Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education
Almost half of students experiencing homelessness in DC miss at least 1 out of every 10 days of school. Transportation is often a barrier.1 Every Ride Counts, a pilot program, offered metro and bus passes to families with school-aged children entering DC’s short-term family housing sites. We evaluated whether offering families additional gas and ride-share gift cards, as well as the metro and bus passes, improved students’ school attendance. We found that the gas and ride-share gift cards did not improve attendance more than metro and bus passes alone.
A case manager discussing the Every Ride Counts program with their client. (Credit: DC Department of Human Services)
Why is this issue important in DC?
Most children in DC attend a school outside their neighborhood. Students can get to school by riding public transit for free using the District’s Kids Ride Free program. But switching school routes suddenly because a family facing homelessness is forced to relocate can be challenging and lead to an increase in absenteeism.
What did we do?
In March 2019, DC started a pilot program, Every Ride Counts, to tackle this issue. The program offered resources to help families get kids to school while staying in a short-term family housing site. DC ended the program early when schools closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
Case managers offered all families with school-aged children two weeks of metro and bus passes during the program. Half of the families were randomly assigned to also receive their choice of gas or ride-share gift cards. We measured the impact of these gift cards on school attendance during the families’ first two weeks at the short-term family housing site.
What have we learned?
The gas and ride-share gift cards led to limited improvements in student attendance, compared to just metro and bus passes. We estimate that families with gas and ride-share gift cards may have attended 0.1 to 0.4 more days of school over two weeks, but this effect is so small that it may be the result of chance. These results suggest that DC may need to address other barriers to school attendance before this type of investment—which is substantial at $100 to $625 per family over two weeks—could show results.
The program was not designed to look at the effects of just providing metro and bus passes to families experiencing homelessness. It is possible that metro and bus passes increased attendance, but if they did, it is unlikely to have made a large difference. The program was also not designed to study the effect of the gas and ride-share gift cards on other parts of families’ lives beyond school attendance. There may have been other benefits of Every Ride Counts that we couldn’t measure.
What comes next?
When in-person learning resumed in the 2020-21 school year, Every Ride Counts was not continued. Any remaining resources were used to support families in Short-term Family housing sites for general use. DME is relying on local education agencies to provide transportation resources to families experiencing homelessness.
What happened behind the scenes?
Not every family’s trip to school is the same. Some trips take 10 minutes, others take more than an hour. Some families have four children, others have just one. To distribute resources equitably, The Lab created a web app to estimate the cost for families to get to school for two weeks. This app calculated the value of their gas and ride-share gift cards in real-time as they enrolled in the program. This means that if a family’s trip to school takes an hour, they receive more than a family whose trip takes 10 minutes.
This map shows where the children in one neighborhood in Northeast DC have to travel to get to their school. (Credit: Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education)