The Core Knowledge Blog

A New York University study followed students entering the New York City public school system in the 1995-1996 school year and finds that about 40% of them had exited the system by 8th grade.

Student mobility is an underutilized, dead-bang argument for national content standards and curriculum. One out of four kids change schools three or more times over the course of their public school career. A GAO study showed one out of six children had attended three or more schools by the end of the 3rd grade. This high level of mobility has long been associated with lower student achievement and a higher likelihood of dropping out of school. While moving is disruptive for children in any scenario, continuity in curriculum would provide one less moving part, as it were.

Not surprisingly, it’s low-income and minority children whose education is disrupted by mobility the most. This is not news and the new NYU study reinforces it. The authors of the study are most concerned with continuous progression, grade-by-grade, associating “standard academic progress with higher performance on standardized tests.” (Huh? Do they mean to suggest that being held back caused lower performance? Isn’t low performance why they were held back?) Ignoring mobility is tantamount to writing off the academic outcomes of millions of kids.

Update:  ASCD’s Educational Leadership has a story about student mobility online today (Thanks, Alexander Russo).  It’s all about the emotional toll on teachers  “I also thought of myself and the frustrations and heartbreak I had faced each year as students I cared about vanished,” writes Laura Hoeing, a 1st grade teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina.  ”At what point would their frequent mobility discourage me from investing in relationships with my students and trying hard to teach them?”