SchoolHouse Connection and Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan updated data profiles on child and youth homelessness in January to include four years of federal homelessness data, as well as state-, county-, local educational agency-, U.S. Congressional district- and state legislative district-level data.
New features allow users to explore which LEAs are likely to be under-identifying students experiencing homelessness and which are likely to be too severely under-funded to serve these students well. The dashboard also includes chronic absence rates and high school graduation rates for homeless students compared to state averages.
During a Jan. 29 webinar discussing the release of the data profiles, SchoolHouse Connection Executive Director Barbara Duffield noted that progress was made across several important indicators, but that there is still a ways to go in ensuring homeless youth are receiving the support they need to thrive in school.
“Broadly, we know that the identification of homeless students is up, but still very likely under-identified.” Duffield said. “We know that chronic absence for students experiencing homelessness is slightly down, but it’s still much higher than other students and it’s even higher than other students who are low-income, but we have seen that come down in recent years, and we contribute some of that to more resources that schools had from the American Rescue Plan – Homeless Children and Youth (ARP-HCY) fund. We see that high school graduation is slightly up, but again, it’s still much lower than graduation rates not just for all students, but for other low-income students.”
The ARP-HCY fund provided $800 million during the 2022–23 school year to support the identification, enrollment and engagement of youth experiencing homelessness, including through wraparound services. About 62 percent of school districts received a portion of these recovery funds, according to SchoolHouse Connection and Poverty Solutions. This represented a significant boost from the annual appropriations tied to the McKinney-Vento Act — the federal law ensuring the education of homeless youth — which is typically around $129 million and serves about 21 percent of school districts.
During the 2022–23 school year, 1.4 million preK-12 students experienced homelessness, according to a dashboard — a 25 percent increase from 2020–21. The McKinney-Vento Act defines homelessness as students living in shelters, motels and unsheltered situations as well as doubling up in a house with others due to loss of housing and/or economic hardship.
Advocates have noted that the identification rate of homeless youth — not just the number of children experiencing homelessness — has increased in recent years. Identification is a good thing because it leads to increased resources for students, Duffield said during the webinar.
California
Student homelessness in California increased by 8 percent between 2020–21 and 2022–23, according to the state’s updated data profile.
During that period, the state data profile shows:
- The overall number of preK-12 students identified as experiencing homelessness increased from 227,612 to 246,480
- About 17 percent of these students in 2022–23 were also identified as special education students, 35.6 percent as English learners, 3.5 percent as rural, 2.4 percent as migrant youth and 3.5 percent as “youth on their own”
- The chronic absence rate among this group jumped from 28.5 to 40.8 percent
- The graduation rate for these students increased from 67.8 percent to 72.7 percent
In 2022–23, the vast majority of youth experiencing homelessness were doubled up (83.3 percent). Six percent reported staying in a motel, about 7 percent in a shelter and close to 4 percent reported being unsheltered.
The racial and ethnic makeup of students experiencing homelessness didn’t change much, if at all for some subgroups, between 2020–21 and 2022–23. According to the latest available data, 72.6 percent of California’s homeless youth identified as Hispanic/Latino, followed by 10 percent white, about 8 percent African American, 4 percent Asian, nearly 4 percent two or more races, 0.8 percent American Indian and 0.6 percent Native Hawaiian.
Among children 3 and younger, 72,603 were estimated to be experiencing homelessness 2022–23, and almost 3.7 percent were enrolled in Head Start. This information was not available for 2020–21.
