From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Education of Homeless Students

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Kay Brown, Director,
Education, Workforce, and Income Security

Related GAO Work: GAO-14-465: Education of Homeless Students: Improved 
Program Oversight Needed


Released: August 2014

[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It’s August
2014. In the 2011 to 2012 school year, there were more than 1 million
homeless students in the United States. The Department of Education
established a grant program to help homeless students gain access to
public education. A team led by Kay Brown, a director in GAO's
Education, Workforce, and Income Security team recently reviewed
oversight and implementation of the program. GAO's Sarah Kaczmarek sat
down with Kay to talk about what they found.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] How can school districts improve homeless students'
access to education?

[ Kay Brown: ] Well first of all, it's important to know that the law
requires that homeless youth receive the same free and appropriate
public education as any other student. So starting from that premise,
there are a couple things that school districts can do. First, they can
help to enroll youth. And a homeless child has the right to attend the
school where they started as long as that's in their best interest, or,
the new school where they're attending. So a school can help them enroll
even if they don't have all the required paperwork that a family
typically has when they enroll their child. The second factor is that
schools can help children once they're enrolled continue to attend
regularly and to succeed in school. And there are a number of
circumstances with homeless youth that might get in the way of this.
They might not have a quiet place to do their homework. They might not
have a place to obtain clean clothing or school supplies. They may not
even have an alarm clock. So it's important for schools to be aware of
these things and help students so that they can focus on their
schoolwork and succeed.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] You started to mention a couple of challenges. Let
me ask you, what do you see as the main challenges in identifying and
supporting homeless students?

[ Kay Brown: ] Well the challenge with identifying students often has to
do with a stigma associated with being homeless. A student may not want
their peers or their teachers to know that they're homeless or that
their family circumstances have changed. In some but not all cases, this
may be related to a fear of involvement from other government agencies
such as Child Protective Services or immigration authorities. Now as far
as supporting students and the challenges there, we visited 20 different
districts and talked to officials and again and again we heard one of
the major challenges is transportation. Because students can attend
schools in districts where they are not living, schools face the
challenge of both the cost and the logistics of getting the kids to the
right school. They may end up paying for a taxi to take the child to
school, or paying for public transportation, or rerouting some of their
buses. So that can be a real challenge for school officials. The other
big challenge relates to the fact that this is not a big program. It's
$65 million and we heard again and again about resource constraints. $65
million, relatively speaking, is not big because these grants go out to
each of the states and then the states have to award grants to some, but
not all of their school districts get these grants. And so that small,
relatively small size combined with the many needs of homeless families
can create a real challenge for districts. And it's important for them
to be able to refer these families and connect them to resources in the
community that might help them with things like housing assistance or
food assistance or counseling.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] What recommendations is GAO making, then, to the
Department of Education?

[ Kay Brown: ] Well one of Education's duties is to monitor the states
to make sure that they're implementing this law correctly and that the
students are getting the services that they are expected to get. And
what we found as we went out to these different districts is some
districts have much better programs in place, were more focused on this
and more successful than others. So that combined with the fact that
what we found out from Education is that the monitoring that they have
done has dropped off considerably in recent years, and so they don't
really know how well this is being implemented across the country. Our
recommendation to them is that they develop a new plan to increase their
monitoring so that they have a better feel for how this program is being
implemented nationwide.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Finally, what do you see as the bottom line of this
report?

[ Kay Brown: ] Well when a child is homeless, so much of the things in
their lives that they usually count on may be in chaos or may be falling
apart. And that's why it's very important for schools to work hard to
first identify these kids so they can be in school and have that
continuity and then to give them the supports they need so they can
succeed.

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[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit gao.gov, and be sure to tune in to
the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the
congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.