Socially-Structured Mobility Networks and School Segregation Dynamics: The Role of Emergent Consideration Sets

This study proposes and applies a novel method for empirically evaluating the role of social structure in the school sorting process. We use administrative records from Baltimore City and suburban Baltimore County public elementary schools (2011-2015) to generate a network of schools based on student transfers. We then apply repeated calculations of the Louvian method of community detection to estimate emergent sets of schools that are likely to be considered by similar parents – which we term emergent consideration sets – and use gravity models to explore the role of social structure, demographics, and geography in observed enrollment patterns. We find that our network-derived emergent consideration sets are better defined by structural boundaries than student composition or proficiency alone. Within consideration sets, students tend to avoid schools with relatively higher levels of free- and reduced-price meal eligibility and flock towards schools with higher proficiency levels. School racial composition, however, plays a much smaller role in predicting movement between schools, in part because structural constraints generate racially homogeneous consideration sets. Together, these findings highlight how regional social and geographic organization shapes school segregation processes and the policies used to combat them.

Socially-Structured Mobility Networks and School Segregation Dynamics: The Role of Emergent Consideration Sets

This study proposes and applies a novel method for empirically evaluating the role of social structure in the school sorting process. We use administrative records from Baltimore City and suburban Baltimore County public elementary schools (2011 to 2015) to generate a network of schools based on student transfers. We then apply repeated calculations of the Louvian method of community detection to estimate emergent sets of schools that similar parents are likely to consider—which we term emergent consideration sets—and use gravity models to explore the role of social structure, demographics, and geography in observed enrollment patterns. We find that our network-derived emergent consideration sets are better defined by structural boundaries than by student composition or proficiency alone. Within consideration sets, students tend to avoid schools with relatively higher levels of free- and reduced-price meal eligibility and flock toward schools with higher proficiency levels. School racial composition, however, plays a much smaller role in predicting movement between schools, in part because structural constraints generate racially homogeneous consideration sets. Together, these findings highlight how regional social and geographic organization shapes school segregation processes and the policies used to combat them.

Changing places, changing tracks: Inter-school mobility among Czech secondary students

Most of the literature on student between-track mobility or school choice examines decision making in comprehensive systems or in tracked general education schools. In this article we present data on inter-school mobility (transfers) of upper secondary students in a differentiated educational system with academic, professional and vocational tiers and with a complex scheme of programmes and qualifications. This study is based on administrative microdata from the Czech school register merged with databases containing geographical information. We performed an explorative analysis of 4,533 events of school change with focus on the spatial aspects of VET student transfers. The preliminary results confirm the usefulness of this approach in studying the role school distance plays in programme and school choice.

Preparing for the Next Move

School transitions sometimes happen with little time for the family or the teachers to prepare. A teacher might walk into the classroom one morning to find that a student withdrew the previous afternoon and there was no opportunity to say goodbye or tell the child that he or she will be missed. These situations should not keep teachers or counselors from contacting the family and offering support through the process of transferring to a new school. If the child is relocating to another school in the district, a process can be created for teachers from the sending and receiving schools to communicate about the student if any questions arise—perhaps informally through an email or more formally by filling out a form. If the district has a transition team, as described in Chapter 9, these individuals can make suggestions and create procedures to follow when a student transfers within a district. For example, a teacher or counselor at the sending school might fill out a form that accompanies the student’s academic records and gives more descriptive informa­tion about the child’s strengths, needs, and interests. Or a checklist could be created for families to remind them what documents and other information they should gather if their child is changing schools. The Military Child Education Coalition created such a checklist for military families, which could be used as a guide. If a teacher or other school staff member is aware in advance that a child is transferring—whether it’s within the district or across the country—a variety of strategies are available for helping the family prepare for the change. A discussion with the child and family before a move is a chance for everyone involved to review the student’s academic progress and address any important issues that might need attention when the child moves into a new school. Similar to a parent–teacher conference, these meetings can help answer “what next” questions for both the parents and the child.

School Choice, Racial Segregation, and Poverty Concentration: Evidence From Pennsylvania Charter School Transfers

This article examines how student movements between traditional public schools (TPSs) and charters—both brick and mortar and cyber—may be associated with both racial isolation and poverty concentration. Using student-level data from the universe of Pennsylvania public schools, this study builds upon previous research by specifically examining student transfers into charter schools, disaggregating findings by geography. We find that, on average, the transfers of African American and Latino students from TPSs to charter schools were segregative. White students transferring within urban areas transferred to more racially segregated schools. Students from all three racial groups attended urban charters with lower poverty concentration.

The Relationship Between Student Transfers and District Academic Performance: Accounting for Feedback Effects

This paper draws attention to a subtle, but concerning, empirical challenge common in panel data models that seek to estimate the relationship between student transfers and district academic performance. Specifically, if such models have a dynamic element, and if the estimator controls for unobserved traits by including district-level effects, then model validity does not allow for a district's academic performance, in turn, to impact future transfers. Yet it seems reasonable that families, having access to publicly available aggregated information on standardized test results, seek to move their children to better-performing districts. In this paper, we demonstrate that, not only is such feedback quantitatively and qualitatively important, but also that allowing for such feedback substantially alters the estimated relationship between transfers and district performance.

School Choice Participation Rates: Which Districts are Pressured?

School choice policies are intended to provide students in poorly performing schools the option of transferring to a better school. The associated loss of funding to new competitors is expected, in turn, to benefit students who remain in their assigned schools by spurring improved performance among the educators in them. The prospects for such systemic improvement are greatest if in fact student transfers and the market signals they provide are determined by school effectiveness rather than the social and racial characteristics of a district’s students. To test this proposition, we employ a series of fixed effects regressions to analyze the relative influence of school effectiveness versus student demographic composition on participation rates in Michigan’s charter school and inter-district choice policies. Our results indicate that school effectiveness has no systematic influence on participation rates for either choice policy, while the loss of students to choice options increases significantly in districts serving high concentrations of low-income students. Therefore, Michigan’s school choice policies create financial pressures not on schools that are performing most poorly but rather on those that face the most difficult educational challenges.