A reader shared a link to an important study of the damaging effects of student mobility. The more students changed schools, the more negative effects on them.
Too bad Margaret Spellings and Arne Duncan didn’t know about this research when they decided that the best way to help low-scoring students was to close their schools. Too bad Rahm Emanuel didn’t know about it when he closed 50 public schools in a single day.
School mobility has been shown to increase the risk of poor achievement, behavior problems, grade retention, and high school drop-out. Using data over 25 years from the Chicago Longitudinal Study, we investigated the unique risk of school moves on a variety of young adult outcomes including educational attainment, occupational prestige, depression symptoms, and criminal arrests. We also investigated how the timing of school mobility, whether earlier or later in the academic career, may differentially predict these outcomes over and above associated risks. Results indicate that students who experience more school changes between kindergarten and twelfth grade are less likely to complete high school on time, complete fewer years of school, attain lower levels of occupational prestige, are more likely to experience symptoms of depression, and are more likely to be arrested as adults. Furthermore, the number of school moves predicted above and beyond associated risks such as residential mobility and family poverty. When timing of school mobility was examined, results indicated more negative outcomes associated with moves later in the grade school career, particularly between fourth and eighth grade.
Doesn’t this seem like common sense? Your child is in a school where he or she makes friends and has a good relationship with teachers. You take the child out, and he or she has some trouble readjusting. Maybe the family moved, and it was necessary. But why would the government inflict it on children, call it “reform,” and celebrate the harm to the children?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I worked with poor students that often lived in unstable homes. When a dramatic change occurred at home, there was often fallout that spilled over into the classroom and a student’s work habits. Children facing food and housing insecurity have a harder time focusing on learning.
“School mobility has been implicated as a risk factor for a variety of negative developmental outcomes.” I have to wonder why the federal government continues to incentivize educational disruption through the federal charter schools program that the Biden administration had vowed to eliminate. Since research has shown that charter schools perform no better than public schools and many perform worse, why are our tax dollars being transferred into private schools that often do not even open or close shortly after opening? There is no evidence that shows this is a beneficial use of public dollars.
“But why would the government inflict it on children, call it “reform,” and celebrate the harm to the children?”
…Because too many leaders don’t value community. A school, even one struggling to produce solid academic results, serves as a stabile presence for community. When the school is ripped away it takes away that neighborhood’s corner stone. I once attended a conference where a young teacher presenter told his story of using his fifth grade class to advocate for the renovation of their school in Chicago, the energy created in this episode brought positive national attention and resulted in significantly improved reading scores at the end of the year. Chicago ended up closing that school anyway and folded it into a new building that housed a rival neighborhood gang. Violence ensued. Closing schools is a bigger travesty than testing. Using tests scores as an excuse for closing a schools means that those leaders responsible for the decision give up on kids.
Research: Humans need oxygen to survive. Too bad that ex-Marine guy didn’t know about this research before he choked Jordan Neely to death on the New York subway.
Stability is a basic human need. That is usually taught in Child Psychology 101. I have a nine year old autistic grandson who came to live with us when he was one year old after he lost his mother due to tragic circumstances. My wife and I are his grandparents and we help raise him along with his Dad. We all live together. He was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum at age 2. He did not learn to speak as typically developing children do.
He was provided with early interventions immediately at our local day care center and then went tp the Delaware County PA Intermediate Unit where he was provided instruction with “come and go” teachers until he went to kindergarten at public school in our Haverford School District. Because of our local autism epidemic our District started an autism support program at our neighborhood school, Manoa Elementary, where Little Johnny attended first grade with a wonderful teacher, “Mrs. K.” We love her. She and the school created a wonderful program for Johnny and his classmates with much needed inclusion in several classes and “Morning Meeting” every day. He was provided with “stability” for four years now. He has flourished because of that stability and that program. He now talks and his oral and receptive language ability has developed so well that we provided him with a reading specialist, and voila, he is learning to read now, too. I am a certified reading specialist, too, so I understand cognitive development.
The typical kids befriended Johnny and so have all the teachers and support staff right down to the janitor and cafeteria staff. His growth is so heartwarming. It is all because of stability and the love of his friend and teachers. The little guy has more girlfriends than I ever had and he is only in fourth grade!
Hey, remember everyone: “No Excuses! No Excuses!”
Reality as an “excuse.” That’s a good one.
I suspect that retention is more harmful. Has anyone studied the background of these mass shooters? How many were retained in school? How many had a poor self image due to negative remarks on papers and criticism on work they did in school?
A mass shooter’s home life or lack of same would be the true and original source of his (it’s usually a male) psychoses.
“Research shows that positive parenting helps children do better in school, have fewer behavioral problems, and stronger mental health. Neuroscientists discovered that positive parenting contributes to better functioning in the brain regions associated with emotions and cognition during the teen years.”
https://health.ucdavis.edu/children/patient-education/Positive-Parenting#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20positive%20parenting,problems%2C%20and%20stronger%20mental%20health.&text=Neuroscientists%20discovered%20that%20positive%20parenting,cognition%20during%20the%20teen%20years.
