Addison Simpson
Research Mentor: Michelle Parker
Mentor Department: Detroit Public Schools Community District OHFC, NonUM
Author(s): Addison Simpson, Mary Kovari
Session: Session 6 (3:00 PM – 3:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 28
Abstract
McKinney-Vento is a federal law passed in 1987 requiring public school districts to identify students as homeless, ensuring resources such as transportation and enrollment for identified students, as well as mandatory staff support. With McKinney Vento in mind, the Detroit Public Schools Community District should be identifying 10% of their school population as homeless. However, most do not meet this mark. In our investigation, we found that individual schools are a source for under-identifying students as homeless. The consequences of undercounting students results in high chronic absentee rates, which impacts student achievement. The purpose of our research was to uncover barriers schools face in identifying students experiencing housing instability. Two sources of data were used. The first being a past UROP project, creating a regression line between zip-code poverty rates and school identification rates. The second was information from a survey, sent to all Homeless School Points of Contact (SPOCS). These individuals serve as the liaison between the Office of Homeless and Foster Care, and their schools. Only 50% of SPOCs returned the survey. We then selected the schools in the high poverty zip codes to investigate some of these barriers and were able to see the lower identifying schools struggle with communication and trust with families, while higher identification have more resource based issues. Soon, we will be talking with staff to truly understand why these barriers exist, thinking about confounding variables, and work together to find solutions to increase attendance and identification.
