Identification of doubled up, homeless students in district level McKinney-Vento act policy

This dissertation is a critical policy analysis for district level McKinney-Vento Act policy. The district is a large urban district, serving mostly low-income, minority students. Through critical policy analysis methodology, I facilitated qualitative interviews with seven participants to analyze current methods being implemented to identify the largest subpopulation of homeless students, doubled up students. Using a trauma informed framework to analyze the data, themes arose demonstrating lack of capacity in many district roles to meet compliance of the district policy and to meet homeless students’ needs. Lack of capacity influenced trust in staff-student relationships and hindered collaborative efforts between staff and students. The interviews also revealed limited evidence of homeless students’ and families’ voices included or prioritized in planning, implementation, or evaluation efforts of this district policy. Overall, there was no targeted outreach to identify doubled up students. Recommendations for improving the policy included prioritizing doubled up students and families voices and needs in planning, implementation, and evaluation efforts, clarifying the construct of doubled up living for district staff in professional development and in policy, increasing advocate positions in more schools, and adding targeted identification strategies for doubled up youth.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ed.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Thiele, Katherine

Contributors dc:contributor

• Pak, Yoon Kyung
• Hood, Denice
• Huang, Wen Hao David
• Kang, Hyun-Sook

• Doubled Up
• Homeless Students
• Mckinney-vento Act
• Critical Policy Analysis
• Homeless Student Identification

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Katherine Thiele

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117683

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F117683