Rising student homelessness not an 'excuse' but a brutal fact of life at CPS
Last night I was watching CBS News Chicago. I was surprised when I saw their report on the city's homeless children, putting the number at 11,447. It sounded low to me. I assume it's from the latest report by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. But that number includes only young people aged 14-21. ABC 7 reports that there are more that 20,000 homeless students in Chicago Public Schools.
To put that in perspective, that's about one in every 20 CPS students, the great majority being African-American or Latino.
CPS's Nancy B. Jefferson school and the Juvenile Detention Center, is packed with homeless kids, many of whom have committed no crime other than being homeless.
The number of homeless families in Chicago has tripled over the last dozen years, says CCH.
Corporate school reformers love to talk about their so-called, "no excuses" schools. But homelessness is not an excuse, but a fact.
There's only a small body of academic research and literature that focuses on the academic achievement of homeless children. But everything I've read points to the Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Rising student homelessness not an 'excuse' but a brutal fact of life at CPS: