For the first time they're able to report on their population.
And they can also compare children in foster care,
their education outcomes, both locally and statewide.
JOYCE: Great, John -- Wisconsin?
JOHN: The only thing I would add to that,
and I agree with everything,
again we're evolving in getting that information,
but we also have a joint Strategic Planning team
where we develop a join strategic plan
with our Department of Public Instruction.
So we also realize that it's not just developing the data.
Having the data is great, but educating our workforce
on how to use the data,
how to use it in collaboration in discussions with schools,
in interacting with foster parents
and that thing of those nature.
Also working with our school systems
so they can educate those points of contact
about that information and how schools can work together
better with child welfare.
I think we're looking at it more holistically;
it's not just the data itself
but how you utilize that data in different mechanisms.
That's an evolving process.
so we do have a strategic plan that we've developed
with our Department of Public Instruction.
There's bumps in the road every once in a while,
but I think we're moving in a very positive direction
to provide that information.
And some of our challenges too
with 432 school districts and 72 counties
is that some of those counties or school districts
may have a kid in foster care
like once every year or once every couple years,
versus other school systems like Milwaukee and Madison
and our bigger urban areas,
they constantly have kids in foster care.
So that school system itself is more used to
working with kids in foster care
and have different supports and processes in place.
We're also thinking about how we support
those smaller entities in school districts
to support those kids that typically don't have
kids in foster care all the time.
KARYN: If New York City could just weigh in quickly.
We meet monthly with our agencies.
We have 28 subcontracted foster care agencies,
so we really facilitate a peer-learning environment.
When we meet, we want them to kind of share
their best practices with each other.
Some agencies have used the data to write grants,
to start tutoring programs.
They really like having accumulated credit information
for their high school students,
so they can zone in on who's on track to graduate
and who's not.
We really use the data to just identify risk factors,
specifically for our students that are overage for grade,
and those that are flagged as repeating a grade.
So we go through our files with the agencies
and we'll put filters in Excel
so we can really drill down and see
how many eighth grade students are repeating;
how many of those are below attendance.
We really try to just give practical strategies
to use the data.
The DOE, our local Department of Education partner,
also attends the meeting monthly, which is helpful.
JOYCE: Great, and once again as we move through our discussion,
you have talked about future data exchange plans,
current and future data exchange plans.
Is there anything else that you want to add
to that topic of what's coming next?
John, you talked about your child disability information?
JOHN: Yeah, so I think we're also in the midst of evaluating
the feasibility of CCWIS and going to that.
I think we're keeping that in mind too
as we potentially transition our current SACWIS system
into CCWIS.
Of course data exchanges are a requirement under that, which
I think we're well positioned for that.
But what does that mean for us as a state
and what are their opportunities?
So I think we continue to work with
our Department of Public Instruction
and really have a better understanding
of what data they have and don't have,
and what we can get in workers' hands that is useful.
There is other information that they don't have
that we have separate data exchanges,
or I'd say more recent projects on.
So one example is graduation.
So we know as a state, our foster care population
has about a 53 percent graduation rate,
which is similar to nationwide.
But we don't know why they're not graduating.
And the problem is that type of information
is housed at individual school districts.
That information isn't put into the centralized database
for our Department of Public Instruction.
So we're continuing to work with them
and I would say more research data exchanges,
where we work with our University of Wisconsin, Madison
to do research.
That will be one of the projects that
we'll be kicking off here early next year
to work individually with some of our larger school systems
to get their information data
to understand why kids aren't graduating,
so that we can then hopefully develop
some policy or legislative changes
that would help alleviate some of those issues
like credit transfer, short of credit, those types of things.
JOYCE: Great, Kentucky?
GRETCHEN: In the future, one of the things
that they want to work on
is providing end dates as part of what goes to education,
so that the Department of Education
will have a record of a child exiting foster care.
