Research nationally demonstrates that children and youth experiencing foster care and/or homelessness achieve academic outcomes significantly below their peers due to trauma and loss, multiple changes in homes and schools, and emotional upheaval. When youth fail to graduate from high school, they are much more likely to live in poverty, require…

The Montana Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) is administered by the Montana Office of Public Instruction every two years to students in grades 7 through 12. The purpose of the survey is to help monitor the prevalence of behaviors that not only influence youth health, but also put youth at risk for the most significant health and social problems…

This chapter explores the various performances of activism by students through sound, silence, gender, and dis/ability and how these performances connect to social change efforts around issues such as human trafficking, homeless children, hunger, and children with varying abilities.

The authors place a continuing education conference devoted to linking the arts, social practice, and social work within the context of a movement to advance arts activism. They illustrate how social workers, artists, and community arts activists can collaborate in building public awareness about serious social issues, creating alternative…

Exclusionary school discipline--that is, suspension and expulsion--disproportionately affects already disadvantaged students on both the national and state levels. In New Hampshire, students attending larger urban schools, male students, students of color, students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, students with disabilities, and homeless…

This design case follows the instructional planning and decision making before and during a nine-week project-based unit co-taught by three of the authors at a not-for-profit charter high school in the American Southwest. The school serves students who have not been well served by traditional schooling. The teachers partner with industry…

This Research-to-Impact brief is the fifth in a series by Chapin Hall's Voices of Youth Count on understanding and addressing youth homelessness. The brief estimates that nearly 4.2 million youth and young adults in America experienced some form of homelessness during a 12-month period. It highlights research related to the specific experiences of…

Background: Substance use, particularly injection drug use, continues to fuel the HIV/HCV (hepatitis C virus) epidemics in San Juan, Puerto Rico (PR). Aim: This article examines individual and sociostructural factors that affect HIV/HCV risk among people who use drugs (PWUD) living with or at risk for HIV/HCV in San Juan, PR. Findings were used to…

Annually, states are required to monitor whether school districts disproportionately refer certain student groups into special education services. However, these monitoring methods do not account for student factors theorized to be associated with the presence of a learning disability. I explore whether conclusions drawn from current measures of…

Studies of homeless individuals typically sample subjects from few types of sites or regions within a metropolitan area. This article focuses on the biases that can result from such a practice. We obtained a probability sample of 419 homeless youth from 41 sites (shelters, drop-in centers, and streets) in four regions of Los Angeles County (LAC).…

Stereotypical notions of who experiences homelessness frame how educational institutions approach policy and program development. This life history of a teacher challenges assumptions by providing an in-depth look at a mother's struggle to find stability.

Each year, effective federal programs give parents the power to provide their children with affordable healthcare, nutritious food, stable housing, and early childhood education. These programs lift millions of children out of poverty, but also have long-term benefits--children in families who accessed these programs have higher educational…

Over a million U.S. students are homeless according to a report by the U.S. Department of Education (National Center for Homeless Education 2013). According to the same report, rates of homelessness among students have increased 72% since the beginning of the 2008 economic recession and 10% from the 2011-2012 school year. Moreover, whether or not…

We know that students cannot learn if they are not in school, and that students with economic challenges miss school more frequently than other students. What obstacles create this attendance gap, and how can school districts provide the supports to improve attendance for these students? The authors of this article, who work with the Texas…

This past winter, the third student-run homeless shelter in the United States came into being. Two recent Harvard graduates, Sam Greenberg and Sarah Rosenkrantz, who had volunteered at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter as college students, saw a need within the Boston and Cambridge communities for a homeless shelter serving young adults. Drawing…