Only five states track high school dropouts who are homeless

Today, the McKinney-Vento Act is nearly synonymous with assistance to homeless children. But as we approach the 30th anniversary of this important piece of legislation, we should take stock of how far we have – and haven’t – come.

Congress first passed legislation designed to provide assistance to homeless youth in 1987. Three years later, it revised the law to highlight obligations of local educational agencies when it became clear that schools are the only consistent place to find and help homeless youth. Yet even with the power of 30 years of evolving legislation behind the act, the needs of homeless students are still being overlooked.

{mosads}Most schools still aren’t equipped to help students like Jenny, a homeless teenager who dropped out of high school in Washington State. As a freshman, she was forced to choose the instability of homelessness over the instability of a drug-addicted parent. School should have been the easiest place to find support, but when Jenny tried to enroll in a local high school, district officials told her they needed transcripts, parental consent forms, and proof of residency–without helping her navigate those obstacles.

Jenny is one of an estimated 1.3 million homeless students in America. That’s 1 in every 40 school-aged children; an average of almost one student in every classroom. The statistic may be shocking considering that homelessness is often associated with adult males, and typically imagined as a status not easily hidden. Homelessness for many students, however, may be invisible to both the public and the schools they attend.

Despite the challenges associated with transience, the overwhelming majority of homeless children continue to attend school or strive to do so, suggesting that school is an important place for connecting students with the support they need. Yet recent data show that more than 60 percent of children who have experienced homelessness were never even offered support services at school—despite nearly 90 percent of those who did receive support expressing that the help was valuable.

It gets worse. Two-thirds of homeless students say they’re uncomfortable talking to people at their school about being homeless and its related challenges. They worry not only about the stigma of being without a home, but also about the danger of being separated from loved ones. Being homeless comes with unimaginable stress—and failing to create space for students to seek help at school only exacerbates the challenge.

As a result of these and myriad other challenges, 42 percent of homeless middle and high school students say they’ve left school at least once – and most never return. Without a high school diploma and a clear pathway into the workforce, these students risk a lifetime of un- or under-employment, which only contributes to the cycle of homelessness.

On Oct. 1, provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act finally changed federal mandates for access to services and reporting requirements from homeless youth. But we cannot address the needs of homeless students rule by rule. We need to address them heart by heart and mind by mind. ESSA will help, but if we’re only worried about following the letter of the law – and if we continue to do a poor job at that – we’ll be having this conversation again in another 30 years.

That’s why it’s time to change our minds about who homeless people are and what our responsibilities are for helping them. It’s time to recognize that we’ve been forgetting these students for far too long.

For students like Jenny, change may start with policy, but it will require much more fundamental and practical shifts to help them blaze the pathway out of homelessness. ESSA represents a critical and long-awaited first step. But we need to move well beyond its requirements and vision if, 30 years from now, we want to look back with pride on a time in which we worked together to bring an end to the cycle of homelessness.

The federal government has also attempted to address the challenge through the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, which last year published a blueprint for action. That blueprint, however, implores a community response. The work of identifying strategies is well under way. But the necessity to join forces to bring them to fruition looms.

Some leading organizations, like Seattle’s Mockingbird Society, have created coalitions to gather better information about homeless youth and employ it to inform advocacy efforts. Even more critically, they strive to make a difference by engaging youth voice and insight into their work.

We’ve discovered through our own efforts to reengage high school dropouts and provide career training skills to those without high school diplomas that so many of the students we meet are bright, motivated, capable people who could have earned a diploma on time if it weren’t for the constellation of preventable circumstances that led them into homelessness. As a result, we are committing to reach out to support these students—and we hope you will, too.

We encourage you to take one simple step this week by starting a conversation. Meet with your colleagues and discuss what you know about the students you serve and how you might make changes to your practice to better serve them. If you don’t work directly with children, find out what your community is doing to support homeless youth and make the commitment to get involved.

Ron Klausner serves as chief executive officer of Graduation Alliance, an organization that provides highly effective postsecondary planning, alternative education, and workforce training programs to ensure that every student has an opportunity to succeed during and after high school. Bart Epstein is President of Gifts for the Homeless, a charity that provides over one million dollars’ worth of clothing and blankets for dozens of homeless shelters in the Washington, D.C. area annually, and the founding CEO of the Jefferson Education Accelerator at the University of Virginia.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.