STEAM Education for Unhoused Children

K-12 STEAM education

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Education is the gateway to opportunity – but it does not serve all students equally. The persistent achievement gap between low-income and minority students and middle-income white students has now widened to as much as 21 percentage points. Children experiencing homelessness have been particularly hard hit.
These children have always been among the most invisible and neglected in our nation, their high mobility tied to trauma, behavioral issues, and overwhelming academic troubles – and COVID-19 worsened things. School closures and moving instruction online exposed the huge digital divide between rich and poor and erased two decades of progress in math and reading. Poverty is the best predictor of learning loss: 44% of all California students but 79% of low-income students failed to meet state math standards in 2022. Our students already needed intensive help to catch up to where they should have been in the first place, and now they have been pushed further behind.

With one-on-one time proven most effective at improving academic and personal development, the heart of our work mobilizes volunteers to provide focused educational support: weekly sessions, in-person or online, offer reinforcement, positive modeling, and constructive feedback for physical, intellectual, psychological, and social growth. We have scaffolded Social Emotional Learning as an add-on to this core Tutoring Program, and deepen the impact of the sessions with programs that address the greatest needs of different populations: younger students are steered to our Literacy Program, middle students focus on English and Math, and older students add goal setting, time management, self-advocacy and more. Now we will add AI resources.
We also have programs to address ancillary barriers: we supply Chromebooks and internet access so that students can meet with their tutors (or even attend school) Our Digital Learning Initiative seeks to bridge the digital divide by empowering our students to harness the power of technology and develop crucial 21st-century skills. We facilitate prompt re-enrollments in new schools and provide required uniforms, backpacks filled with school supplies, even scholarships for school-related expenses. And in the high-need Skid Row area, we run a Learning Center to welcome students living in nearby shelters and motels, offering a safe place to access computers, homework help, and additional enrichment programs after school – and art on Saturdays.

Students experiencing homelessness experience particular obstacles to learning (shelter restrictions, high mobility…) that devastate their academic opportunities and make them, on average, four grade levels below their housed peers, three times more likely to be placed in special education, nine times more likely to drop out altogether, and statistically likely to repeat the homeless lifestyle with their own children. Supporting their educational needs can mitigate these statistics, helping break the terrible cycle of poverty.
We are the only organization in the greater Los Angeles area exclusively dedicated to serving the educational needs of students experiencing homelessness. Many organizations serve this population, but these provide “basic” services (shelter, food, clothing…) and refer to us for educational services. Other organizations focus on education, but these serve all children who are struggling and do not address the particular needs of homeless children.

We administer assessments at enrollment and then regularly over 10-week periods thereafter (our students’ high mobility requires rapid impact). Last year, students in grades 5-12 recorded an average Grade Level Growth of 47% in Math and 35% in Language Arts in 2-4 months. Younger students improved in all 5 key literacy concepts over their first 2-5 months. “Beginning Readers” improved in targeted literacy concepts by an average 22% (in phonemic awareness and phonics by 20%, in vocabulary by 19%, and in comprehension by 28%). “Rising Readers” averaged a 12% improvement (in vocabulary by 3% and raised fluency by 14 words/minute and Lexile scores by 98.2). Our impact increases the longer students are with us: students in the Literacy Program for a year increased comprehension scores by 428 Lexile points, a growth typically expected over a 4-year period. Those who were with the program for closer to two years showed an even more dramatic increase: an average of 794 Lexile points.