Effects of Student Mobility on Academic Achievement

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 20: School and Classroom Dynamics: Trust, Discipline, and the Pathways to Educational Flourishing

Abstract

Enrollment instabilities due to student mobility have important implications for students. Transferring between schools is associated with lower test score performance (Alexander, Entwisle, and Dauber 1996; Cordes, Schwartz, and Stiefel 2019; Grigg 2012), fewer social ties with peers and teachers (Felmlee et al. 2018; Langenkamp 2010), and decreased access to important services provided through schools, such as meals and mental and physical health care. Student mobility presents an urgent challenge to the schooling system because the students who are most likely to experience such instabilities are often those who are most vulnerable in the schooling system. Student mobility is a reflection of poverty: families experiencing housing instability move frequently, thus needing to move schools (Calibuso and Winsler 2021; Kerbow 1996; Pribesh and Downey 1999; Welsh 2017). While the literature on student mobility often focuses on the effects of the number of moves between schools, there is less systematic study around the effects of within year school transfers (Welsh 2017). This paper begins to address this question by asking: Does transferring between schools affect students’ academic achievement? To what extent does this effect vary by within or between year moves? Leveraging administrative data from the state of Indiana and a fixed effects modelling strategy, I find that students who experience more transfers between schools tended to have lower test scores. The effect was larger for students making between year moves. These findings suggest that additional academic supports may be needed for students, especially at key transition points in their academic careers.

Author

• Bridget Curry, University of Notre Dame