Recognizing and Supporting Students Experiencing Homelessness
Panelists
Tiffany Anderson, Ed. D., Superintendent of Schools, Topeka Public Schools (KS)
Deb Delisle, President, Alliance for Excellent Education
Barbara Duffield, Executive Director, SchoolHouse Connection
Kara Freise, 2016 SchoolHouse Connection Scholar and Student, Columbia University Teachers College
Jason Amos, Vice President of Communications, Alliance for Excellent Education (Moderator)
On November 18, 2019 the Alliance for Excellenet Education held a webinar on the issues Homeless Students are experiencing. For the 2016-2017 school year, there were as many homeless students—1.3 million—as there were people living in Dallas, Texas, America’s ninth-largest city. Even worse, that large number probably undercounts students experiencing homelessness as students often hide their homelessness from educators due to the stigma surrounding it.
Without support to overcome poor health, hunger, a lack of supplies and clothing, and other challenges, homeless students often struggle in school, evidenced by their 64 percent high school graduation rate—a rate that is the lowest among the subgroups of students for which data is reported and 14 percentage points below the rate for students from low-income families.
In this webinar, part of the Alliance for Excellent Education’s yearlong #OurChallengeOurHope campaign to both honor the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case and focus on the continuing needs of our most underserved students sixty-five years after Brown was decided, our expert panel shared their knowledge on how educators can recognize and support students who are experiencing homelessness.
Please direct questions concerning the webinar to jamos@all4ed.org.
If you are interested in renting the Alliance’s facilities for your next meeting or webinar, please visit our facilities page to learn more.
