Homeworks starts with home

The Homework Starts with Home project aims to foster just and equitable communities by  stablishing a transforma– tional research partnership focused on ending student homelessness in Minnesota. Homelessness among children and youth is a complex but tractable challenge requiring integrated system approaches. Student homelessness is linked to poor outcomes across many domains, including achievement and health and well-being, as well as future work success. It is a marker of poverty, marginalization, trauma, and many other adverse childhood experiences that threaten positive development of the citizens and work–force in Minnesota and other states. The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education reported 1.2 million homeless students, with rising rates. Minnesota has reported an average annual increase of 15 percent in student homelessness across the state for the past decade. In 2016, over 9,500 students enrolled in 1,200 schools statewide met federal criteria of homelessness. The team aims to build a model partnership focused on the grand challenge of student homelessness, engaging University, state, county, and community partners in a seminal effort to integrate, build, and disseminate high-quality evidence on solutions to this national problem. The team will design and implement a signature program of collaborative research to evaluate the State of Minnesota’s existing initiative, “Homework Starts with Home,” and to disseminate the best data available in Minnesota on this issue. The existing initiative is led by the state and the Heading Home MinnesotaFunders Collaborative. A team of Universityscholars frommultiple disciplineswill partner withstate, county, andcommunityorganizations engaged in the Homework Starts withHomeinitiativetoevaluateprogress todateandimplement ahigh-quality researchstudyontailoring solutionstotheneeds offamiliesin thisprogram to achieve better outcomes. The project will integrate strategies, expertise, and data in order to establish sustainable systems and partners to support future data-driven decision making in Minnesota on student homelessness. The Homework Starts with Home Research Partnership will elevate the capacity and prominence of the University, the state, and Minnesota’s philanthropic organizations as leaders in solutions to the challenge of student homelessness that threatens human capital here and across the nation.