Reposted with permission of the American Federation of Teachers
http://www.aft.com
Where We Stand
By Albert Shanker
Caught in a Revolving Door
Student mobility--kids moving in and out of a school--is something 
teachers think about a lot, especially those who teach in 
poverty-stricken neighborhoods, where it can be a big problem.  
Undoubtedly the chief sufferers are the youngsters who suddenly find 
themselves in a strange class where they have no idea what's going on. 
But getting a new student or two in the middle of the year is also 
hard on the other kids in the class and on the teachers. Until 
recently, however, there has been little information on the extent of 
the problem and few real efforts to solve it.
A recent study of student mobility in Chicago elementary schools, 
which is described in the latest issue of American Educator ("Kids, 
Schools Suffer from Revolving Door," Spring 1996), makes clear how 
serious the problem is.  At one school of about 800 students, 170 new 
students enrolled between the beginning of school and January 31, and 
198 left. In addition, 177 families brought children to be enrolled 
but transferred out before the children actually came to class. Of 
course, the problem is not this severe in most Chicago schools.  
Nevertheless, the study found that a majority of children--three in 
five--move from one school to another during their elementary school 
years; and nearly half of the moves take place during the school year. 
When researchers looked at the data from the school perspective,  they 
found that "a typical classroom gets an average of five new students a year."
How does this affect the education that students in these schools are 
getting? It's pretty clear what problems the kids who transfer in are 
likely to have. As the American Educator article puts it, "For many 
transfer students, mobility is a vicious cycle: They're dropped into 
lessons that their previous school didn't prepare them for." Then, 
because they are "starting out behind in strange territory, many 
transfer students act out, making learning still harder." The 
long-term results are just what you might fear: The Chicago study 
found that "by fourth grade, students who had switched schools were, 
on average, four months behind students who had stayed in the [same] 
school." And the more often students change schools, the more 
devastating the effect on their achievement: "Students who had moved 
four or more times were, by sixth grade, a full year behind."
But even kids who never move are affected by the arrival of new 
students who do not know the material.  Perhaps the teacher spends 
extra time with the new children, trying to catch them up, or perhaps 
she simplifies the curriculum so they can follow.  Either way, the 
other students lose.  And if  there are two or three or four transfer 
students in the class--and a couple of them turn out to be discipline 
problems-- the difficulties that come from their lack of preparation 
are multiplied many times.
What can be done? One approach the article suggests is to make sure 
parents are aware of how changing schools can affect their children. 
David Schuler, the president of an apartment owners' association in 
Rochester, New York, was appalled by the turnover rate among children 
in his apartment buildings. So he organized a successful campaign to 
educate parents and help them find housing within the attendance 
boundaries if they had to move. Schools and school districts can do 
the same thing. They can also relax their rules so students who have 
moved out of their school's attendance area can complete the year 
without changing schools--a number of districts have already done 
this. And they can make sure that parents are aware of this 
flexibility. But useful though these approaches are, they can't really 
get to the heart of the problem.
What if students who moved from one school to another didn't have to 
face material that was totally unfamiliar? What if teachers knew that 
a fourth grader who came into class in January had covered certain 
topics in English? That's what would happen if we had a common 
curriculum, as they do in other industrialized nations with successful 
school systems. And it would be a boon not only for kids who move but 
for all students. Our free-and-easy approach to curriculum means that 
what fourth graders learn in a given subject can differ from school to 
school and even class to class. So teachers can never be sure what the 
students who enter their class know, and they have to waste precious 
time making sure that everybody is ready to start on the year's work.  
The American Educator article says that some of the Chicago schools 
are aligning their curriculums to help ease the transition for 
transferring youngsters. They have the right idea. This is something 
we need to do for all our students.
Chuck Beams
Fidonet - 1:2608/70
cbeams@future.dreamscape.com
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* UniQWK #5290* Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.
--- Maximus 2.01wb
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