Educational Experiences of Massachusetts Foster Youth

Disparities in Educational Outcomes

Current data and past reports reveal striking disparities in educational experiences and academic outcomes for Massachusetts students in out-of-home Department of Children and Families (DCF) placements compared to the general student population. CfJJ has gathered this information together into a briefing paper in order to provide education and foster youth advocates a means of understanding the issue in its full scale.

"Educational Experiences of Massachusetts Foster Youth" shares in-depth data and information on the disparate outcomes in attendance, school mobility, dropout rates, discipline, grade retention, performance on state assessments, and graduation rates. Findings show that students in Massachusetts foster care system are performing up to 6.5 times worse than the general student population in Massachusetts public schools.

In 2015, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s (SJC) Court Improvement Program (CIP) began research on the school experiences of students involved with DCF in out-of-home placement in Massachusetts. The full report was commissioned “to address the gaps in information on the school experiences and academic outcomes of students in DCF custody,” with a comprehensive purpose “to improve educational outcomes for children in state care by identifying barriers to school success in Massachusetts and developing interventions to improve outcomes.” The full report was completed and presented to DCF, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and the SJC in August 2017, and an Executive Summary of the report was released in March 2019. Since then, little has been done to address these disparities. 

Key takeaways

DESE and DCF have an agreement to tag students in foster care to allow DESE to track school data on foster youth, and that collection continues. However, these data are not publicly available and we, therefore, do not know the extent to which DCF-involved students are experiencing disparate educational outcomes in comparison to their peers, leaving over 5,000 of the most vulnerable students in the Commonwealth without equitable educational access, support, and opportunity for achievement.

DESE should share and use these data to provide a greater understanding of how students involved with DCF are doing in school. Leadership from all child-serving agencies, with the input of schools, impacted youth and families and the education advocacy community, should come together to take action to hold everyone accountable in addressing these disparities. Massachusetts foster youth deserve the best we can offer.