When Home Isn’t Stable, School Isn’t Either
Article excerpt
About 1.6 million American children experience homelessness each year, yet the crisis remains largely invisible because these families often live doubled up in relatives' homes or move constantly between shelters. The instability devastates academic performance: homeless students miss more school, fall behind in reading and math, and face higher dropout rates. Teachers and administrators struggle to identify these students without reliable home addresses or consistent attendance records. Long-term consequences compound: children who experience homelessness are three times more likely to repeat a grade and four times more likely to drop out entirely. Experts argue that schools need better systems to identify and support these students, not as charity, but as a public health and educational imperative.
The Hidden Impact of Homelessness on Attendance, Learning, and Long-term Outcomes for Children
Chances are, your child has a classmate, or even a friend, who is experiencing homelessness. That’s because family homelessness is often a crisis hidden in plain sight.
It can look like many things. A classmate may not have their own bedroom, or even their own bed, sleeping instead in a crowded apartment or on the floor. Perhaps your child’s new friend just moved into a nearby homeless shelter, possibly for the second or third time, changing schools with each move.
When we think about America’s homelessness crisis, we don’t typically think about homeless children. Yet student homelessness is widespread and frequently overlooked.
Family and child homelessness has been rising steadily in recent years. Today, nearly half of all homeless students nationwide are chronically absent because they don’t have a stable place to live. Looking closer at the tri-state area, the trend is clear:
In Connecticut, 5,100 public school students were homeless last year, a 44% increase since 2021.
In New Jersey, that number rose from 14,393 in 2022, 2023 to 16,380 the following year.
In New York, the numbers are staggering. For the past decade, more than 100,000 public school students in New York City alone have experienced homelessness. In the 2024, 2025 school year, that number reached 154,000, roughly 1 in every 7 students.
The Impact on Learning and Emotional Health
Unstable living conditions can have a profound impact on a child’s ability to learn and succeed. Children experiencing homelessness often move frequently, staying temporarily with friends or relatives or cycling through shelters. These disruptions force abrupt school changes, requiring children to adapt to new teachers, new classmates, and entirely new environments, often with little warning.
Simply not having a permanent home is stressful. That stress is compounded by hunger, lack of sleep, and ongoing instability. Anxiety, depression, and feelings of isolation are common.
Children experiencing homelessness face both academic and social challenges. Chronic absenteeism is one of the most visible, but it is far from the only one. These students are more likely to have lower grade point averages, lower graduation rates, and a weaker sense of connection at school. A lack of belonging can also lead to higher rates of bullying, depression, and even suicidal ideation.
How Systemic Barriers Disrupt Education
The cycle of homelessness often begins or deepens here. Students who do not graduate from high school are significantly more likely to experience homelessness later in life. Research from Chapin Hall found that youth without a high school diploma have a 346% higher risk of experiencing homelessness compared to their peers who graduate.
At the same time, these students face a range of systemic barriers that make consistent education difficult or even impossible. These include:
Inability to meet enrollment requirements, such as proof of residency or school records
Frequent relocation, leading to a lack of stability and continuity
Limited access to transportation
Lack of school supplies and appropriate clothing
Insufficient awareness or support from school staff
Poor health, fatigue, and hunger
When these barriers are not addressed, children experiencing homelessness may struggle not only to attend school, but sometimes to enroll at all, effectively blocking a pathway out of poverty.
In New York City, 52% of all homeless children, and nearly two-thirds of those living in shelters, were chronically absent during the 2024, 2025 school year. Families are often placed far from their original neighborhoods, forcing children to spend hours commuting each day. Even when they make it to school, they may arrive late, already having missed critical instruction.
The impact is clear: approximately 75% of students living in shelters lack reading proficiency, and more than one-third do not graduate on time.
Where Laws and Systems Fall Short
The federal McKinney-Vento Act guarantees transportation to a student’s school of origin, regardless of where they are temporarily living. In practice, however, this protection is often not fully realized.
In Connecticut, state law creates another roadblock.
Sarah Fox, CEO of Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, told The Connecticut Mirror that an outdated law is standing in the way of getting children to school. Under current law, any vehicle transporting a student must have specialized commercial registration and permanently affixed signage to operate. These are rules for large bus fleets, Fox explained, adding, “These requirements make it nearly impossible for community-based drivers or flexible options to help.”
The result is a system where laws intended to protect students are undermined by logistical and regulatory barriers.
The Need for Meaningful Solutions
Efforts to address student homelessness often fall short of the scale of the problem. In New York City, a pilot program called Every Child and Family Is Known pairs students in shelters with school staff for daily check-ins and weekly family meetings. While the program aims to expand from 3,200 to 7,000 students, it still reaches only a fraction of the 154,000 students experiencing homelessness.
Even well-intentioned programs cannot succeed without addressing the root issues: housing instability, transportation barriers, and the lack of coordinated support systems.
“Transportation gaps and shelter placements far from classrooms make attendance a constant struggle,” said Christine Quinn, president of the family shelter provider Win. She also pointed to the need for more direct solutions, including:
Placing families in shelters closer to their children’s schools
Expanding reliable and flexible transportation options
Increasing access to school-based and shelter-based support staff
Most importantly, ensuring access to stable, permanent housing
Breaking the Cycle
As it stands, existing protections like the McKinney-Vento Act cannot fully support students if other systems continue to fail them. What we are seeing is not a single point of breakdown, but a multi-agency failure, one that limits opportunity at every stage of a child’s education.
Without meaningful change, the cycle continues: housing instability disrupts education, and disrupted education increases the risk of future homelessness.
Breaking that cycle requires more than temporary solutions. It requires coordinated action and a commitment to ensuring that every child has not only access to education, but a stable foundation from which to succeed.