XPost: alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.obama, sac.politics   
   XPost: soc.culture.usa   
   From: bksperman@outlook.com   
      
   My sisters and I were going hungry. We lived off of ramen   
   noodles for weeks at a time; we didn’t know what my mom did with   
   the EBT money for food. We became fatigued and skinny. During   
   those weeks of living in paranoia, my mom acted like life was   
   dandy, still buying liquor and marijuana just for her boyfriend   
   and herself. I had to put a stop to worrying about my life. I   
   came to a conclusion that the only way that I could be happy and   
   stable is to move on when we got evicted for the 5th time in 3   
   years. At age 13, I wanted to see what life could give me, even   
   if it meant living like a nomad and bouncing to house to house.   
   … I moved out.   
      
   — Gladys Thompson   
      
   Gladys Thompson became homeless before she was old enough to   
   drive or hold a job. She remembers begging for food and water,   
   and pleading with friends for a place to sleep. And she is not   
   alone: More than 1.3 million U.S. students were homeless in 2013-   
   2014, twice the number who were homeless before the collapse of   
   the housing market and subsequent recession.   
      
   [The number of U.S. homeless students has doubled since before   
   the recession]   
      
   Homeless youth spend more energy surviving than kids who have a   
   stable place to live. They miss more class. They are more likely   
   to struggle academically and less likely to graduate from high   
   school. And according to a report on homeless youth released   
   this week by GradNation — which has led a long-running, national   
   campaign to shrink the high school dropout rate — the majority   
   of homeless students feel as if they cannot even tell anyone at   
   school about their situation.   
      
   They feel invisible. Or, as Gladys Thompson put it: “I cried for   
   days and nights. I was so hurt that people would leave me in the   
   streets.”   
      
   Now advocates and federal officials are seeking to draw   
   attention to the plight of America’s homeless students,   
   including to what educators can do help, from providing mentors   
   and emotional support to easing homeless children’s transition   
   when they have to change schools.   
      
   John Bridgeland co-authored the GradNation report after seeing a   
   documentary on homeless youth that opened his eyes to the   
   profound challenges they face.   
      
   “I realized, oh my God, we’ve been working on the high school   
   dropout epidemic for more than a decade, and minorities and low-   
   income students and students with disabilities and English   
   language learners — all these pops have been very high on our   
   radar screen,” Bridgeland said. “But homeless students were   
   nowhere.”   
      
   The report, which included surveys of homeless youth, found that   
   three-quarters have been homeless more than once in their lives,   
   42 percent have dropped out of school at some point, and half   
   had slept in a car, park, abandoned building, bus station or   
   other public place. More than half — 62 percent — said their   
   schools did a fair or poor job helping them stay in school, and   
   58 percent said their schools did not connect them with an   
   outside organization for help with housing or other issues.   
      
   [Coming of age in a city coming apart]   
      
   The new federal education law — the Every Student Succeeds Act —   
   may help bring a new focus to the plight of homeless youth. The   
   law requires that the performance and graduation rates of   
   homeless children be reported separately, which advocates hope   
   will spur schools, districts and states to come up with new ways   
   to support them and help them stay on track.   
      
   [Obama signs new K-12 education law]   
      
   Education Secretary John King Jr. met with several young people   
   — including Thompson — who experienced homelessness during their   
   K-12 careers, and who beat the odds and are now in college. He   
   wanted to hear what their schools had done well and not so well   
   in terms of helping them overcome the obstacles they faced. He   
   said the conversation will help shape guidance that the   
   department sends to schools this summer, outlining what they can   
   do to better serve children who are in unstable housing or are   
   homeless.   
      
   “One young woman said, ‘The fact that I was missing school, and   
   late to school, and not turning in assignments, was a way that I   
   was calling for help, and I wish that someone had intervened,'”   
   King said. It’s not just schools that have a responsibility to   
   ease the lives of homeless youth, he said, so do local housing   
   authorities and transportation departments. But schools can make   
   a difference.   
      
   The students who met with King were all winners of scholarships   
   from the National Association for the Education of Homeless   
   Children and Youth (NAEHCY), an advocacy group based in   
   Washington, D.C. Three of them spoke to The Washington Post   
   about their lives and the messages they think policymakers need   
   to hear.   
      
   Gladys Thompson is now 20 years old and studying to be a nurse   
   practitioner at the Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences. She   
   said that in her experience, teachers need more training in   
   helping students who are dealing with homelessness and extreme   
   poverty.   
      
   “You have these new teachers and they’re put in inner-city   
   schools and they don’t know how to deal with the demographics,”   
   Thompson said. They need to better understand how to approach   
   people who have been abused, people who are living in shelters,   
   people who are being tempted by — or are members of — gangs,she   
   said. “We need more training.”   
      
   Jamie Talley, 21, said that she first became homeless at age 2,   
   when her mother left an abusive partner. They moved in with her   
   grandparents, and then continued to move: By fifth grade, Talley   
   had attended seven different schools.   
      
   When she was 17, she said, a fight led her mother’s then-   
   boyfriend to tell her she had to leave.   
      
   “I was pushed out into the world and left to survive on my own,”   
   she wrote in her NAEHCY scholarship essay. She couch-surfed at   
   friends’ houses, then started renting a room and working full-   
   time to pay her bills.   
      
   “In the beginning, I had lost hope,” she wrote. “I thought that   
   I had no choice but to forget about school and try to find a job   
   that would enable me to care for myself. I had given up on the   
   possibilities for me to become somebody. Thankfully, there was a   
   special teacher in my life.”   
      
   That teacher became her support system, helping her get onto   
   Medicaid and telling her over and over that education was her   
   way out. Talley is now studying to be a teacher at Wayland   
   Baptist University in west Texas.   
      
   She said she wants the federal government to make it easier for   
   homeless students who are applying for financial aid to prove   
   that they are homeless and living independently from their   
   parents. Currently, she said, legal emancipation is an expensive   
   process that homeless kids can’t afford.   
      
   And she wants teachers in K-12 schools to ask questions, and to   
   be sensitive to the fact that their students might have good   
   reasons for their behavior. She said she had a college-   
   preparation class that required many forms to be signed by   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)