Estimating the effects of student houselessness on learning outcomes and exploring for variation

Houselessness affects over a million US students annually. Previous scholarship has detailed the experiences of unhoused students, as well as some steps schools can take to better support them. Still, little is known about the impacts of houselessness on learning outcomes, or the ways in which locale, different temporary housing accommodations, and race/ethnicity may complicate this relationship. Using data from the U.S. Department of Education (ED), the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), and the Research Alliance for New York City Schools (RANYCS), this dissertation quantitatively explores the relationship between student houselessness and learning outcomes, and explores potential sources of variation in the magnitude of this relationship. Analyses include descriptive statistics and multi-variate linear regression models. This dissertation consists of two studies: the first is a national study, with analyses conducted at the district level, and the second is student level study in New York City (NYC). Results from Study #1 demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between rates of student houselessness and average standardized test performance at the district level. Furthermore, they demonstrate significant variation in the magnitude of this relationship across different levels of district urbanicity. Results from Study #2 in NYC confirm that houselessness is significantly associated with student’s learning outcomes at the individual level. They also demonstrate significant variation in the magnitude of this relationship across students’ temporary housing accommodations and racial/ethnic groups. Lastly, I find that student houselessness in NYC is also associated with the number of Office Disciplinary Referrals that a student receives and a student's likelihood of being chronically absent.