As homelessness increased among families and children during the 1980s and 1990s, policymakers created, and strengthened, the McKinney-Vento Education for Homeless Children and Youth (EHCY) program. The McKinney-Vento EHCY program aims to mitigate the effects of residential instability through the identification of homeless children in schools and the provision of services, including expedited enrollment, transportation to school, tutoring, and mental and physical health referrals. The program has been in place for more than two decades, yet policymakers know little about how schools identify homeless children, the specific services that individual children receive, and how these relate to academic outcomes. In August 2009, with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Urban Institute completed a study that looked at the McKinney-Vento EHCY program in the Washington metropolitan region. As part of this reconnaissance, the authors reviewed the literature on how residential instability affects academic outcomes among children; collected descriptive data on the extent of homelessness in the region's schools; and convened a group of homeless liaisons, state coordinators, and advocates to discuss local implementation of the program and types of data collected by program staff. This brief summarizes the literature and data collected during this reconnaissance and provides questions for future research on residential instability and the McKinney-Vento EHCY program. (Contains 1 figure and 3 notes.)