WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THE CHILDREN KEEP CHANGING? Reflections of an Author Submitted by Frank Murphy, November 30, 2010 “There were one hundred seven kids in the second grade class; thirty-two of them were still at Meade in fifth grade … This turnover of students represented a two year 70% transient rate. It is difficult to sustain program improvements and student growth when a major portion of your student population leaves after such a short period of time.” (Frank Murphy, in Confessions of an Urban Principal)
I was not alone in giving scant attention to the high rate of student transiency that characterized my school. Most schools that serve communities with a high percentage of poor and minority students have high rates of yearly student turnover. This isn’t just an urban school district phenomenon. There are suburban and rural schools that feel the impact of a highly mobile student population. It is an area of concern that has not received a great deal of research attention.
The conclusions of available research studies are not clear as to whether poor student achievement is caused by student mobility or if mobility is one factor in poor student achievement resulting from the effects of poverty. Studies that do not control for personal student characteristics have found that mobile students consistently underperform academically when compared to stable students within schools. Research studies that have controlled for differences in student background suggest that: “… Mobility might, be more of a symptom than a cause of poor school performance… In other words, mobile students came from poorer families and had lower academic performance before they were mobile.” Regardless of whether or not student mobility is or isn’t a cause of poor student achievement, it clearly can have a negative effect on children as well as the schools they attend. The school attendance of students who frequently relocate from one school to another is often interrupted. These students suffer from a lack of continuity in the scope and content of their instruction. They also have more limited ability to develop relationships with teachers and fellow students. Repeatedly adjusting to a new peer group and social expectations can lead to withdraw and misbehavior. Skill acquisition suffers as a consequence, thus putting these students at higher risk of academic failure. In addition to the negative effect that student mobility has on individual students, the impacts on the schools that serve large numbers of highly mobile students can be huge. A case study by Donna H. Sanderson lists three major concerns articulated by the teachers of a school with a large population of mobile students:
- the amount of time teachers spend on addressing the needs of mobile students,
- the lack of academic foundations these children exhibit,
- and the effect the behavior and attitudes of mobile students can have on the overall classroom and school environment.
These too were the concerns of the Meade staff. Registration paper work, placement testing, intake interviews, and tracking down records from the sending schools frequently demanded the time and attention of our office staff and leadership team. Classroom teachers coped with the challenge of maintaining a stable and productive classroom culture as they faced multiple student entrances and exits. Making progress with the students they started with in September was made more difficult when they regularly had to instructionally reach back in order to pull forward a steady stream of new students. New arrivals like Devon, a fourth grader who was in need of a emotional support program, Saundra, a fifth grade girl who was determined to make her presence known to her new classmates, and the Island twins, who weren’t going to be pushed around by anyone, were but a few of the newcomers who tested our ability to keep our school calm, orderly and on track. In order to do so, we realized that every student who entered our school must be quickly assimilated into our school culture. To this end, instructional activities and objectives in every classroom focused on engaging students in meaningful learning tasks. These tasks sought to develop students’ skills at synthesizing, analyzing and evaluating information in all content areas. Classroom cultures were created that encouraged children to take responsibility for their own behavior. All students were expected to make their thinking public and to be accountable for the accuracy of the knowledge they used to answer questions and/or draw conclusions. Developing the problem solving skills of our students was a high priority focus. A variety of engaging activities in art, music, drama, physical education, logic, and poetry were integrated into our instructional program for our students. A school- wide culture was created. The public spaces of the building were beautified and made to feel homey and cozy. Student works and seasonal decorations dressed the hallways, auditorium and cafeteria. Opportunities were provided for children to help plan and manage school-wide projects such as a school recycling project, serving breakfast in classrooms, creating murals, and maintaining hallway gardens. Children were rewarded for their positive contributions to the school community. Regularly scheduled literacy assemblies and community celebrations reinforced the idea that we were one community. In short, we worked to create a powerful and pervasive school culture, one that aided and supported our students in developing a clear understanding of how a productive citizen of Meade school acted. Creating a consistent and engaging community was not an easy feat. It took many years to accomplish. The steadily increasing test scores of Meade School students over the last five years offers proof to the effectiveness of using this holistic strategy to address the needs of both our stable and mobile student body. Increasing student academic achievement at Meade School wasn’t just a matter of our teachers believing that our children could perform well on standardized tests. Nor did it result from creating a narrow focus on the rote memorization of facts, rules and procedures math and language arts. Our success can be attributed to our creation of a pervasive school culture that engaged every student and encouraged him or her to regularly use higher-level thinking skills. In time the mobility rate at our school declined. Families still moved as they pursued better housing opportunities but increasing numbers of parents began to leave their children enrolled at Meade. As our student population became more stable, we saw significant increases in our test scores. Our response to the problem of student mobility wasn’t a quick or easy fix. It was a comprehensive one that in the long run helped many of our students to be more successful in school.