Vans. Two types of vans wereemployed by districts. The first type was operated by the district as part of its school bus or school district fleet. Student reaction to them was similar to the small school bus. Transportation coordinators liked them because they can more easily go to remote, harder to access locations and can be operated by part-time school district personnel. The second type was provided through Medicaid transportation brokerages under contract to PSESD. From the vantage point of some transportation coordinators, the Medicaid passenger vans, cars, and taxis were less reliable than school buses in that they arrived at school within a 20-minute window, whereas school buses arrived within a 5-minute window. As with taxis, there was some friction about student public buses were the safest mode of travel and private vehicles driven by teenagers the least safe. The study is available at ▇▇▇▇://▇▇▇.▇▇▇.▇▇.▇▇/transportation/publications.aspx 24 During the study design we hypothesized that students might think it was “cool” or a status symbol to pull up in front of school in a taxi. We were wrong. Homeless liaisons noted that taxis prompted questions and brought potentially unwanted attention to the student, and thus were thought of as less desirable. arrival and departure times competing with their traditional customers going to physician and hospital appointments. The intent of ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇-▇▇▇▇▇ is to ensure that one very important part of a student’s life, school, can remain a point of stability. The act infers that remaining in the school of origin will result in better academic performance. In our interviews, homeless liaisons believed that grades and WASL scores improved by staying in the school of origin and were consistently supportive of helping homeless students to stay there. Research on the subject of school mobility related to academic achievement is less conclusive. Much depends on why students and their families move from one school to another (moving to a school district with a better academic reputation is very different than being forced to move to a homeless shelter because of job loss or drug problems). However, studies do show that repeated mobility leads to decreased achievement25 and that the disruptive impact of school mobility is greatest in the early elementary school years26. Did a relationship between staying in school of origin and academic performance exist among students in the pilot projects? We examined two measures of academic performance, grade point average (GPA) and scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), compared the performance of homeless students staying in their SOO with those who moved, and compared homeless student scores with those of the general school population. In both cases homeless students scored below the general student population. But the WASL scores of SOO students were consistently better than those of homeless students who changed schools, as shown in Figure 4. GPA scores of SOO students were similar to those of homeless students who changed schools, although
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