Student mobility: How some children get left behind*

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2003 by Hartman, Chester, Franke, Todd Michael

What follows is a series of seven articles, each dealing with the issues, problems, and needs of specific subpopulations for whom school instability is particularly rife and troublesome: the homeless, for whom the housing link is most blatant (Patricia Julianelle and Maria Foscarinis); migrant farmworker families, whose job transiency is definitional (Angela Branz-Spall and Roger Rosenthal, with Al Wright); immigrant children (William Hanna); special education students (David Osher, Gale Morrison, and Wanda Bailey); foster children (Dylan Conger and Marni Finkelstein); children of families impacted by welfare reform (Laura Nichols and Barbara Gault); and ways in which the new No Child Left Behind Act may increase and encourage classroom turnover or leave highly transient students out of the desired reform measures (Paul Weckstein).

One subpopulation we were not able to treat is Native American students. Over a half million Native American [Kappa]-12 students (and the population is increasing at a rapid rate, faster than either Whites or African Americans) are enrolled in federal, tribal, public, boarding, and parochial schools, although some 85% attend public schools. According to Rick St. Germaine of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, "Native American students transfer freely among the array of schools located within the overlapping districts on Indian reservations as the continuing search for improved learning opportunities increases with the proportionate failure of the schools to resolve their learning needs" (personal communication, February 7, 2003). Native American households are highly mobile, and St. Germaine further explains that student mobility among this population is:

. . . compounded by the growing numbers of poverty-stricken families moving from Indian reservation communities to the cities in search of economic opportunities. Inner-city residencies don't result in significant improvement for family self-sufficiency, and children are often caught up in a confusing twist of change, hopping back and forth from rural to urban and back again to rural settings as economic demands set the course of family instability. . . . It is clear that the growing transfer of students during and between school year programs compounds the rising failure rates of students and creates an obstacle for the school to diagnose student needs and plan consistent strategies to ameliorate deficiencies. (See also Demmert, 2001.)

Like many other issues affecting Native Americans, the school mobility problem is in need of serious attention.

In the final section, five case studies are presented on how the problem has been handled in ways that reduce turnover and/or reduce its potential negative impact: from two Texas school districts (Barbara Wand James and Patrick Lopez); from the Minneapolis public schools (Elizabeth Hinz, Lucy Kapp, and Sarah Snapp); from a Los Angeles elementary school (Todd Michael Franke, Jo Ann Isken, and Michelle Parra); from Chicago (David Kerbow, Carlos Azcoitia, and Barbara Buell); and from the Department of Defense, whose military assignment rotation system builds in persistent family relocation as part of the job description (Claire Smrekar and Debra Owens).