The Eviction Lab at Princeton has issued a new report, Losing your Home, Losing Your School: How Evictions Affect Kids' Educational Trajectories. Drawing on a project tracking 13,197 kids in the Houston School District (yes, 13,197 kids in one district over 14 years) whose parents were filed against for eviction at least once, they found that:
kids whose parents face eviction cases are more likely than students not facing eviction to leave the district. The students who remained in the district and experienced eviction filings were more likely to have switched schools, often relocating to campuses with fewer resources, more student turnover, and lower test scores. Students whose parents faced eviction experienced an increase in absences and, among those who switched schools, more suspensions.
While other western countries have social safety nets for children, the U.S. has a long history of deferring hope for economic security with the promise of eventual rewards for success in school. Children may have only precarious access to housing, but as long as they stay in school and do all their homework, they'll eventually land in in a more secure place, we're told.
The challenge, of course, is that structural inequalities make it very hard for too many children to find their footing in school. Frequent moves mean having to make new friends over and over. These children will have limited access to accommodations that require lengthy eligibility assessments, and will be strangers to school staff in schools where student turn-over is too common. As the Eviction Lab found, children moving schools because of eviction typically move to schools with fewer resources because the U.S. is also unable to solve the problem of persistent educational inequalities.
Other countries cushion more children from economic turmoil. Children in the United States are promised only the opportunity to work their way out of that turmoil with "resilience" and good grades, even when the odds are so solidly against them.
The Eviction Lab's research is published (0nline first) in Sociology of Education. The AP's news article about the project highlights specific families.
It would be a good thing for many more people on college campuses to read more about such public policies that work against children succeeding in school.
