The McKinney-Vento Act and Children and Youth ... - State of Michigan

Diminished educational achievement:
The consequence of mobility
School mobility can be emotionally and academically devastating. Students
must adjust to new teachers, peers, curricula, and rules. Ties to friends and
mentors in their previous school are broken, exacerbating the anxiety and
trauma that the children experience from being separated from their families
or experiencing homelessness.
Several studies have found that mobile students score lower than non-mobile
students on mathematics and reading tests. 18 A California study found that
high school students who changed school even once were less than half as
likely to graduate as those who did not change schools, even when controlling
for other variables. 19 Highly mobile youth are also less likely to participate in
extra-curricular activities, which impacts their social and emotional growth. 20
Every school change presents social, emotional, and academic challenges.
Students may lose credits, do the same work repeatedly, struggle to adjust to
new rules and a new school culture, and even be forced to repeat a grade.
School changes also may create gaps in school attendance. Enrolling in a new
school requires that someone assemble enrollment documents and school
records and take the child to school to enroll. Families in homeless situations
struggle to maintain documents, and youth on their own lack a parent or
guardian to enroll them. Although the McKinney-Vento Act addresses such
barriers, these barriers may continue to cause enrollment delays in some areas.
For youth in out-of-home care, confusion among foster parents and child
welfare caseworkers over who is responsible for school enrollment may delay
the process. Child welfare professionals may not have access to necessary
documentation for enrollment. School policies may hinder the transfer of
prior school records and prevent immediate enrollment of youth in outof-home
care when enrollment documents are not forthcoming. Studies in
Pennsylvania, New York, and California have found that gaining access to
prior school records is a serious barrier to school access for youth in care,
resulting in significant enrollment delays. 21
Statistics indicate that children and youth experiencing homelessness
and those in out-of-home care suffer the negative consequences of school
mobility:
• Children experiencing homelessness are twice as likely to repeat a
grade as housed children. 22
10 The McKinney-Vento Act and Children and Youth Awaiting Foster Care Placement