What education reporters should know about covering students in foster care

Find any story about obstacles to success that kids face in school. 

In it, you might read about high poverty rates and how many kids in the school eat free or reduced-price lunch. You might also find context about race, neighborhood and class, or immigration status and English fluency. 

All of this demographic information can shape a student’s needs and affect their performance in school and on standardized tests, as well as their chances of getting into college.

But rarely do you see statistics about how many kids in school are in foster care, or how many move from house to house, living with different relatives or family friends. This instability also harms a child’s chances of success in school, and it’s something education reporters should know more about. 

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children & Families, more than 400,000 kids are in foster care across the country – more than the number of students in Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest district in the nation. 

But that official number doesn’t account for the tens of thousands – possibly hundreds of thousands – more kids in what some have described as “hidden” foster care. 

These kids have been removed from their homes by child welfare agencies and placed temporarily with other family members or family friends, but they aren’t officially in the system yet.   

And their numbers may be growing: More than 200,000 children in the U.S. have lost one or both parents or primary caregivers to COVID-19, according to Imperial College London’s COVID-19 orphanhood calculator, and many of those have been – or will be – placed in the system if a family member can’t care for them. According to The Hechinger Report, other social crises, including the opioid crisis, have left even more kids in the foster care system, with schools on the front lines.

As a regular contributor to The Imprint, an outlet that exclusively covers child welfare and juvenile justice, I’ve spoken to many young people who were in foster care. One thing they often bring up is how they were treated at school and the role that teachers and counselors played in their lives. 

For some, these were negative experiences. Perhaps they were the only student of color in their class and were treated as an outsider. Some have confided about abuse to a teacher or counselor only to be disbelieved. 

But for others, school was a safe haven, the one place where they felt in control and able to indulge their curious minds. School was their ticket to a better life. 

Education reporters have a responsibility to include these students’ stories in reporting on schools. 

“It’s easy for editors to say the vast majority of our readers have kids in the public schools, and they’re not foster youth, and they’re not in juvenile justice facilities either, so focus there,” said Claudia Rowe, a former Seattle Times education reporter, who told me she had to make a case for covering kids in foster care. 

“I think that’s an extremely shortsighted way to view it because the fact is that an enormous percentage of foster youth end up either homeless or incarcerated for a period of time. … The impact of that cost downstream is huge.”

Here are six tips education reporters should know about including kids who don’t live with their parents in education coverage, including perhaps most importantly making sure not to stereotype them as doomed to failure.

1.) Know the difference between foster care and kinship care.

Most of us are familiar with standard foster care: A child is removed from their home by child welfare workers and then placed in a family of strangers. But this describes only one type of care. 

Often, kids are placed with other relatives, sometimes with the involvement of a child welfare agency and sometimes not. This is known as kinship care, and it’s a growing trend. As of 2017, one-third of children in foster care were living with a relative – up from 26% a decade before. 

But many kids living with relatives are not in the child welfare system, so they aren’t reflected in foster care statistics, and their caregivers do not receive benefits they would otherwise be entitled to. While some families prefer to keep child welfare workers out – sometimes for good reason – the informal arrangements can make it hard for caregivers to enroll kids in school and sign off on permission forms because they aren’t legal guardians. 

If officials describe your school district as “highly transient,” but foster care numbers seem low, look into how many kids might be in kinship care situations. This could be one reason the numbers don’t match up. While their outcomes are generally better than for kids in care living with strangers, they still face more instability and disruptions to their home life than kids living with their parents. 

2.) Learn about disproportionate patterns and educational impacts.

Black and Native American kids are disproportionately represented in foster care across the country. 

According to a Children’s Bureau report, in 2019, Native American children made up 1% of the child population in the U.S., but accounted for 2% of the foster care population. In some states, the numbers are more jarring. For example, in Minnesota, Native American children make up less than 2% of children in the state but represent about 26% of children in foster care. 

That year, Black children made up 14% of the child population, but 23% of the foster care population nationally. White children made up about half of the child population, but only 44% of the foster care population. In several states, Latino children are overrepresented as well.

The U.S. has a long history of removing children of color from their parents, often without due cause. Any time you report on foster care, it’s important to keep this in mind to combat stereotypes and biases about why children are removed in the first place and whether it’s always in their best interest. 

There’s also a wealth of research on kids in foster care and their educational outcomes. Rowe recommends starting with Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, which is a foster care research center. “They have ton of studies, including on education,” said Rowe, who now writes for Crosscut.

