Student mobility is highly prevalent in the United States and has negative impacts on students' academic performance. Within-year mobility may be especially disruptive. However, research on the impacts of within-year mobility is limited, and less is known how impacts may vary across different geographies, such as differences between urban and…

Do grade configurations affect student academic performance? To bring new evidence to this question, I use recent district-by-grade data for nearly the entire United States that contain measures of test score achievement and rates of school switching induced by grade configuration. Past research has found that student performance, is, on average,…

Increasing pupil mobility has led to widespread concern among parents, educators, and policymakers regarding its negative effects on academic performance. An important issue in examining mobility effects in longitudinal school achievement comparisons is providing accurate estimates. The presence of pupil mobility suggests that we should model…

Schools often track students to classes based on ability. Proponents of tracking argue it is a low-cost tool to improve learning since instruction is more effective when students are more homogeneous, while opponents argue it exacerbates initial differences in opportunities without strong evidence of efficacy. In fact, little is known about the…

This study explored negative emotional, behavioral, and academic performance outcomes for highly mobile students and potential protective factors. Participants were fourth and fifth-grade students (N = 647, 51% male) from three schools with low socioeconomic status, highly mobile student populations within a large, suburban school district in the…

Introduction: Increasing evidence has shown that student mobility is negatively correlated with individual students' and schools' academic performance (Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004; Lara, Mizala, & Repetto, 2011; Sun & Pan, 2014). However, the negative impact may be due to the switching behavior or it could be only a side effect of…

The United States has one of the highest school mobility rates of any developed country and it is disproportionately experienced by ethnic minorities hailing from lower-income families, especially those attending schools in densely populated districts. Disentangling the effects of school mobility from other preexisting and concurrent factors has…

Students' instructional needs are identified, and proper interventions and instructional placement are put in place to maximize student-learning potential, but there is a gap in literature regarding the impact of classroom factors on student achievement of English learner (EL) students in diverse elementary schools (Heritage, Walqui, &…

School mobility increases the likelihood that students will experience low academic achievement, more discipline infractions, absenteeism, grade retention, and a higher propensity to drop out of high school compared to students who are nonmobile. The purpose of this quantitative ex post facto study was to examine the cognitive and behavioral…

Background: National data confirm that youth are not eating recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables (F/V), legumes, and whole grains (WGs). Establishing plant-based eating patterns early in life may positively impact long-term health through tracking of adolescent eating patterns into adulthood and through potential associations between…

Growing evidence illustrates the size and character of public-school enrollment declines during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, far less is known about where unenrolled students went. Using unique cross-sector enrollment and mobility data from the state of Hawaii, this study provides evidence that demographic changes and movement to private…

As a result of the Every Student Succeeds Act and its requirement that students in foster care be included in education report cards, states have a renewed sense of urgency surrounding accountability for the academic achievement of this vulnerable group of students. This study examined the effects of placement and school stability on students'…

As military dependent students relocate, they enroll in multiple schools throughout their K-12 experience. Frequent mobility can create gaps in achievement. The challenge in the local setting is meeting the needs of military dependent students scoring below grade level standards in math. The purpose of the formative evaluation was to determine the…

Research on the effectiveness of educational interventions usually is based on samples of students who remain in the same school over time. In contrast, most students transfer schools at least once during their K-12 school career, not including normative transfers such as those from elementary to middle school (Rumberger, 2002). Even when looking…

As applications of multilevel modelling in educational research increase, researchers realize that multilevel data collected in many educational settings are often not purely nested. The most common multilevel non-nested data structure is one that involves student mobility in longitudinal studies. This article provides a methodological review of…