MCKINNEY VENTO ACT

McKinney Vento Act

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Discussion and Analysis1

Conclusion5

McKinney Vento Act

Introduction

The effective education of homeless children is a major concern across the United States. Mark ward and Biros (2001) reported that in 1987, Congress recognized the homeless educational problem and the need for improvement. This recognition gave rise to the passage that year of the Stewart B. McKinney Act, the precursor to the McKinney-Vento Program, referenced as the program, the sub grant component of the program, or the MCKV in the rest of the study. As early as 1997, Stronge reported the need for a comprehensive evaluation to determine empirically which programs for the homeless improved the educational experience of homeless students. However, there has been no evidence that Stronge's suggestion was implemented (Anderson, 2003).

Similarly, Anderson, Janger, and Panton (1995) noted that even though grants were being made to local districts supporting a range of services to homeless students, the educational impact of this program was not known. Its impact remains unknown. Markward and Biros commented, “No attempts were made to establish empirically how well these activities work. Without this information neither policy makers nor practitioners can accurately predict which intervention strategies work best”.

Discussion and Analysis

The U.S. Department of Education (USDOE, 1997) reported that the number of homeless children and youth doubled between 1991 and 1993. Jackson (2007) observed that 34% of homeless persons are in families with children and that 84% of the adults in homeless families are women. Nuñez and Collignon (1997) reported that the school-age children subgroup of the homeless population constitutes the fastest growing segment of that population. Duffield (2001) reported that an estimated 1.35 million children in the United States are homeless. Jozefowicz-Simbeni and Israel (2006) asserted that 900,000 children and youth experience some period of homelessness in a given year. This trend toward more school-age children in the homeless population began to be recognized in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This awareness helped to convince Congress that the education of homeless children had become a serious national problem (Doak, 2006).

During the 1970s and 1980s, homelessness began to be increasingly recognized by social scientists (Hopper, 2003; Jencks, 1994) and by Congress (Doak, 2006) as an important and growing social problem. This concern resulted in the passage of PL 100-77 in 1987. This concern for the welfare of homeless students continued through the 1990s and resulted in an expansion in 2001 of the 1987 Act. In 2001, the Stewart B. McKinney Act PL 100-77 was renamed the McKinney-Vento Act. Prior to the Johnson Administration, the issue of homelessness received little attention from the federal government. With the advent of “the Great Society” programs, homelessness began to be studied by more social scientists, who identified a broad range of topics that were influenced by homelessness (Bassuk & Rubin, 1987; Berck, 1992; Doak, 2006). As scholarly studies of homelessness increased, the nature and characterization of the demographics of homelessness became more clearly defined. In addition, the causes and consequences of homelessness increasingly became the focus of ...