Student mobility: How some children get left behind*

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

It is a fascinating compendium of treatments of this issue, penned by a diverse set of writers-academic researchers, staff of public interest groups, education reformers, school system officials, and consultants.

As several of the articles emphasize, not all school transiency is detrimental. Many such moves-to a better school or residential environment, to a safer classroom-are beneficial to the student. But these are not the typical situations, and such beneficial moves are far less frequent among low-income and minority families, and among the identified subpopulations treated in the seven articles listed above.

What is clear is that the problem takes different forms for the various subpopulations. For military personnel and farmworkers, residential mobility goes with the job, and so the solution is how best to accommodate children's education life to that reality. For children in foster care, the primary goal of social workers is to establish the most stable, supportive placement, a goal that takes precedence over schooling considerations (but into which such considerations ought to be a significant factor). For immigrant children, the realities of arrival time in the United States-adjustment to various locational possibilities in this country, periodic important return trips, possible failure of the immigration experience leading to a return to the country of origin-all dwarf the consideration of school stability. For homeless children, the overriding goal is to wind up in a normal housing situation, which overwhelms considerations of educational stability (although here too such stability needs to be factored more prominently into housing choices and placements).

Similarly, there are few problem areas where a "one size fits all" solution is less appropriate. The various types of and reasons for school mobility, rooted in the broader conditions that characterize the lives of the different subpopulations, must shape the reforms and changes needed, both to reduce transiency and to mitigate its negative effects where it cannot be avoided.

For government programs, one clear mandate, following the medical profession, is "do no harm." Thus, as Sheila Crowley points out, HUD's HOPE VI public housing redevelopment program, in the (not always successful) process of removing blight and creating new mixed income developments, ought to time operations so as not to require residents with school-age children to move during the school year if such a move involves a school transfer. Similarly, HUD's Moving to Opportunity Program (modeled after Chicago's Gautreaux program, a court-ordered desegregation effort; see Rubinowitz & Rosenbaum, 2000) apparently does not take school disruption into consideration in its planning process; and the uncertainty surrounding displacement has created stress that can show up in additional student behavior problems. Any benefits of welfare reform in terms of employment ought not to be achieved at the expense of mid-year disruption of a child's education. And, as Paul Weckstein points out, education reform measures such as the No Child Left Behind Act must take into account likely, albeit unintended, consequences in increasing negative school mobility and providing incentives to exclude mobile children from the proposed benefits of such reforms.