Educating transient youth: Influence of residential instability on educational resilience

Homeless youth face many barriers that limit their ability to complete a high school diploma and transition to postsecondary education. The federal government passed the McKinney-Vento Act over 20 years ago to address issues of access to public education for homeless youth. The most recent reauthorization of the law expanded the definition of homelessness to include youth living doubled-up--a residential situation that occurs when more than one family is forced to live together as a result of economic hardship. Although these youth represent over half of the students covered by the federal law, few studies have been conducted to understand their experiences. Framed by Resiliency Theory, this dissertation study investigated how living doubled-up influenced the youth's educational participation. The seven month case study of four adolescents living in Los Angeles used data gathered from interviews, observations and document analysis to identify risk and protective characteristics of the youth's experiences. This dissertation demonstrated how complex the residential situations were as well as identifying aspects of living doubled-up that encouraged educational success. Main findings from the study suggest that: (1) families have multiple ways of arranging doubled-up residences (2) how the families structure the doubled-up residences influences educational resilience and, (3) the social network outside the home shapes how youth living doubled-up understand the educational process.