The Consequence of Ignoring Student Mobility in Multilevel Modeling of Achievement Growth

• In Event: Roundtable Session 46
  In Roundtable Session: Issues in Accountability Models and Practices

Abstract

Student mobility is a pervasive phenomenon in the United States. Accumulative evidence has shown that student mobility has had a negative impact on academic achievement of individual students and school systems. Unfortunately, mobile students have been invisible in previous longitudinal studies of achievement growth. The current study introduces cross-classified multiple membership growth curve modeling for incorporating student mobility in longitudinal studies. Using a one-year local mathematics benchmark test dataset and a six-year national reading assessment dataset, we demonstrate that ignoring student mobility in multilevel modeling underestimates school effects on students’ achievement growth thus leads to inappropriate inferences about school accountability. Implications for assessment of academic achievement growth and school accountability are discussed.

Authors

• Shuyan Sun, University of Maryland - Baltimore County

• Wei Pan, Duke University