According to a US report from the Center For Public Integrity,
“The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which protects the educational rights of homeless students, requires schools to identify and provide support to all students experiencing housing insecurity.”
So naturally, schools are bending over backwards to identify poverty-stricken children who need support.
Naturally not.
An award-winning investigation reports that hundreds of thousands of US children living in housing insecurity are being overlooked.
The fact that schools are not knocking themselves out to determine who needs extra assistance is perhaps unsurprising.
Every student who pops up on school housing radar, insecure or not, must receive standard financial support for their education. That costs money.
Every student who can be teased out of the woodwork and shown to be poverty-stricken and in need of greater assistance requires still more support — costing the school system even more money.
So how hard are schools trying to ensure every child’s future is brightened by education? There are conditions associated with family poverty that can make it difficult to identify at-risk children. For example, a family crashing on a friendly couch has no fixed address and may be difficult to identify, even before they outstay their welcome and move on to stay with another sympathetic supporter, even further away from school radar.
So maybe your education system is not American. Is your country’s commitment to children’s education short-changing similar numbers of young futures?
An investigation into such problems has focused on one of America’s poorest big cities. Read more from The Center For Public Integrity: Where are the homeless children? This struggling city isn’t finding them
