Identifying and Serving Students Experiencing Homelessness: Evidence from Two States (RPA Pilot / Seed Project)

"Housing insecurity among school-aged children in the U.S. has reached crisis levels; each year, between 1.1 and 1.4 million children experience homelessness. These disadvantages are unevenly distributed: students experiencing homelessness disproportionately identify as Black or Hispanic, compared to White. Furthermore, the opportunity for economic mobility is stifled by housing insecurity as students experiencing homelessness have lower levels of school attendance and achievement than similar stably housed peers. In this context, schools have come to play important roles: schools are often the places where children are identified as experiencing homelessness and where they access resources and supports. And, although federal law provides some guidance, school districts have substantial flexibility in how they identify and serve students experiencing homelessness.

In light of this, we ask three research questions: 1) How do school staff understand homelessness? 2) How do school staff identify homeless students? How do they determine who is eligible for services?; and 3) How do school staff serve homeless students? 

To address our questions, we will use a comparative, sequential, multi-method research design, drawing on novel data from housing questionnaires as well as interviews with school- and district-based staff across Kentucky and New York. Through hand web searches, we will gather and organize housing questionnaires from all 171 school districts in Kentucky and 731 school districts in New York. We will build a dataset that will quantify and summarize key information from these housing forms. We will also conduct Zoom interviews with individuals from approximately 55 school districts: 40 districts in New York and 15 districts in Kentucky. In doing so, our study will advance our understanding of how school staff navigate the complexity and challenges of identifying students who may be experiencing homelessness, how they approach determining their eligibility for services, and how they serve these students and their families. "