Teachers whose classrooms seem to have revolving doors with students entering, withdrawing, and even re-entering throughout the school year, face a variety of challenges in meeting the needs of such highly mobile students and their more stable peers. This information brief highlights some of those challenges and offers recommendations to teachers based on our exploration of the literature and case studies of award-winning teachers with a variety of students in their classrooms who moved frequently.

Teachers whose classrooms seem to have revolving doors, with students entering, withdrawing, and even re-entering throughout the school year, face a variety of challenges in meeting the needs of such highly mobile students and their more stable peers. This information brief highlights some of those challenges and offers recommendations to teachers based on our exploration of the literature and case studies of award-winning teachers with a variety of students in their classrooms who moved frequently.

This study, designed jointly by the National Center for Homeless Education and The College of William and Mary, explores the critical role of the classroom teacher in contributing to the education of at-risk and highly mobile students. The study includes a review of the literature on the effective teaching of at-risk and highly mobile students and an exploration of the beliefs and practices of six teachers who won national and/or state awards for working with these populations.

This abstract bibliography lists and describes a selection of publications released in 2011 that deal with issues related to the lives and education of children, youth, and families experiencing homelessness. Topics include Child Welfare/Foster Care; Collaboration/Case Management; Data; Domestic Violence; Education; Funding; General Issues: Homelessness, Hunger, Poverty, etc.; Health and Mental Health; Higher Education; Housing; Immigrants; Juvenile Justice; Pregnant and Parenting; Research; Resilience; Young Children; and Youth.

This NCHE bibliography, updated in December 2010, provides a comprehensive listing of research studies addressing the issue of mobility and its effects on a child's or youth's education.

This NCHE publication provides an overview of research on resilience as it relates to counteracting risk in at-risk children and youth, including children and youth experiencing homelessness. The concept of resilience has received increased attention recently in a growing body of literature that has reported not only the psychological and academic impacts of homelessness, but also has highlighted ways to strengthen the resilience of children and youth experiencing homelessness.

This literature review was developed as part of an unpublished study conducted in 2004 by Dr. Beth Garriss Hardy and Dr. Cheryl Vrooman. The review examines the current body of research on mobility and how it may apply to the school performance of children and youth experiencing homelessness and makes recommendations for further research.

This publication provides an overview of research that studies the relationship between homelessness and academic achievement among school-aged children and youth in the United States. For readers interested in conducting research on the education of homeless children and youth, this publication (1) provides context on child, youth, and family homelessness from the late 1980s to the present; (2) summarizes policies and practices that link homeless children and youth to educational supports and services; (3) provides an overview of selected research studies that examine the relationship between homelessness and academic achievement; (4) describes commonly utilized methodologies and challenges in conducting research on homeless and highly mobile populations; and (5) offers direction for further research.

This review is based on literature published between 1995 and 2005 on issues concerning unaccompanied youth experiencing homelessness. It provides an overview of the challenges these young people face and includes research about why they leave their homes, how they live after leaving, and what interventions are being used to assist them.

This article, featured in the Child Development journal (xxxx 2012, Volume 00, Number 0, Pages 1–17), examines academic achievement data across third through eighth grades (N = 26,474), comparing students identified as homeless or highly mobile (HHM) with other students in the federal free meal program (FM), reduced price meals (RM), or neither (General). Achievement was lower as a function of rising risk status (General > RM > FM > HHM). Achievement gaps appeared stable or widened between HHM students and lower risk groups. Math and reading achievement were lower, and growth in math was slower in years of HHM identification, suggesting acute consequences of residential instability. Nonetheless, 45% of HHM students scored within or above the average range, suggesting academic resilience. Results underscore the need for research on risk and resilience processes among HHM students to address achievement disparities.

This report from Chapin Hall highlights the results of a study that examined the educational needs of a group of homeless children in the Chicago Public Schools. The research involved both qualitative interviews with key informants familiar with the problems facing homeless families with children in Chicago and quantitative analyses of administrative data from Chicago Public Schools and Inner Voice, an agency that provides services to chronically homeless families. Generally speaking, the educational experiences of these children were characterized by high levels of school mobility, academic difficulties, and special education needs. The implications of these findings for how public schools and homeless shelters can work together to better address the educational needs of homeless children are discussed.

Analyzing data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a nationally representative sample of approximately 5,000 births between 1998 and 2000 in 20 large United States cities, this report from the Institute for Children and Poverty examines young children’s experiences with homelessness and its effects on their development and well-being.

In this study, Child Trends examines a group of children younger than six who have experienced five or more moves using nationally representative data from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health. They aim to understand some of the particular demographic characteristics of this group of frequent movers, as well as to see whether these children were more likely to have poor physical and/or mental health than similar children who did not experience frequent moves.

This bibliography from Project HOPE, the Virginia Education for Homeless Children and Youths program, provides a listing of homeless education resources separated by type of resource. Resources include articles and reports, books and chapters from child and young adult books, audiovisual materials, curricula and resource kits and legal sources.

Homeless youth surviving day-to-day on the streets are at constant risk of solicitation and sexual exploitation. Homeless youth are far more likely to be physically and sexually victimized than their peers who are housed, and they are more likely to experience repeated episodes of sexual assaults. This publication from the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) reviews the research and practice implications for community-based services.

This bibliography from the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) provides a comprehensive review of research literature on all issues related to youth homelessness. The survey, studies, and research included span over four decades and include a breadth of perspective and in-depth analysis. The research is organized by typological or categorical areas to help in the ease of review.
(NAEH Disclaimer: In publishing this bibliography, NAEH makes no judgment on the methodologies or quality of the research conducted, nor does it necessarily agree with all of the research findings presented in this review of research literature.)

The National Center for School Engagement (NCSE) is coordinating the Web-Based Professional Development project to study the effects of homelessness and high mobility on local school communities. The project blends team-based participatory action research with web-based instruction. The results of over 20 research projects are available online and address topics related to school attendance, student attachment and academic achievement.

This report from the Urban Institute (UI) examines the McKinney-Vento homeless education program in the Washington metropolitan region. As part of the initiative, UI reviewed the literature on how residential instability affects academic outcomes among children; collected descriptive data on the extent of homelessness in the region's schools; and convened a group of local homeless education liaisons, state coordinators, and advocates to discuss local implementation of the program and types of data collected by program staff. This brief summarizes the literature and data collected during this reconnaissance and provides questions for future research on residential instability and the McKinney-Vento EHCY program.

This Summer 2008 article from the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota examines protective factors and intervention methods that may promote school success among homeless and highly mobile students.

On March 1–2, 2007, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sponsored the second National Symposium on Homelessness Research. This publication is a compendium of the 12 papers prepared for and presented at the Symposium. Among the papers' topics are homeless families and children, homeless youth, and rural homelessness.

In 2007, the California Research Bureau conducted a survey in which homeless and formerly homeless youth completed 208 interviews with their currently and formerly homeless peers across the state in order to find out about their experiences, the services they need, and the changes they would like to see happen in policy or law. This report presents the survey responses and findings.

This report and its accompanying resources from the National Runaway Switchboard provides new research that sheds light on the runaway problem in America and begins to fill in the gaps of what is already known and what can be done to prevent young people from running away.