Homeless Child And Education

[discocrisco01]

It is challenge to be a homeless school. Via http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=8263812">KGO

"This fall, Makayla Vigil will be a sophomore at Pleasant Valley High School in Chico. For most of her school career, she made the honor roll. But last semester, after her family lost their apartment, she earned C's and D's.


"My grades did suffer a lot from just not caring," said Vigil, 16. "Before, when I had good grades, I was thinking, 'I want to impress my family.' But then when you become homeless and you don't really have anything, you just don't care."

California -- hit particularly hard by the combination of a high cost of living, the housing crisis and a lack of jobs -- has more homeless students than any other state in the nation. In 2009, nearly a third of all homeless students nationwide lived in California, according to the federal Department of Education.
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Nationwide, about half of homeless students in third through eighth grade score proficient in math and English, according to a 2010 U.S. Department of Education report . In high school, about half of homeless students are proficient in English, but math proficiency falls to about 38 percent.

For the 2009-10 school year in California, only 39 percent of homeless students in third through eighth grade scored proficient or above in math, 35 percent in English, according to California Department of Education data that tracks schools receiving federal funding for homeless students. In high school, 33 percent of homeless students scored proficient or above in math, 41 percent in English.

Vigil is one of thousands of students in California struggling with the challenges of homelessness. During the 2004-05 school year, 148,443 students were identified as homeless, according to the state Education Department. By 2008-09, the number of homeless students nearly doubled, to 288,233.

"The economy is in a struggling state, and we are seeing more and more families losing their homes and becoming homeless," said Leanne Wheeler, the department's coordinator of homeless education.

Wheeler's position is mandated by the federal McKinney-Vento Act , which funds homeless services. The act requires states to employ county and district homeless coordinators. It also guarantees transportation to and from school, even if a homeless student moves from his or her school of origin, in an attempt to prevent the academic challenges of changing schools

[LWolf]

1. It's hard to educate the homeless.

There are so many variations on homelessness. MOST of the homeless students I've had took turns sleeping at the homes of different family and friends; they were never in the same place two nights running. They had whatever they could carry each day, their stuff often got left behind, and they had no consistent way to get to school.

So their attendance was spotty, their stress levels were high, they were exhausted, and dealing with too many things to really focus on learning. At that point, my job has always been to make sure they got to eat, to tuck supplies into their packs on days they were at school, to set up car pools, and to be as supportive as possible. Survival trumps academics.