Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Helping low-income students make it to college--the last summer is critical

Interesting story on the radio this evening about "summer melt"--the phenomenon of low-income students "melting" off the path to college between acceptance in the spring and enrollment in the fall--and what some people are doing to stop it. Keeping paperwork from blocking the road to college | Marketplace.org .  The online version has links to some apps to help kids keep up with paperwork and deadlines.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Educating Homeless Kids

Nearly a quarter of homeless people are children.* Over a million children were homeless at the start of the 2010-2011 school year. And being homeless can make it tough to get an education. To address some of the problems, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (1987) set up the Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program.

The ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty just published Educating Children Without Housing: A Primer on Legal Requirements and Implementation Strategies for Educators, Advocates and Policymakers (Gallagher Law Library Classified Stacks KF4217.H6 D84 2014). One of the coeditors is Casey Trupin, the Coordinating Attorney for the Children and Youth Project at Columbia Legal Services and also a lecturer in UW Law's Legislative Advocacy Clinic.

Here are some links if you want to learn more about these issues:
(I copied this from a post I wrote for the UW Law Library's blog. There's usually not much overlap!)

* See p. 1 of HUD's 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.