The Department of Education announced that it will be enacting one of the provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act earlier than others; by October 2016, schools across the country must enforce revised policies to better support students who are homeless.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, signed last December, is the new education legislation that has replaced the long-expired No Child Left Behind. Though passing ESSA was half the challenge through a rare bipartisan effort, the next half will be implementing the sweeping legislation across states.

The legislation’s amendment of the McKinney-Vento Act, or the "federal education law that provides protections and services for homeless children and youth,” is just one of the changes that the ESSA made to better education for all of America’s students, said the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) in a statement.

The changes require that the country’s schools ensure school staff is trained to identify homeless students to therefore offer the proper support services to help them succeed.

Services must increase school stability for homeless children, offer college counseling and information about obtaining financial aid, and ensure that young homeless children have access to early education programs.

On the funding end, the changes require that funding be authorized to "support school district efforts to identify and serve children and youth experiencing homelessness.”

The NAEHCY estimates using public school data that there are 1.3 million children in America, a number that has been increasing from year to year.

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Article by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

4/6/2016