Strategies for Success Report Release 2020

Come hear from experts, McKinney-Vento Liaisons, and young people on how schools and districts can support students experiencing homelessness.

The Education Leads Home campaign invites you to join them on Tuesday, October 20 at 2:00pm E.T. to learn about their new report, Strategies for Success: Supporting Students Experiencing Homelessness, authored by Civic and sponsored by The Raikes Foundation.

The event will focus on the lessons learned from interviews with educators in Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Texas, and Virginia to identify strategies schools and districts are using to successfully mitigate the challenges students experiencing homelessness face in attending and succeeding in school. It will feature perspectives from a homeless liaison, a student who has experienced homelessness, and student homelessness policy experts to discuss ways schools and districts can support students experiencing homelessness, especially in the current environment.

A Zoom link will be provided upon registering.

About the Report

Over 1.5 million K-12 students were identified as experiencing homelessness in U.S. public schools during the 2017-18 school year. This marks a sizeable increase over the past decade, in part due to schools and districts doing a better job at identifying students experiencing homelessness. Other factors, however, such as lack of affordable housing, persistent poverty, the opioid crisis, and increasing natural disasters contribute to this as well.

These millions of students experiencing homelessness are at the center of COVID-19 and systemic racism. Black and Hispanic high school students are more likely to experience homelessness than their White peers, significantly less likely to graduate from high school, and more likely to experience homelessness as adults. In addition, all students experiencing homelessness are particularly vulnerable to the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools provide stability and food security for many students experiencing homelessness who do not have a place to ‘shelter in place’ or ‘stay at home.’

Encouragingly, success stories throughout the nation show that with the right support, students experiencing homelessness can graduate from high school at the same rates as their peers. These stories validate the aspirations of those on the front lines of supporting such students: 88 percent of homeless student liaisons interviewed say they are optimistic regarding the potential of youth they work with to graduate from high school college- and career-ready.