Recent efforts by the Detroit school district are helping officials identify more homeless students who would otherwise miss out on crucial support services guaranteed under federal law, a new research study found.

Roughly 5% of the district’s students were identified as homeless last school year, compared with around 1% nearly a decade ago.

But the researchers, from Wayne State University’s Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research, found that schools in Detroit continue to significantly undercount the number of students experiencing homelessness, as well as other forms of housing instability. Their conclusions are based on data from the Detroit Public Schools Community District and charter schools in the city, as well as interviews with families experiencing housing instability.

The researchers estimated that as many as 16% of the roughly 100,000 K-12 students in Detroit experienced homelessness or housing instability during the 2021-22 school year, with roughly three-fourths of those students not being identified as homeless by their school during that time frame.

That gap is critical, because it points to potential underutilization of support services available to those students. Under the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, homeless students are entitled to several services and protections, including transportation to and from school, academic support, the right to remain in the school they attended at the time they lost their permanent housing, and the right to enroll in a school even if they lack proper documents.

Homeless students are more likely to be chronically absent, drop out of school, and be suspended or expelled from school. So ensuring students can get access to McKinney-Vento services can have long-term effects on their academic wellbeing, experts say.

Read the full article about student homelessness by Ethan Bakuli at Chalkbeat Detroit.