Student Mobility's Effect on Academic Achievement

For children caught in the shuffle, frequent moves into different schools and/or homes can negatively impact academic performance. With poverty and mobility both contributing to the achievement gap—and with poverty being highly correlated with mobility—understanding how these issues jeopardize achievement is critical.

Student mobility has a negative impact on educational achievement for students and schools, creating an achievement gap between mobile and nonmobile students. Frequent relocation interrupts regular attendance, continuity of lesson content, and the development of relationships with teachers and peers. In addition, high student mobility has a slowing effect on basic skills acquisition, creating a long-term risk of school failure and dropout. Another risk, because academic records are not always available, is inappropriate placement in a new school—placement in programs for the gifted and talented or in remedial classes when neither is appropriate (Biernat & Jax, 2000).

Research clearly indicates the negative effects of student mobility. Forty-one percent of highly mobile students are low achievers, compared with twenty-six percent of stable students. The more frequently a child changes his/her school, the greater the threat to academic achievement. Furthermore, according to the U.S. Government Accounting Office (1994), children who change schools more than three times before eighth grade are at least four times more likely to drop out of school. Another study found that successive school changes result in a cumulative academic lag—students who move more than three times in a six-year period can fall one full academic year behind stable students (Kerbow, 1996).

Children who are either homeless or from migrant families, by virtue of their situation, are most likely to be highly mobile. Whether moving within or between districts, homeless children generally have difficulty attending school regularly and can easily fall behind their peers because of transportation issues, untreated or unattended health issues, barriers to enrollment, or actual relocations (National Center for Homeless Education, 2001).

Data indicate that more than 750,000 migrant children and youth live in the United States. In the 1997-1998 school year and summer term, the Migrant Education Program served more than 600,000 migrant children (DiCerbo, 2001). The graduation rate of migrant children (50 percent) is even lower than the graduation rate of otherwise highly mobile students (60 percent) (National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education, 1994).

Complementary to academic success is social development and the formulation of relationships with peers and teachers. Moving often damages, or completely severs, important social ties that are useful for cognitive or social development (Pribesh & Downey, 1999).

Similarly, children who are frequent movers are 35 percent more likely to repeat a grade, not allowing them to progress at an age-appropriate level and subsequently jeopardizing established peer relationships.

Student Mobility Has Negative Effects for Transient Students, Schools, Teachers, and Classmates Mobility is associated with lower student achievement (Fowler-Finn, 2001). An achievement gap exists between schools with a high mobility rate and those that are more stable (Kerbow, 1996). Classroom instruction in schools with higher mobility rates is more likely to be review oriented and have slower instructional pacing from month to month and grade to grade (Kerbow, 1996). High school students who change schools are at least twice as likely not to graduate—research indicates that only 60 percent will graduate (Rumberger, Larson, Ream, & Palardy, 1999). In all income categories, highly mobile students are more likely to be retained a grade than children who do not change schools (Fowler-Finn, 2001).

Transient students are affected most by high student mobility, but the subsequent implications for schools, districts, teachers, and fellow classmates are clear. "During the past two decades the dynamics of economic change, unemployment, eroding tax bases, rising poverty and significant out-migration have disrupted rural and small town America, changing family and societal patterns and forcing educators to rethink approaches" (Stalker, 2001). These dynamics that undoubtedly increase the likelihood of mobility are already topics of conversation among rural administrators and teachers. Understanding how transient students affect the local school and taking steps to minimize mobility and/or its negative implications are issues that must be explored as well.

High mobility can have dramatic effects on school budgets and funding, especially in rural school districts that are typically smaller and grappling for resources. Every time students leave a school, they take funding with them. In addition, high student mobility makes staffing and calendar decisions for the school year extremely difficult (Florida Division of Teaching and Learning, 2002).

"A revolving door of new students forces teachers to devote attention to remedial work rather than new lessons" (Stover, 2000). And because many students arrive without academic records, school officials have difficulty determining proper placement. In fact, schools that experience high mobility—many as much as 70 percent—spend a great deal of time on activities that impede instruction (Fowler-Finn, 2001).

A third issue to consider is that a large number of transient students can pull down the academic performance scores of the entire school. Obviously, if a great number of students are experiencing academic failure, whether from student mobility or other issues, the impact on the school's academic performance as a whole is jeopardized.

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