Study Shows Increase In Homeless Students

University of the Pacific Associate Professor of Education Ronald Hallett led the study on homeless students.

He says since the beginning of the recession in 2008, homeless students have grown to two and a half million students nationwide, that means one in 30 students is homeless.

"We see down to the fundamentals of reading and math that these students perform very poorly so the dropout rates tend to be very high, we have dropout rates around 50 percent."

Hallett says homeless students should be tracked with as much care as schools track English learners or special education students.

He says schools have become better at counting homeless students and aid for them has tripled over the past several years, but he says most of the money has gone to backpacks and school supplies when it should have been spent on counseling.