On that note, imagine the damage caused by evangelical fundamentalist MAGA RINO parents spouting ignorant, twisted biblical crap and damnation while not sparing the rod, all the time, spewing hate, death, and destruction on everyone and everything that does not think or live like they do.
What does living in that toxic bubble do to children growing up?
Too bad they didn’t know? Was purposeful ignorance or pursuit of a goal regardless of the impact on equity and democracy. Inexcusable!
If Duncan and Emanuel didn’t know about student mobility, it is because they and their staff were not paying attention to/were neglecting the research, not that the research wasn’t available/known. My work in Chicago builds on research they overlooked/neglected to consider implications for on-the-ground leadership in schools with high levels of student mobility, chronic absence and homelessness. It is important to call out such oversights because they continue.
The Chicago research community has produced excellent work on student mobility as it relates to school improvement and student learning going back 30 years. One of my favorites: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ670765. Chicago researchers Steve Raudenbush and Tony Bryk have published on the topic. Buried in the book “Organizing Schools for Improvement” is a focus on student mobility. In 2010, Steve Raudenbush led a 2010 National Academies workshop on student mobility and outcomes for young children.
Research on student outcomes related to employment, housing, and other forms of instability has developed substantially since this workshop.
Building on this and other bodies of research, my work is an attempt to answer the question: What does mean for on-the-ground work in schools, particularly the work of school leaders? See this UIC-published brief for a product of this question: Toward the Continuous Improvement of Chicago Public Schools’ High-Churn Elementary Schools: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359717200_Toward_the_Continuous_Improvement_of_Chicago_Public_Schools'_High-churn_Elementary_Schools_Policy_and_Practice_Brief_UIC_Center_for_Urban_Education_Leadership
The oversight/neglect of student mobility research demonstrated by Duncan and Emanuel continues under current leadership in Chicago. Student mobility is not mentioned as an indicator in the new CPS accountability policy, though it calls for the creation of an “Opportunity Index.” (Student mobility as a measure is quite useful. The higher it goes, the harder the work of school improvement. I consider it the lead indicator in my work, which also includes rates of chronic absence and homeless students.) Based on my experience with CPS staff in its accountability office, I believe the exclusion of student mobility from the policy is not an oversight (the director was well acquainted with my work). Rather it reflects the belief that student mobility is not within the control of schools. I address this kind of thinking in this overly long blog post — see the section “Lived Experiences” toward the end: https://lisajeanwalker.com/blog/seeing-patterns-in-accountability-data-for-chicagos-high-need-schools
Chronic absenteeism and homeless students are recognized in federal and state policy so they are included in the Opportunity Index. Student mobility is not recognized in policy.
Please see this executive summary for an attempt to synthesize vast bodies of literature to bring focus to student instability to improve school leadership: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361344214_Conceptualizing_High-Need_Schools_Executive_Summary_2021_FINALpdf
Thank you for drawing attention to student mobility. My point is, We know this and we have known this. We need to BEGIN to act on the knowledge. https://lisajeanwalker.com/work/high-churn-schools-data-and-evidence
I wholeheartedly thank you for being there to disseminate ideas and enable input such as this. Here in Chicago, I mostly feel alone in my inclinations, but I feel much less alone with you helping to forge connections around future-oriented ideas and initiatives for improving public schools.
I am sharing responses from my blog to a common perception that student mobility is outside schools’ control and does not require attention from district and other policy leaders. The initial reaction to hearing that student mobility requires attention is often “not the purview of schools.”
“Student mobility in elementary schools may be largely driven by residential mobility (housing issues), but it creates a myriad of internal challenges that schools and the district can and should respond to. It is possible to mitigate the effects of student mobility on a school community—including on its instructional core and school climate.”
“The alternative to saying, ‘outside of schools’ control’ is collaborating and coordinating with other agencies/services, with community leadership and organizations, and with parents/families. It is also advocacy.”
“Educational policy makers should care about student mobility if they care about student outcomes. They should care about student mobility if they care about the ‘lived experiences’ of the people for whom they develop policies. Equity—and tragedies that focus our attention on its importance like George Floyd’s murder—require us to connect to these experiences.”
One of my first students when I started teaching the fall of 1979 was a girl who told me she had been to 17 different schools before ours. This was a private alternative school for children who were experiencing exaggerated reactions to adolescence. She was sensitive and kind. Eventually she graduated. A few years later she took her own life.
If any of the governmental officials mentioned above need research to understand that children need stability, it is because they need to be struck in the head so they will awaken.
That’s very sad, Roy. Could anyone have helped her?
This is so timely given the NYC Panel for Educational Policy’s recent deeply shameful vote to force West Side High School, a “last chance” transfer school that serves some of our system’s most vulnerable youth, to move from its current site–purpose-built for it–to a lesser facility across town. Many students have said they simply will not go if/when this comes to pass. Meanwhile, West Side’s building will be given to a school that has received the largesse of Mackenzie Scott and the Tisch Family Foundation. The last thing the students of WSHS need is MORE instability in their lives.
Kk,
The decision to give the West Side High School building to the billionaire funded Young Women’s Leadership Academy was made by Mayor Eric Adams. He has to raise money for his second term.