Liv Ames for EdSource

Liv Ames for EdSource

The U.South. Congress may soon be following California'south lead in requiring states to provide data on the academic progress of all homeless and foster youth and provide boosted resources to those students.

A bill amending the Unproblematic and Secondary Instruction Act (ESEA) to include homeless and foster youth equally ii new subgroups of students has passed the U.South. Senate, and two similar bills are being considered by the House of Representatives. Under the current version of the ESEA, known as No Child Left Behind, student subgroups are based on race and ethnicity, English learner status and disability.

"Too many students in our classrooms are worried near where they will sleep that night, where their side by side meal will come from, or who they can plough to if they demand assistance," said Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., who introduced a homeless and foster youth nib in the House with Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa.

Rep. Danny Thousand. Davis, D-Ill., has introduced a similar bill in the House aimed primarily at foster youth that includes some provisions for homeless youth: the Teaching Stability for Foster Youth Act.

If Congress approves the changes, information technology will be specially meaning for foster youth because states are not at present required by federal law to follow their progress or provide boosted back up. Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Human activity, states already have to study the test scores of homeless students and allow them to remain in the same school if they motion during the schoolhouse year.

But the bills existence considered by Congress become further, such as requiring districts to create educational liaisons to coordinate services for homeless and foster youth. The bills too require districts to allow foster students – like homeless students – to stay at their school of origin if they move or modify homes, including providing transportation from their new home to the school.

Eventually the House and Senate volition consider whether to back up these changes in a conference committee that will effort to reach a compromise on a new version of the ESEA. If a compromise is reached, the new neb would be sent to President Barack Obama. The concluding time the ESEA was reauthorized was in 2002. The law was originally slated to exist reauthorized in 2007, but for the past eight years Congress has been unable to agree on how to change it.

In California, school districts already are expected to show how the needs of homeless and foster students are being addressed in districts' Local Command and Accountability Plans. An LCAP is a 3-twelvemonth plan that shows how districts plan to spend state funds to meliorate pupil achievement, with particular attention to high-needs students – foster and homeless youth, low-income students and English learners. The plans are updated annually with input from the community.

"California is pushing the residue of the country to do things that California has already embraced," said Jesse Hahnel, executive director of the National Centre for Youth Law. "School districts in virtually states have no policies or practices aimed at closing foster youth achievement gaps."

Studies have shown that both homeless and foster students are at take chances of dropping out of schoolhouse. A recent study by researchers at the Center for Promise at Tufts University establish that homeless students were 87 percent more than likely to stop going to schoolhouse. Existence in foster intendance was also constitute to be a risk gene. A study of California foster youth by WestEd institute that students in foster care had the highest dropout rate and the lowest graduation rate of all subgroups of students.

About 310,000 students are homeless in California. Homeless students include those who are living in motels or shelters and doubling up with other families. An estimated sixty,000 children in California are in foster care.

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