ESEA Includes New Requirements On Educating Homeless Students

By Linda Jacobson

When classes resume in the coming weeks throughout the country, districts will have new tools for identifying homeless children in their communities—and new responsibilities for making sure those children are attending school.

In addition to holding schools more accountable for student performance, the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001, signed into law by President Bush last January, also reauthorized the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, which provides grants to states for services to homeless students.

The revised law, which went into effect July 1 and was pushed by advocates for the homeless, more clearly defines homelessness as living in motels, cars, or camping grounds. And it specifically states that if children live in families that are "doubled up" with another family in an apartment because they cannot afford housing otherwise, they are considered to be homeless. In the past, the housing status of such families might have been debatable, said BethAnn Berliner, a senior research associate at WestEd, a regional education...