Saturday, September 06, 2008

 
Homeless Students Face Special Challenges:

They live with friends of their parents, with relatives, in garages and in shelters.

They sleep on couches, on floors, and share beds with brothers and sisters in low-cost motels.

Sometimes they live in cars.

They are children and, according to advocates, approximately 1,100 kids in Charlotte, DeSoto and Hardee counties are homeless under the guidelines established by the federal Department of Education. Helping them succeed academically presents educators with some special challenges.

"Children who are homeless often don't do as well on standardized tests as their peers because they don't have a regular place to study and often their parents, who may be working two or three jobs, don't have the time to help them with their homework," said Carmen McCraink, an associate professor of education at Barry University in Miami.

"To combat that, it's important that teachers recognize the signs that these students are having trouble adjusting to their circumstances — such as turning in homework assignments late or not at all — and act quickly to help them, she said.

A failure to do that, she said, could result in the school system itself victimizing these students by classifying them as unwilling or unable to meet academic standards.

Fortunately, there is help for school districts that have homeless students.

The federal Department of Education administers a special grant program aimed at helping students who are homeless succeed academically despite a nomadic lifestyle that keeps them constantly on the move, said Chantal Phillips, who works for the Charlotte County public school system..

“When children bounce around from school to school lack of academic success becomes an issue,” Phillips said. “One of the ways we deal with that is to allow kids to stay in the same school even though their addresses may change and they’re no longer in the districted area.”

By MIKE BILLINGTON
Associate Editor
See the Charlotte Sun on September 7 for the full story

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