30 percent

My district has a 30 percent mobility rate. What this means is that at any given time during the school year, 30 percent of the district's students are moving to a new home which means they either have to go to a different school within the district, or they are moving out of the district. Either way, studies show that this is toxic to student achievement. It's also hard for teachers, who have to constantly catch new kids up or lose kids just as they reach them. Some kids' parents just take them away to Mexico for months at a time, then show up a few months later and reenroll them, which of course causes havoc in terms of the kids' education gaps and the classroom community.

Three cases at my school. I'll start with the one that made me very happy yesterday. The first week of school when I saw my bilingual 4th grade, I asked: "Where's A?" A. had enrolled in the school two years ago fresh from the Dominican Republic and apparently very little education there. The Newcomer program is for new immigrants who had so little schooling in their homelands that even in Spanish they are way, way below grade level. They are taught strictly in Spanish for a while to help them catch up and acclimate to American institutions and customs. Anyway, A. started out in a regular bilingual 3rd grade, then was placed in the Newcomer class, I guess, when they figured out how behind she was. Then last year she repeated bilingual 3rd grade, along with a two other kids who had also been in Newcomer. The three of them are a bright, hardworking bunch. Anyway, last year she told me she wants to be a librarian when she grows up. You can imagine how happy I was. She's one of my student helpers, of course.

Anyway, this year she's in the fourth grade--luckily she's short and cute so she looks more like a nine-year-old than an eleven-year-old. So when I saw her class for the first time a couple of weeks ago and she wasn't there, I said, "Where's A?" She was still in the D.R., the other students said, and wasn't coming back till November. Their school year is different and one of the mobility problems we have is that a lot of kids go back to Mexico or the DR over the summer, or back and forth, and the school calendars there are different from here. I was so annoyed. I mean, here you have parents who didn't educate her much when she was living there, and now that she's getting a decent education they can't get her back here in time.

Well, it's only the end of September, but yesterday she showed up. I was thrilled to see her. So was her classroom teacher, who was talking to me yesterday about Case #2:

Case#2. His smartest student last year was S., who was from Mexico. Although still in a bilingual class, his English was getting quite good and he was excelling in his other subjects as well. Then, halfway through the year, his mom took him back to Mexico. He didn't want to go. He had to, and he was gone. His teacher told me though, yesterday, that at least he has the option to come back someday--apparently he has his citizenship papers. You have to realize that most of our kids HAVE BEEN BORN in the U.S. But as kids, if the parents go back to their home countries, they have to go with them, education interrupted.

Case #3. On the way to the car, I ran into M., a 5th grader. As I saw her, I realized I hadn't seen her this year. She had moved a few blocks away over the summer, but now was in the neighborhood of another school. She misses ours, and her friends. She's only going to be in this new school one year before moving up to the middle school. She was just on the cusp of transitioning between bilingual class and English-speaking class, and I hope this doesn't hold her up.