Homeless Children’s Schooling Is Lacking
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WASHINGTON — More than 65,000 homeless children fail to regularly attend school because they do not have transportation, clothes or the proper motivation, the Education Department reported Friday.
“Our fears are confirmed,” Education Secretary Lauro F. Cavazos said in sending the report to Congress. “Each school day thousands of young people are losing their best opportunity for a better life--education.”
Cavazos said the statistics should be “viewed with caution” because of difficulties by state educational agencies in gathering the data.
The report estimated that there were 220,000 school-age homeless children in America last year and that about 65,000 of them were not attending school regularly. Reasons given included a preoccupation by parents with finding housing, food and employment, lack of money for clothes and school supplies and lack of motivation.
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