Homeless Students And Academic Achievement.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that homeless students suffer academically because of their social-economic situation and are far more likely to be placed in special education programs and struggling schools since their parents are more concerned in finding food and shelter than advocating for a better placement for their child at school.  The result is renewal schools end up with a large amount of homeless students which number almost 87,000 in New York City.  Moreover, add to the homeless student population the many students who are recent immigrants whose families share an overcrowded apartment with other families and offer little or no privacy or a place to study and you have a recipe for educational disaster.

When you talk to education reformers, they ignore the inconvenient truth of poverty and homelessness and instead blame schools for their low academic achievement.  These organizations will blame the teachers and demand that teachers be fired for their failure to improve the test scores of deep poverty students by the use of junk science.  Unfortunately,   even the best teachers have little real effect on a child's academic achievement.  A major study showed that any one teacher makes between a 1% to 14% difference in a child's academic achievement.  In other words, the education reform organizations and their media allies believe that putting a bandage on an infection will cure the infection.

Secure housing (not shelters), food security, and parental involvement is the solution for better academic achievement and failing to address these difficult issues and blaming the schools and their teachers is not going to improve a child's education.