Infinite Campus provides indicators
for a child's special needs, gifted, special education,
and the child welfare system is working on
a management report to display those types of children,
children with special needs
or are receiving special services.
Also, in the long term, the Department of Workforce
has the ability to track adults
as they are employed within the state,
college graduation rates, employment data,
and tax payer status.
Being able to match children in foster care
with the Department of Education
in terms of their educational records
and then long term with the Department of Workforce
should give us better longitudinal information
related to foster children and their adult outcome,
in terms of employment, et cetera.
And I also think as a lesson learned,
one of the things that we talked about
in preparation for this call
was having a way to fix a match
so that it's not constantly being exchanged,
looking for a match, and then matching back.
But then once a child is matched,
a way to flag that so that it's a permanent match
and not resent back and forth.
JOYCE: Okay, and New York? Future plans?
LISA: I'll just start from the state and then turn to the city.
For us, our goal is to just continue to enhance
our research and reporting abilities
so that you have the local school district,
as well as the Department of Child Welfare
working together to identify the support that kids need so
we're improving our graduation rates, our performance,
all of the things that everyone has mentioned.
We feel that from where we sit in our home office,
it's making sure you're pushing down
enough relevant information
so that you're continuing that conversation
and that collaboration to improve outcomes. For ACS?
KATHLEEN: This is Kathleen Hoskins from ACS.
I know my team member, Karyn, has been on the call,
so thank you, Karyn.
In terms of sort of pushing it forward,
our match with the New York City Department of Education
is pretty good and pretty fluid,
but I also think we have to think about the kids
who are placed out of district.
And sort of how to bring them into the fold,
and to enhance and make sure.
So we're going to be working with the state
to try to see if there's something we can do
that's attached to their match to sort of move that forward.
In addition, I don't know if Karyn mentioned,
we also have at least one existing data match
with the public university system here,
so we're starting to look at outcomes for higher education,
as well as the majority of our students do attend
the public universities in the City of New York,
so sort of how to capitalize and utilize that data
to sort of help with higher education outcomes as well.
JOYCE: Great! Kathleen, I'm pleased that you could join us,
and yes, I'd like to thank Karyn for standing in for you.
You did an excellent job.
KARYN: We're also working with
the Department of Youth and Community Development
to perhaps get a match going for the after-school programs
that are run by that city agency.
JOYCE: Great. Well, that brings us to our final topic,
subtopic, and that's lessons learned.
So I would like to ask each of you to share
with your colleagues who are listening
at least one or two key lessons that you have learned.
Kentucky?
GRETCHEN: So the first lesson had to do with,
when defining the data elements that are needed,
really giving consideration to those features
of the child's development
that are key to developing a good case plan
and good service matching, with regard to their behaviors,
absenteeism, grade level, assessment testing, et cetera.
Additionally, accurate data is essential to the matching
and critical to the success of the interface,
especially the Social Security number.
Using the tools to help verify this data is correct
in each system really helps improve the matching results.
JOYCE: And John, Wisconsin?
JOHN: So I would think from a state-level perspective,
I think lessons learned is that
relationships are very important.
So establishing relationships with
the Department of Public Instruction,
especially since people that have left and gone.
I think having a guiding document,
and that's a strategic plan that I've alluded to
that we are developing with them,
improves continuity across people
leaving different agencies.
We did have a downfall when a big advocate over at our
Department of Public Instruction left for another job.
We had a bunch of new people that had
come on over to the Department of Public Instruction,
and we did not at that point have that kind of
guiding document of the things we were working on together.
So it took us a while to get back up to speed.
So I think just establishing those relationships
and establishing that kind of strategic plan
is key to get everybody on the same page.
And then I think the research that we did,
the lessons learned and that piece
is that the research, I think, was very helpful
in the sense that it gave us some information to share
on the education side about this at-risk population.
I think it helped open their eyes
to where their role is in this,
and helping improve the educational outcomes
of the at-risk population,
which then helps them, overall, improve
their graduation rates and things as a state
which they're held accountable to by the federal government.
