Students who experience homelessness are at high risk for a number of negative academic outcomes—including chronic absenteeism, course failure, and low test scores—to say nothing of the physical and emotional toll. But these negative outcomes are not a foregone conclusion. Hundreds of millions of dollars are invested annually to support students and their families through schools, nonprofit organizations, religious groups, and government programs. A new study tries to tease out the school and community resources that have the most positive influence on young people who experience periods of homelessness, with an admirable focus on academics.
Michigan State University researcher Tasminda Dhaliwal looks at data from public schools across the Great Lakes State between 2011 and 2018, focusing on six specific factors she theorizes may help students who experience homelessness achieve in school despite their trying situations. She conducts a series of fixed-effect regressions to map their impacts both individually and in combination.
Primary data come from the Michigan Department of Education and cover 2 million students attending public schools in the state over the seven school years. (While Dhaliwal specifically notes that cyber charter school students are excluded, she does not categorically state that brick-and-mortar charter students are included; the sum of the information provided in the report seems to indicate that they are.) The data include indicators that denote whether a student has ever experienced a period of homelessness, as required under the McKinney-Vento Act and using the criteria and definitions established in that federal legislation. Academic outcome data include attendance (share of days attended of the total enrolled) and scores on the state’s standardized achievement tests for grades 3–8 and 11 in English language arts (ELA) and math. School-level data include the average years of teaching experience, share of teachers with a master’s or doctoral degree, share of teachers who have two or fewer years of experience, and support-personnel-to-student ratios (counselors, social workers, psychologists, and teacher aides). Neighborhood characteristics such as percentage of college-educated citizens, racial composition, and employment levels come from the American Community Survey, while information on businesses and organizations related to health and social assistance (everything from hospitals and clinics to food pantries and family shelters) come from a resource called ReferenceUSA.
Dhaliwal identifies and tests six broad categories of school- and neighborhood-based factors that should provide supports for students experiencing homelessness. They are peer socioeconomic advantage, teacher qualifications and experience, school support personnel, neighborhood advantage, neighborhood educational and occupational attainment, and neighborhood social services. Each one has several sub-factors that are also analyzed via regression. Students who were ever identified as experiencing homelessness are compared with those who weren’t.
Her findings indicate that availability of school support personnel, teacher qualifications and experience, and neighborhood educational and occupational attainment operate as positive supports for all students—whether they experience homelessness or not—boosting all three academic outcomes of interest over students who do not have these advantages. The better-resourced school and community are, the higher all students perform in school. Only two factors were seen to benefit homeless students more than non-homeless students—peer socioeconomic advantage and neighborhood socioeconomic advantage—and even these only impact attendance measures, not the two test scores. In fact, peer socioeconomic advantage is actually a drag on both math and ELA test scores for students experiencing homelessness. Dhaliwal theorizes that students of higher socioeconomic status—especially ones with better and more consistent attendance—could attract “resources” like the time and attention of the most experienced teachers to the detriment of more transient peers. But she does note that all of the significant effect sizes observed are small in magnitude and reflect a complex interplay of factors—including any number of variables unaccounted for in the data despite the rigor of the analysis conducted.
Dhaliwal concludes by recommending further research, not only into the nuances of the various factors (and indeed into the various lengths and circumstances around bouts of homelessness), but also into actual efforts implemented to support these students and their families. One hopes that detailed school choice data could be a specific feature of any future research, rather than lumping charter and district students together, since more than half of all students in Flint and Detroit, for example, attend charter schools rather than their zoned district schools. Does decoupling school attendance from residential address help or hurt homeless students’ attendance? Which neighborhood’s “factors” impact students who live in one place but attend school in another? Could cyber charter students experiencing homelessness have an advantage over brick-and-mortar school peers because they can access their school from any location, regardless of transportation availability, and often at non-traditional times of day? School choice is intended to decouple education from residential address (albeit for a different reason than supporting homeless students). Leaning into that fact would help expand this already-useful research.
SOURCE: Tasminda K. Dhaliwal, “Promoting Resilience? The Role of Schools and Neighborhoods in Supporting the Success of Students Experiencing Homelessness,” Educational Researcher (May 2025).
