The "Highly Mobile"

When students transfer out of my school, I usually say, ""I’m sorry to lose you. But, is this good or bad news for you?" Rarely do I get an unambiguous answer. 

After 25 years of playground basketball, I’m still amazed that every pickup game has kids who come from the same neighborhoods, but attend schools that are scattered so widely across the county. A few have relatively straightforward explanations for their mobility, like a family illness or transportation problems, but rarely is there a simple path to an inner city secondary school.

As with the rest of the nation, the saddest tales are of students who shuttle from one home to another, one neighborhood school to another, one alternative school to another, and one district to another. The most frustrating stories are of kids who simply mature more slowly and thus can’t fit into our lockstep system.

The greetings, goodbyes, and welcome backs are always poignant, but now it is harder to show proper respect to each individual as transfers occur almost daily. Twice, I have had long goodbyes and a couple of hours later my former student was dead. Twice, within a couple of hours of saying goodbye, my students had shot people. Plenty of times I have reunited with former students on the streets or living in parks, and been stunned that those sweet children now looked older than me.

Others come back from their journeys with new dedication, and return to show off their degree, their uniform, or their child. One vexing student came back as a principal. I wish I knew where he went wrong. - John Thompson

Comments

[Margo/Mom]

My district did a study of mobility in the district a few years back. There were several big AHAs that didn't surprise me much, but apparently not everyone else knew. One was that mobility was extremely low--off the charts, at the elementary that served primarily a low-income federally subsidized housing project. The other was that schools played a part in exacerbating mobility.

The district had in place policies to provide transportation to kids who moved mid-year. The fact that they weren't acted on was due to a number of reasons. First is the classic right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, so that building principals and secretaries--basic front line folks--weren't aware and couldn't tell families. The other is that frequently things weren't going well at school and this either played a part in the families' move, or the school's reluctance to extend themselve's to keep the family--if they knew about the move.

The most highly mobile of the students was the special education population. This was noted, explained as being due to students being moved to special programs, and dropped.

There was also some correlation data to indicate that changing schools between school years was less harmful than during the school year. Achievement went down with the number of school changes during the year.

The district launched a PR campaign aimed at curtailing school year moves (trying to convince parents not to move during the school year). Not sure how that turned out. The also did a lot to try and line up the curriculum at all the elementaries across the district to minimize the impact of school changes. But there is still, I believe, a pretty big cultural reluctance, within the schools, to see any part of their work as holding on to kids who are difficult to teach. There are still too many ways to push them out.

[john thompson]

Marmo/mom,

Thanks. The more I learn, the more complicated things are.