So I think our lessons learned was that
it was really critical of having our own
data and information about our kids
that we can help and understand kind of where they're at
and what the issues were,
to help us all understand what the ultimate goal was.
JOYCE: Great, and New York?
Both from the state and city perspective?
LISA: So I'll just jump in first from the state perspective.
I think the most important thing is that
you have to have buy-in from the top.
Our commissioner has been a great support to us,
and you have to be persistent; you have to be committed.
It is so hard to move our system,
the child welfare system.
Case workers are inundated and they're busy,
and there's so many different boxes that have to be checked
to stop and say "Education is really important,
not just an acceptance"
or continuing to tell your story yourself that
"Our kids just don't do well in school."
That shouldn't be our default position.
Our default position should be that our kids can do well
and we need to provide the right support.
But not only are you moving your system,
you have to bring another system
with its own challenges and structure
that doesn't meet your needs to the table as well.
So moving ourselves, moving the State Education Department,
bringing your governor's office to the table as well to say
"Yes this is a small subset
of all of the kids across our great state,
but we really have a duty to focus on these kids
and here's why:
Putting this effort in gets to better outcomes,
specific for this population
but across many systems that these kids touch."
So, I think you have to be persistent,
you have to be committed, and you have to be passionate
because you're always advocating.
You're always trying to bring people to the table.
And you're always trying to remind everyone
that education is not an extra,
this is not a nice, this is a necessary.
It's safety, permanency, and well-being,
and every one of those elements require our full attention.
JOYCE: Well stated. Kathleen?
KATHLEEN: I'm scared.
I don't know if I should say anything after Lisa.
[laughter]
I agree with everything Lisa said.
In our experience, because we subcontract out to agencies,
we were providing them with the data for the students,
but really were not giving them instruction
on how to use it and what it says
and sort of how to figure out trends.
While quality assurance people exist,
they don't necessarily know what the education data is saying.
Part of what we learned was that,
while we were sharing it and we had this great match,
people didn't know how to use it.
And so sort of having this monthly meeting
that goes over the data, reviews the outcomes
and sort of having an opportunity,
and I think Karyn mentioned this before,
about how peer-to-peer learning, it is critical.
The other thing is we have to understand that
the data is a tool and the match is not infallible.
So there are times when the match is going to be incorrect
and agencies have to understand,
or whoever is working with the child
that receives the information has to understand
that it's a starting point.
But the education support doesn't just rest with that.
Sometimes I think having the match
causes people to rely too heavily on it
without doing the ground level and individualization work
that's required for good educational outcomes.
And again I have to mirror Lisa's sentiment
that if you don't have the Department of Education
or your education partner on board,
it makes it more difficult to use the data
in a more systematic way to sort of do big system reform.
It helps that all of our commissioners have been
messaging that education is part of well-being,
and while we do focus on safety and permanency,
that well-being is a critical piece
of our planning for children in foster care,
and education is a critical piece of that as well.
JOYCE: Well, thank you so very much.
You know, when we started this discussion an hour ago,
we had a couple of goals.
One was to provide a lot of information,
and secondly to have a lively discussion.
I think we've succeeded in both of those goals.
So thank you to our panelists,
and this concludes the roundtable discussion.
And I would now like to turn it over to
Mr. Terry Black [phonetic],
who is going to discuss the always-interesting topic
of cost allocation. Terry?
OPERATOR: Next slide, please.
TERRY: Hey, Joyce, thank you very much.
I really appreciate your guidance here as we walk through
this wonderful presentation into the states. Great job.
[Inaudible], and I want to applaud you
for the creative work that you're doing.
Keep pushing that envelope.
There are laws on both the education side
and the child welfare side
that basically mandate some exchange of information,
so we need to keep breaking down
the perceived barriers that some folks believe that are there
and share information that's useful to improving the outcomes
of these kids and families that we're serving. Well done, guys.
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