Some states are better than others at collecting education data for foster children, but see what’s out there. California, for example, has data showing that before the pandemic, over a third of kids in foster care moved schools during the school year, compared to 5% of the general student population. The Learning Policy Institute has more.

Another area of research Rowe recommends reading up on is the neurological effects of trauma and how that impacts learning, as most – if not all – kids in foster care have experienced trauma. 

3.) Get to know your state’s child welfare system.

Every state has its own child welfare system, and they all operate differently. Most states have centralized state-run systems, but nine states are county-run. 

Beyond the system, there are also networks of advocacy groups, nonprofits and foster care agencies that can be integral to telling the stories of students in foster care.  

It’s worth spending time understanding how your community’s child welfare system operates and which groups are most active to know where to find sources. Reporting on foster care often means you’ll be talking to social workers and advocates, not just educators and students.

4.) Understand what policies your school district has for foster children.

Ask district officials if they keep track of kids in foster care in their schools. How do they identify them? Do they count kids in kinship care situations who are outside the system? 

Do they report what services foster kids are receiving and what results foster kids are achieving, which is required in a few states like California and Washington? 

You should also dig into how schools in your district decide whether a child who has changed homes (and districts) can remain in the school or not. The 2008 Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act says that stability should be the goal when considering education of kids in care. 

Some states, such as Connecticut and Texas, have laws stipulating that a child should remain in the same school if it’s in their best interest. But if your state doesn’t have a law like this, find out who makes these decisions and how.

5.) Talk to teens about their living situations.

Kids often officially leave foster care by 18 or 21, but many are on their own well before that, sleeping on friends’ couches or living in homeless shelters and taking care of themselves. Others move to group homes, as it can be harder to find foster homes for teenagers. They may also be working full time to support themselves. 

When interviewing students in foster care, be sure to ask about their living situations. Even if they are technically in the care of adults, they might be living independently. This would harm their ability to get to school and focus on their homework. It’s important to know all of the challenges they face.

“The reality is that if you are not adopted or reunited with your biological family – and most foster youth are not adopted – you’re going to be in foster care, and you’re going to move from placement to placement,” Rowe said.

6.) Remember that many kids in foster care go on to live happy, healthy and productive lives. 

Many young people I’ve spoken to are aware of the harmful stereotypes that they are a “burden to society.” Part of this problem is that they are portrayed that way in the media. 

A quick search of recent news stories about foster care reveals why: headlines include phrases like “foster home ‘of horrors,’” “child abuse investigation,” and “sex trafficking scheme.”

Another reason, according to Rowe, is that nobody – including education reporters – talks about expectations for kids in care. 

“We talk all day long about college readiness and getting kids of color into college and prepared for college,” said Rowe, who is working on a book about kids in the foster care system. “We talk about the effects of poverty and what your standards and expectations should be for kids in poverty. But we never have that conversation about foster kids.”

Children who don’t live with their parents do face many obstacles and challenges – and often traumas. But they are often resilient, self-reliant, intelligent and compassionate people. Be sure to include these stories as well to paint a fuller picture of these young people.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Kristen Graham has done an excellent job of this recently. In one story, she profiled a student who fell behind in school while living at a group home, but then enrolled in a program that helped him get to University of Pennsylvania. “He’s one of our students that has had the most challenges, but he’s really ambitious and persevered – more so than anyone else,” one source told Graham.

Another example was reported by NBC News’ Erin Einhorn on young people in residential facilities in Michigan who claim they did not receive an adequate education that conferred the credits they needed to graduate. The story spotlights a problem while putting the students’ determination to get a decent education front and center. 

One student, writes Einhorn, “has become so frustrated seeing his hard work ‘swept away’ that he decided last month to give up on a diploma and is now pursuing a GED certificate, he said. He’s part of a group of youth in Michigan who are pushing the state to address the issue.”

The Seattle Times Education Lab also recently partnered with Youth Voice and published first-person pieces from students who were formerly in foster care. The students discussed their experiences transitioning to adulthood with family, housing and financial instability.

And for a great example of how to dig deep into education and foster care, check out Twice Abandoned, the 2018 series from the HuffPost and The Hechinger Report which discusses how schools and child welfare systems fail kids in foster care.

These stories offer lessons to other reporters on how to write on this subject with compassion, highlighting the challenges but also the hope.