One Million Homeless Children in America’s Schools
by: Craig Wiesner on August 26th, 2010 | 14 Comments »
The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) recently published a report showing that there are nearly 1,000,000 homeless children enrolled in U.S. schools. This represents an alarming 41% rise from just a few years ago. Most people don’t imagine a child’s face when they think of the face of homelessness, but the average age of a homeless person in our country is nine!
Click here to read a report by NAEHCY with more details.
When my husband and I launched Reach And Teach, one of our first areas of focus was homelessness. Homeless children face very unique challenges when attending school and it is critical for teachers, administrators, social workers and medical staff to be aware of those challenges to help these children succeed in school. Imagine, for example, a teacher handing out materials to children for a homework project and saying “Now make sure you put all these materials in a very safe, dry, place! You’ll need them to be perfect if you want to get the best grade.” Where will a homeless child keep anything that won’t fit into her backpack?
Hopefully, a shocking statistic like 1,000,000 homeless children in America’s schools will help raise people’s awareness of the issue and also help organizations like NAEHCY continue to advocate for those children and the educators working with them.
NAEHCY has incredible resources to help professionals work with homeless children including:
- An FAQ about educating homeless children
- Training and Awareness Resources (including videos)
- Information about the McKinney-Vento Act, the primary piece of federal legislation dealing with the education of children and youth in homeless situations.
My call to act? When you walk around in the next few days, look at the people around you. There are some you will assume are homeless, because of how they look. Stop. Look at all the children who pass by and think about this. If one million children in America’s schools are homeless, that means that one child in every classroom of 30 is homeless. If you see 100 children in the next few days of walking around, could that help change your perception about what homelessness looks like? I hope so, because the face of one of those children IS the face of homelessness.
Thank you for finally writing about the homelessness epidemic. This is a shameful, and completely unnecessary fact of U.S. life.
It is also shameful that religious groups are doing little except a bit of charity.
It is time for JUSTICE!
I agree, this fact is completely unnecessary. I could have lived a long time without this utterly useless knowledge. Now the shame of it will haunt my dreams for the next few years. Damn those homeless children. Now I cannot enjoy my overpriced latte without thinking of them sleeping under a bridge.
I’m guessing that what you mean by “unnecessary” is not that the information is not needed, but that there is no reason for children like these to be homeless. I of course agree. We have the resources to house all of these children, which would of course mean doing something to help their parent(s) in dealing with whatever the cause of their homelessness is.
I work with a lot of people of faith, and don’t agree with the idea that they are only doing bits of charity. Many churches, synagogues, mosques, and other communities of faith put countless hours and dollars into feeding, clothing, and housing people who need help. That is, in fact, for many religious people THE most important of all the actions faith calls them to take. But, those communities of faith are having to do more and more work with fewer volunteers, and spend more and more money, with fewer donors, as the homelessness and hunger situation worsens across our country.
Justice is needed. A complete rethinking of our priorities is needed. If we want peace, we need justice. To get both, we have to keep working on empathy!
Thanks for shedding light on a truly appalling, embarrassing blight on our country. We can spend billions to bomb another country’s civilians to smithereens, but we can’t spend money to ensure proper housing and security for our own citizens.
For shame.
I am a teacher and know some of my students are homeless. These kids are often so lost, so hungry, so exhausted, and we often don’t know that the cause is they slept on a floor or in a car the night before. NO one should be homeless, but children need full support for their development. Thanks so much for informing all about this, its a shame and a sin.
It is unfortunately that ever since the 80s our entire national culture really has embraced the idea that personal, self-centered, selfish, greed is good. Ignoring people in need is a good thing. Refusing to help people in need is a good thing.
Ideas like being part of a community, knowing and helping the people around you, being jointly responsible as a society are so long gone, so decimated that it will be very hard to convince people that these are worthwhile ideas again.
There will be a whole lot of social inertia resisting any idea or attempt to actually care or help people because we have a culture in business and in entertainment and in politics and in so many subcultures that requires and glorifies the selfish.
It is always a long hard fight without a lot of friends and with a whole lot of enemies. :(
That this should be happening in the so-called “greatest country in the world” is beyond an obscenity. That this is not receiving the attention it DEMANDS is even more of an obscenity.
What is it going to take for the churches, all organizations, all people, to speak out, to demand an end to this horror? We have all the money the MIC wants, but nothing for our citizens.
I am ashamed of this country.
I echo the sentiments already posted above.
It is shameful for a society to allow this, and it is GROWING. We as a society MUST DO BETTER. Acknowledging it is the first step, refusing to allow it be acceptable is the next step…what to do from there is up to smarter people than I, and I’m paying attention to any way we can bring these injustices to an end.
I hope you’ll continue to give this issue attention and perhaps join with other organizations such as Amnesty International to bring this issue to the forefront here in the United States.
Thank you!
This is our national identity, this is what defines us, our lack of caring for ourselves, our people. If we seek balance, there can be none while so many lack the basics, while children go without. Issues of poverty and homelessness do not get enough attention, and every article such as this helps.
Dear Colleagues
I am writing a book entitled, Racism and Education in the UK and the US: The Socialist Alternative, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in New York. Please do you have a breakdown of how many of the one million homeless students are students of color?
Best wishes
Mike
(Dr Mike Cole)
Why the particular concern for homeless “students of color”? I assume you mean “non-white students”? If so, are you suggesting that “colored” pain is a matter of greater concern than “white” pain? Or are you simply trolling for ammunition to use against the White Gentile Majority in the on-going Culture War Blame Game (aka Critical Theory)? If, on the other hand, you truly want to reduce student homelessness, then perhaps this idea deserves consideration: Research & expose the impact of the recent Money Merchants’ home mortgage manipulations on student homelessness. Or would that hit too close to your ethnic home?
As a retired teacher from small schools where I’m almost certain none of the children were homeless…(prior to my retirement in 1994), it is shocking, but needed to be reminded that many of the homeless people in the world are indeed children. We as a society need to “get our act together” and start getting our priorities straight…When will we stop spending more money than we have on war and instead take care of all people to the best of our ability? If we put anyways near as much time and energy into solving the problems such as homelessness as we do into ruining others lives, we could have a much different and happy society.
I am proud to be working with Bright Beginnings child development center in Washington, DC. We serve about 186 children annually whose families are living in crisis shelters or transitional housing. We provide educational, therapeutic, health and family support services to prepare these children for kindergarten and help stabilize their families.
On November 20th we are participating in the Fannie Mae Help The Homeless Walkathon in Washington, DC. 100% of the proceeds designated to Bright Beginnings goes to the organization. You can learn more here: bit.ly/d7zQL0
Comments please.