Homeless Education Data

Homeless Education Data

Homeless information is  collected through a number of student data collections.  Student End of Year Collection is the source for federal data collections.  These annual counts are the data reflected on this webpage. The total unduplicated number of students experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year was 22,896. 

Of the 22,896 students PK-12th grade identified as experiencing homelessness in the 2023-24 school year, 2,192 or 9.6% were identified as unaccompanied homeless youth. These are students who meet the definition of homeless under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act and are living on their own, without a parent or legal guardian.   

The Colorado Department of Education collects educational data as mandated by the U.S. Department of Education. "Homeless"  is one of the Instructional Program Service Type (IPST) categories. This data can be found in several linked spreadsheets on the Education Statistics Webpage.

A data visual based on unduplicated student data, summarizes and spotlights trends in homeless education data from the 2018-19 school year to the 2023-24 school year. 

What's the difference between district level and state level counts?

• District level data  is the count of students who experience homelessness over the school year. When adding the districts together this will result in a different number than the state level unduplicated count due to student mobility (i.e., some students will be reported in more than one district)
• The state level unduplicated data only counts students one time regardless of the number of districts that served that one student.  

Please see the example using 2023-24 data below:

• The duplicated count for 2023-24 school year is 25,210
• The unduplicated count for 2023-24 school year is 22,896
• This means 2,314 students experiencing homelessness were identified and served by more than one district in the 2023-24 school year. 

Homeless Student Count Data

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Special Considerations and Notes

Data  by County
In the past we have included county level data and we have removed that as education data is reported by the school district. 

Suppression Data
suppression applies to protect student privacy. The cells with asterisks indicate a suppressed count changing the total reflected when a column is summed. More information on data suppression requirements for Student End of Year Collection can be found here.
 

EDFacts
The EDFacts Initiative includes a warehouse of data submitted by state educational agencies (SEAs) to ED regarding the education of students experiencing homelessness, as well as other federal education programs. While the data are aggregated and do not include personally identifiable information, it allows ED to determine the effectiveness of the EHCY program and its collaborations with federal programs such as Title I (https://nche.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Data-Collection-Guide-SY-18.19.pdf).

State Unduplicated Data
An unduplicated count is one that counts students only once, even if they were admitted to a facility or program multiple times within the reporting year. Removing multiple counts of individual students is essential to program management and development as including the same student multiple times distorts the picture of homeless students and their needs (https://nche.ed.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Data-Collection-Guide-SY-18.19.pdf). 

District Duplicated Data
Students who attend more than one LEA over the course of the school year are counted in district level duplicated data for each LEA they attend.  When LEAs submit their data each student identified as McKinney-Vento eligible should be counted in every LEA in which the student was enrolled, but only one time per LEA. This count must be cumulative of the entire school year(July 1 - June 30). Counts that only reflect the status of students at the end of the year are considered erroneous.

Student October Count Collection

The Student October Count Collection provides pupil membership data for PK through 12th grade students, or pupils in membership as of the October 1 count day. The pupil membership data is released January of every year following the count in October.  At the district level, pupils are counted by Instructional Programs including “Homeless”.  The Student October Count Collection includes the number of students who have been identified as McKinney-Vento eligible by that count date.  It is not cumulative of the entire school year.  

Student End of Year Collection
The purpose of the Student End of Year (SEY) snapshot is to collect enrollment and outcome information for students during a school year. This includes demographic information and student’s entry and exit from public schools within a district. The data from this collection is used to derive the graduation, dropout, mobility, and stability rates. The SEY collection includes all students in grades PK-12 who were counted in membership in a Local Education Agency (LEA) at any point during the school year. This collection takes place in three phases from May through December with the primary data phase occurring between May and September (https://www.cde.state.co.us/datapipeline/snap_eoy).