Each school year, in the state of Texas, students unexpectedly change schools almost 450,000 times. In the Houston region alone, students change schools more than 60,000 times. These school changes are not random, tend to be geographically contained though not within school districts, and carry significant ramifications in the short-term for students’ performance on STAAR accountability tests and in the long-term for their risk of dropping out and failing to graduate from high school on-time.
This report is the culmination of a multi-year study on student mobility undertaken by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research's Houston Education Research Consortium in collaboration with 10 public school districts in the Houston area. Complementary research briefs have been released providing more details on the full set of findings that are highlighted in this report. As such, this report pulls forward a selection of key takeaways from the overall study with a particular focus on implications for Houston area districts and recommendations districts could consider as they continue to work to support mobile students.
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