The Dynamics and Measurement of High School Homelessness and Achievement

Abstract

How school districts measure homelessness among their students has implications for accountability and funding, as well as for supporting student success. Yet, measuring homelessness among high school students is challenging because students move in and out of experiencing it. Using administrative student-level data from a mid-sized public school district in the southern United States, we show that different commonly used procedures to measure which students are considered homeless can yield markedly different estimates of high school graduation rates for these students. This is largely because of differences in how districts classify students who experience homelessness but later become housed. To address the potentially negative effects of housing insecurity on academic achievement, it is important to first identify a common way to diagnose the problem.

Strategies to Better Identify Student Homelessness Using Data in an Urban School District

“…The current findings help quantify the degree of underidentification and underserving of these students in one district, a glimpse into a much larger problem recognized by others across the nation (Government Accountability Office, 2014; Hatchimonji et al, 2021;National Center for Homeless Education, 2022). Part of this problem is that education records are known to underestimate the number of students with particular needs-not just homelessness-during any given year, and analyses that consider these data at face value without careful consideration run the risk of not only misunderstanding the scope of those needs but also their impact on educational outcomes (Darolia & Sullivan, 2023;Michelmore & Dynarski, 2017). This is a perilous situation for researchers and state and district leadership charged with addressing these student needs.…”