Highly Mobile Students: Addressing Educational Challenges

Teachers whose classrooms seem to have revolving doors with students entering, withdrawing, and even re-entering throughout the school year, face a variety of challenges in meeting the needs of such highly mobile students and their more stable peers. This information brief highlights some of those challenges and offers recommendations to teachers based on our exploration of the literature and case studies of award-winning teachers with a variety of students in their classrooms who moved frequently.
Go to Classrooms with Revolving Doors: Recommended Practices for Elementary Teachers of At-Risk and Highly Mobile Students.

Teachers whose classrooms seem to have revolving doors, with students entering, withdrawing, and even re-entering throughout the school year, face a variety of challenges in meeting the needs of such highly mobile students and their more stable peers. This information brief highlights some of those challenges and offers recommendations to teachers based on our exploration of the literature and case studies of award-winning teachers with a variety of students in their classrooms who moved frequently.
Go to Classrooms with Revolving Doors: Recommended Practices for Middle Level and High School Teachers of At-Risk and Highly Mobile Students.

This study, designed jointly by the National Center for Homeless Education and The College of William and Mary, explores the critical role of the classroom teacher in contributing to the education of at-risk and highly mobile students. The study includes a review of the literature on the effective teaching of at-risk and highly mobile students and an exploration of the beliefs and practices of six teachers who won national and/or state awards for working with these populations.
Go to Effective Teaching and At-Risk/Highly Mobile Students: What Do Award-Winning Teachers Do?

“Reading on the Go!” is a two-volume publication that explores reading instruction for students experiencing high mobility as a result of high poverty. 
“Reading on the Go! (Vol 1): Students Who Are Highly Mobile and Reading Instruction” reviews the characteristics of highly mobile students and provides a literature review of reading instruction, with a focus on the research on reading and high poverty in an effort to help practitioners better understand the needs of highly mobile students and inform their selection and structure of programs by making research-based decisions.
“Reading on the Go! (Vol 2): A Handbook of Resources” discusses the implementation of reading programs. Volume 2 is based on the literature reviewed in Volume 1 but was also shaped by the voice of practitioners captured through focus groups and site visits. Volume 2 focuses on supplemental instruction and children experiencing homelessness in preschool and elementary grades.
Download both volumes here.

This handbook, a joint publication of the National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE) and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education, synthesizes research on the education of various subpopulations of students who tend to be highly mobile and explores commonalities and differences among these groups. Subpopulations explored include migratory children and youth, children and youth experiencing homelessness, children of military families, and students experiencing mobility on a global scale.
Go to Students on the Move: Reaching and Teaching Highly Mobile Children and Youth.

Launching Young Readers (LYR) is the companion website to a five-part television series on PBS. The LYR website provides information about the series, including its broadcast schedule, and offers valuable resources that can be used in conjunction with the series or independently.
Visit the website.

Educational achievement of students can be affected negatively by their changing schools often. The recent economic downturn, with foreclosures and homelessness, may be increasing student mobility. To inform the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked: (1) What are the numbers and characteristics of students who change schools, and what are the reasons students change schools?; (2) What is known about the effects of mobility on student outcomes, including academic achievement, behavior, and other outcomes?; (3) What challenges does student mobility present for schools in meeting the educational needs of students who change schools?; and, (4) What key federal programs are schools using to address the needs of mobile students? This December 2010 publication provides the results of the GAO’s analysis of federal survey data, interview with U.S. Department of Education officials, site visits to eight schools in six school districts, and review of federal laws and existing research.
Download the publication.

The goal of the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) is to help parents and children achieve their greatest potential together through quality literacy programs. NCFL is recognized worldwide as a leader in family literacy development and works with educators and community builders to design and sustain programs that meet the most urgent educational needs of disadvantaged families.
Visit the National Center for Families Learning website.

This report from the National Housing Conference examines the role that residential stability plays in child development. The report finds that low-income families move much more frequently than the general population. While reasons for moving vary, the data and interviews of low-income families show that moves resulting from unplanned or involuntary circumstances, such as an eviction or foreclosure, and moves that occur one after another as part of a pattern of frequent mobility, tend to have negative impacts on child and family welfare, such as increased school absenteeism and a higher incidence of neighborhood problems.
Download Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Exploring the Effects of Housing Instability and Mobility on Children.

This article, published in November 2002 by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) outlines several family involvement strategies that schools can use to provide stability and support for children made vulnerable by disruptions in their education and home lives.
Read Slowing the Revolving Door: Schools Reach Out to Mobile Families.

This brief from Project HOPE discusses what schools can do to support the education of highly mobile students.
Download Tips for Supporting Mobile Students.