Yoav Gonen and Frank Rosario in the New York Post report a spike in the number of homeless students in the New York City public schools.
They write:
“More than 53,000 city public-school students lack a permanent home — a fivefold increase over 2008, figures show.
“While the economy’s collapse led to a huge spike in the number of homeless kids in public schools, the figure has continued to climb by more than 10,000 kids since 2010, according to city Department of Education data.
“As of October 2012, one out of every 20 public-school students was living in a shelter, at an address shared by multiple families or in a hotel or motel.”
Advocates for the homeless predicted that the numbers would increase.
Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless said, “The continuing economic crisis and the high cost of housing continue to be pricing out more and more kids and families from the housing market…At the same time, the failures of Mayor Bloomerg’s policies . . . have contributed to all-time records of homelessness.” He cited the Bloomberg administration’s decision to eliminate affordable-housing assistance as a major source of the problem.
The articles cite two schools where more than 40 percent of the students were homeless.
Homeless students have a hard time doing their studies. When the test scores come out, these schools are likely to have low scores. If so, the leadership of the Department of Education will label them “failing schools,” and they may be closed. This will increase the burdens on the students who are homeless.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In our classroom, the poverty that causes homelessness also means our students come hungry, tired, stressed and focused on non-academic issues. Which bubble is that on the standardized tests?
A -Caring for these students
B-Nourishing these students
C-Guiding these students to be able to Function in the Real-World
D-Teaching these students about character, success, utilizing their talents
E-NONE OF THE ABOVE
ANSWER-E
The Testing Hierarchy cares NOTHING about these students who will negatively skew the data and take the $$$ away from their Political aspirations!!
You are, unfortunately, correct. Those with money and power have the audacity to scapegoat teachers who do their best with limited resources to help these children in crisis every single day!!!
But we all must remember according to NYSED, John Kink – I meant “John King”, Bloomberg, et al that we teachers, if we teachers good enough in the classroom, we should be able to make children overcome the effects of poverty and they’ll be motivated to learn and perform well, right?
If we don’t cause the poverty by taking away disposable income from the public with our “cadillac health coverage” and pensions, then we can certainly erase its effects with our stellar teaching. . . . problem solved. RIght?
While I remain a permanently, irrevocably peaceful activist in education, I fear that one day there will be civil unrest on a national level, and it will be anything but peaceful. LA riots all over again. And it won’t be about education per se; it will be about the 98% to 99% revolting against the rest who are hoarding wealth and substantially contributing to abject poverty.
May this never happen, but I can’t hold my breath any more.
This has left me astonished – a fivefold increase is incredibly sad and astonishing – I am sharing this with as many people as I can to hopefully open eyes about the growing crisis of poverty – being drowned out by media focus on political scandal day in and day out.
I can’t even imagine being emotionally composed enough to teach at a school with so many homeless children – it is heartbreaking. Those teachers deserve congressional medals of honor – and students who graduate in these conditions deserve full university scholarships just for what it shows of their work ethic in the face of adversity.
I read it as a 25% increase (increase of “more than 10,000” to 53,000), not fivefold.
And how many of those children attend KIPP, Evil Moskowitz’s Success Academies, NY State Education Department’s head John King’s Uncommon Schools or any other charter school?
Joe Nathan, we’re waiting for your crocodile tear apologetics…
Joe will be coming soon to express the collective corporate concern, they need to maintain their labor supply, unless immigration reform will serve the same purpose for them. Actually, they may abandon education entirely, machines may supplant human labor completely.
This is not germane to this post but is vitally important. The new rating system for NYC teachers marks the end of tenure. Whether you are a teacher of one year, or forty years; everyone is now in the same boat. Any educator can now be fired within two years. The kangaroo court appeals process is the same for any teacher, regardless of seniority.
In any appeal of an ineffective rating THE BURDEN OF PROOF IS NOW ON THE TEACHER to prove they are satisfactory. In this perversion of due process, you are guilty until proven innocent. Until now the burden of proof had always been on the administrators.
Bob, is poverty or homelessness taken into account or is the evaluation based on test scores and ‘growth’?
If it is like OH…it is based on test scores and growth.
Diane’s remark that schools serving these kids will likely be labeled “failing”, on the basis of the “data”, is well taken. Data on schools is useless unless you can account for and remove all of the aliasing factors. This is why a well designed experiment has a control group. But I miss the point. School grading went right from theory to practice with no experiment proof of accuracy along the way. Junk science.
The oligarchs don’t care! They have theirs and want more. I don’t get their greed.
In Roman Polanski and Robert Townes’ 1974 masterpiece, “Chinatown,” which is loosely based on the L.A. ruling class’ theft of Owens Valley water for its own enrichment, (hmm, any connection to so-called education reform?), private detective Jake Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson) confronts Noah Cross, the Mr. Big behind the conspiracy.
Gittes asks, “Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?”
Cross, played by John Huston, responds, “The future, Mr. Gittes, the future!”
This blatantly shows what kind of a terrible nation we are becoming. We need to take a hard look at ourselves. There will always be poverty. Most of the dramatic increase is due to Clinton signing the 1999-2000 Banking Deregulation Acts which created this terrible lack of an accountable financial system which now just rapes us, except for those on the top. World wide poverty is up because of this and they still have not put back into place those 1933-36 regulations which worked relatively well until 1999-2000. Obama has put this mess into mess overdrive with who he has placed into the financial positions who are those which made the mess and now Sec. of Commerce, Pritzer, who is no one in favor of the people to make it even worse. Obama is a wolf in sheeps clothing. In reality his policies are right wing republican. Notice that he has no differences on education with the republicans. Why? Because he is one of them the way he governs. They say our youth are important but when the rubber meets the road that is a joke as usual. George Orwell reigns now.
What’s your “zoned school” when you’re homeless?
The school you were attending when you last had a mailing address, regardless of how far away that school may be from whatever shelter you are able to find. If I’m not mistaken, people have been prosecuted for “stealing” education because they tried to enroll their child in the nearest school while crashing with a friend or family member after losing their home.
An unfortunate consequence of geographic admission requirements.