Record number of homeless children enrolled in public schools, new data show:

Record number of homeless children enrolled in public schools, new data show

• BY VALERIE STRAUSS

• October 24 at 11:21 am

U.S. public schools are now enrolling a record number of homeless children and youth — over 1.1 million — with the largest populations in California, New York, Texas and Florida, new data from by the U.S. Department of Education show.

The news comes on the heels of a new study showing that a majority of students in public schools throughout the American South and West are poor for the  first time in at least four decades.

The new homeless statistics, for the 2011-12 school year, are 10 percent higher than the year before and 72 percent higher than before the recession. Still, the reported figure — 1,168,354 homeless students — is known to actually underestimate the number of homeless children across the United States.

Ten states showed increases over the previous year of 20 percent or more; the states that showed the largest jumps in the numbers of homeless students were:

North Dakota, 212 percent
Maine, 58 percent
North Carolina, 53 percent
Michigan, 42 percent
Wyoming, 40 percent
South Dakota, 35 percent
Vermont, 31 percent

Because of population size, it is no surprise that the most homeless students are in