Homeless Middle-School Students, Educational Barriers and the Mckinney-Vento Legislation: A Qualitative Study

Background and Purpose. Despite efforts by the government, private for-profit and philanthropic agencies in addressing barriers to education of homeless middle-school students in the United States, many problems relating to educational achievement remain. The purpose of this study was to explore experiences and perceptions of school social workers and homeless liaisons regarding the impact of educational barriers and the influence of the McKinney-Vento legislation (MVL) on educational achievement of homeless middle-school students.  

Methods.  A phenomenological design and a purposive sampling were used to conduct in-depth, face-to-face interviews in spring and summer 2014. Preliminary visits to potential participants and prolonged engagement with them were important in developing trust and increasing study’s credibility. Additionally, the investigator bracketed personal biases and assumptions to increase confirmability. Twenty-four participants (14 females, 7 males) from metropolitan public school districts in Georgia, who met the inclusion-exclusion criteria, participated in the study. Semi-structured, open-ended questions were used to explore participants’ lived experiences and emergent themes. Purpose of the study and rights to confidentiality, anonymity, and informed consent were explained and the participants were guaranteed of their protection. A written consent for participation was obtained. The University and the public school’s Institutional Review Boards approved the study. Data analysis used QSR NVivo 9.0. Analytic framework involved textural, structural, iterative, conceptual relations’ comparison and thematic summary methods to analyze interviews and field note data. Three experts in qualitative research crosschecked sources of data and procedures for accuracy and consistency by matching emerging patterns and eliminating redundancies.

Results.  The sample included 24 participants aged 30 to 57 with an average age of 38.9.  All participants had a master’s degree in social work and their working experiences ranged from six to 15 years with an average of 9.5 years of experiences.  The participants described access barriers to educational achievement of homeless students as enrollment restrictions and transportation difficulties and success barriers as lack of academic support, residential and school instability, absenteeism, physical and psychosocial health issues, and lack of connection to resources. They described their lived experiences with homeless students as disheartening, challenging, and rewarding.  The McKinney Vento legislation (MVL) had notably a positive impact on addressing barriers to educational achievement, but had challenging implementation.

Conclusion and Implications.  Overall, the findings indicated that access and success barriers to education of homeless children and youth remain and MVL has conspicuous positive impact on addressing such barriers. However, inadequate resources make the implementation of this policy challenging. Three implications of these findings are evident. First, investing more in K-12 education is critical in breaking the circle of poverty among homeless and low-income families. Second, preventing homelessness among children and youth requires concerted efforts of the government, private for-profit, and philanthropic agencies (foundations) altogether in terms of resources and workforce. Finally, social workers and other human service professionals are challenged to revisit approaches and strategies they use to address poverty and mental health issues among homeless families.