Patterns of Urban Student Mobility and Local School Reform

Abstract

Student mobility is a topic that frequently surfaces in discussions about the problems of urban schooling. Surprisingly, it tends to fade from the agenda as discussion turns toward reform initiatives and school restructuring. Student movement, however, penetrates the essential activity of schools--the interaction of teachers and students around learning. Using data from Chicago public elementary schools, I first describe the extent of urban school instability. Many schools, in fact, do not have a stable cohort of students whose progress they can track over time. Second, I explore the causes of this high level of instability, connected both to residential mobility and to more school-related reasons. Distinctive patterns emerge that reveal clusters of schools that are closely tied by the students they exchange from year to year. Third, given this context, I examine the impact of mobility on students, schools, and urban education more generally. Recent school reform efforts that center on promoting greater local school autonomy implicitly assume that students will attend a specific school consistently enough that the school can "make a difference" in their achievement. In the unstable urban context, however, even improving schools lose their accomplishments as students transfer, and mobile students forfeit the benefit of continuity of school services. Thus, not only does mobility impact individual students who are changing schools, it has deep (though often hidden) consequences for the schools these students attend and for the systemic changes intended by local school reform.