There is no national consensus on how school districts calculate high school achievement disparities between students who experience homelessness and those who do not. Using administrative student-level data from a mid-sized public school district in the Southern United States, we show that commonly used ways of defining which students are considered homeless can yield markedly different estimates of the homelessness-housed student high school graduation gap. The key distinctions among homelessness definitions relate to how to classify homeless students who become housed and how to consider students who transfer out of the district or drop out of school. Eliminating housing insecurity-related achievement disparities necessitates understanding the link between homelessness and educational achievement; how districts quantify homelessness affects measured gaps.
The Dynamics and Measurement of High School Homelessness and Achievement Disparities
Keywords
homelessness, high school, achievement disparities
Education level
Topics
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/qv0t-d304
EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:
Darolia, Rajeev, and Andrew Sullivan. (). The Dynamics and Measurement of High School Homelessness and Achievement Disparities. (EdWorkingPaper:
-362). Retrieved from
Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/qv0t-d304Related Resources from the EdExchange
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