Students experiencing homelessness miss school at nearly twice the rate of their peers, but school districts across the country are implementing strategies that are reducing chronic absence rates, according to a new report from SchoolHouse Connection and Attendance Works.
Through a series of case studies, researchers were able to identify best practices for identifying homeless students, tracking their attendance, and using community and state support to address barriers that keep them from getting to school.
“We need to take a trauma-sensitive approach and cultivate student and family engagement so we can understand what’s happening to kids in order to address that,” Attendance Works Executive Director Hedy Chang said during a March 13 webinar highlighting the report. “Improving attendance is finding out and addressing what causes kids to miss school in the first place. Is it barriers? Aversion? Disengagement? Misconceptions? We know that kids who are facing housing and food insecurity are experiencing some of the most barriers. Understanding these root causes is essential to making a difference.”
The impacts of chronic absenteeism are wide-ranging, affecting everything from social-emotional and health outcomes to academics. Presenters noted during the webinar that chronic absence is associated with lower achievement and lower high school graduation rates, and that for many youth, it is the start of a long-term cycle of home insecurity.
Youth without a high school degree or GED are 4.5 times more likely to experience homelessness than youth who do graduate, making lack of a high school diploma the single greatest risk factor associated with continued homelessness, explained Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection.
“We know that child and youth homelessness is largely invisible in our communities and also in our schools. Most families and youth who are homeless are out of sight. They’re moving frequently, they’re often staying with other people temporarily due to lack of shelter due to fear. That means that if school personnel aren’t aware of the signs of homelessness and its relationship to attendance, they may miss a critical opportunity to intervene and provide support,” Duffield said. “If we truly want to break the cycle of homelessness, truly make a dent in this national crisis, we have to prioritize education. Nothing about these statistics is inevitable. Our students have tremendous potential and it’s up to us to remove those barriers to success.”
Key strategies
The report includes in-depth looks at successful approaches and effective tools for improving attendance among students experiencing homelessness, and highlights 10 key strategies, including:
- Identifying students eligible for support. In addition to pulling information from registration forms, local educational agencies can train attendance clerks, teachers, counselors and administrators to recognize the signs of housing instability. Some LEAs staff visit motels and RV parks to find students in need.
- Tracking and sharing attendance data. Districts are sharing real-time data with schools about which students are homeless and what their absenteeism rates look like. Using this data to drive timely action and ensure more coordinated action across departments and inform the work of attendance teams can greatly benefit students long-term.
- Addressing barriers. Transportation remains the biggest barrier for these students as sudden housing changes often leave them out of position for bus routes or walking to school. Some LEAs are rerouting buses to motels where homeless families live, using car services with drivers vetted for safety and providing gas cards to families, as well as supporting students and families with other needs, such as food, clothing and mental health counseling.
- Tapping community and state resources. Partnering with community-based organizations and applying for state grants specifically for this population when possible can help LEAs take a community schools approach to link families to wraparound services and places where they can get their basic material needs met.
These and other strategies were gleaned in part from four case studies of four districts ranging in size and setting, including Coalinga-Huron Unified School District in California, Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Colorado, Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia and Kansas City Kansas Public Schools.
Researchers also included best practices being used by districts in Maine, Rhode Island and Washington State, as well as additional examples from California and Colorado.
“We picked these districts because all of them could demonstrate a real reduction in the chronic absence rates among the students who are homeless,” Chang said. “It means we know you can do this in any kind of setting, regardless of size, and regardless of whether you’re urban, suburban or rural.”
Case study
Coalinga-Huron USD is a small, rural California district identified as making significant impacts on student attendance through data-driven strategies. In just one year, the district reduced chronic absenteeism rates for students experiencing homelessness by 10.6 percentage points through weekly team huddles, county-level coordination and community partnerships.
The district has 4,400 students spread across eight schools in a 500 square-mile area. In the 2023–24 school year, 155 students were identified as homeless, a slight increase from past years.
“Being rural is a blessing and a curse,” said Jonathan Spreng, the district’s student services director. “We’re small enough that we do know all of these families. But it’s so hard to get them connected to services.”
The district was identified as using a range of promising strategies including creating a data-driven team at the district level, taking a focused strategy at the county level, expanding ways of identifying students and families experiencing homelessness, addressing barriers with community support and maximizing public funding.
