A group of education advocates and administrators are leading a panel discussion Tuesday morning to discuss the impact of how students moving from school to school impairs a their academic success. WYSO’s Emily McCord reports the group is trying to raise awareness so schools are better equipped to handle what’s called “student mobility”.
When a student moves from one school district to another, it negatively impacts their education, according to a report released last year by the Fordham Institute. It found that there’s a link between school districts with a high student mobility rate and lower test scores. The problem is more pronounced in Dayton than many other Ohio cities. Less than 70% of students in Dayton Public Schools stayed in the same school or district over a two year period. But Terry Ryan with the Fordham institute says the issue is larger than Dayton. It’s also impacting suburbs and rural schools in Montgomery County and across the state
"This is not just a conversation about ‘oh gosh, we’ve got to do something about Dayton Public Schools’. It’s a conversation about Dayton Public Schools and 16 other districts in the county," says Ryan.
1 in 3 students in Montgomery County start in one school district and end in another within 2 years. Ryan adds that a high mobility rate also has implications for the teachers and classrooms dealing with new students who have may been learning different things at their previous schools.