The purpose of this guide is to provide timely and useful best practice information for collecting and managing data about students who have temporarily or permanently enrolled in another school or district because of a crisis. It includes lessons learned and provides recommendations for collecting and maintaining data about students who may move…

Changing schools may greatly impede the academic achievement and social development of students experiencing homelessness. Research studies have demonstrated a link between high mobility due to homelessness and poor school performance (Cunningham, Harwood, & Hall, 2010; Obradovic, Long, Cutuli, Chan, Hinz, Heistad & Masten, 2009). Students…

Schools and districts are seeing unprecedented numbers of students and families living without residential stability. Although the McKinney-Vento Act has been around for over 2 decades, many district- and site-level practitioners have a difficult time interpreting and implementing the Act's mandates within their local contexts. This book provides…

Changing schools may greatly impede the academic achievement and social development of students experiencing homelessness. Students who transfer to a new school often experience educational discontinuity and, as a result, lose academic credits. Moreover, the mobility experienced by these students separates them from their social network and from…

Each year, over 1.2 million children and youth identified as homeless in the nation's schools experience the educational disruption that is caused by not having a safe and stable place to live (NCHE, 2014). Homeless children and youth face educational challenges that include a lack of basic necessities, such as food, clothing, and medical…

How has the recession and its resulting family instability impacted children’s residential and school mobility? Officials from housing, homeless, and school programs discussed the full spectrum of residential mobility in two recent Urban Institute roundtables: from chronic mobility, eviction, and foreclosure to doubled-up households and…

The National Center for Homeless Education and the Legal Center for Foster Care and Education present this brief to help educators and child welfare advocates work together to support the academic success of children and youth in out-of-home care. The brief offers practical, proven strategies for implementing two federal laws collaboratively: The…

However much the recession might be receding, the effects remain deep and cruel to families living in poverty. Many have fallen through their communities' social safety nets. Today, families with young children comprise 41% of the nation's homeless population. According to the Institute of Children and Poverty, more than 1.35 million kids in the…

Homeless children can be hard to identify and even harder to help. But teachers can do a great deal to make sure that they do not fall through the cracks. Teachers of highly mobile students must develop the skills to make these children and youth feel welcome while quickly weaving them into classroom routines. They must rapidly assess new…

In the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the immediate demand for data about displaced students overwhelmed many school districts that had gained or lost students because of the disasters. The scale of these crises and their effects on school operations and management were in many ways unprecedented. This guide reflects "lessons…

Middle and high school students experiencing homelessness often face challenges in accruing credits. Class offerings, methods of calculating credits, and graduation requirements can vary greatly among school districts. Students who change schools late in high school can find themselves suddenly in danger of not graduating due to differing class…

This document's primary focus is on a subset of the population of mobile children--infants, preschoolers, children and youth with disabilities and their families who are highly mobile. First, a background section provides information about policies and practices developed for mobile children at the federal level under the McKinney-Vento Program.…

The digest is a summary of the information presented in the monograph, "Students on the Move: Reaching and Teaching Highly Mobile Children and Youth". It describes the different reasons for high mobility and the characteristics of highly mobile families, explains the specific educational and social support needs of highly mobile…