Texas ranks third in the country for the highest number of homeless students in public schools, and research suggests these kids fall behind academically because they’re prone to more health problems.
The study from the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness ties homelessness and health to school performance. For example, in districts with more homeless kids than average, about one-third of third graders can read proficiently. In districts with a below-average homeless rate, more kids can read – almost half of those measured.
Jeanne Stamp is the project director for the Texas Homeless Education Office in Austin. While her department focuses on academics, she works with health agencies because she agrees with the new study: Performance suffers when health does.
“For us, those issues come into play because, obviously, children that have those issues that go untreated without access to care aren’t very likely to be attending school very regularly or being successful in school,” Stamp says.
[For more of this story, written by Bill Zeeble, go to http://keranews.org/post/study...academic-performance]
Comments (0)