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Student turnover a problem in small, low-income districts

Average student turnover rate by district and income

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By Margo Rutledge Kissell, Staff Writer Updated 1:30 AM Sunday, August 8, 2010

Student turnover is a problem in Dayton Public Schools and increasingly in other smaller and lower-income school districts in Montgomery County, especially Jefferson Twp., Trotwood-Madison, Northridge and Mad River Local school districts.

Another concern for community and school officials is the number of students leaving the county altogether.

There were 5,537 fewer students — a 7 percent decrease — in school districts in the county in 2008-09 school year compared to 1996-97, a newspaper analysis of Ohio Department of Education data shows.

The Dayton office of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a national think tank focused on school choice and educational reform, commissioned the student mobility study by the University of Dayton’s Business Research Group and School of Education and Allied Professions.

Among the findings:

Some of the districts see an average turnover rate of 30 to 52 percent of their students each year.

Children are bouncing from troubled school to troubled school, with few moving up to better performing schools.

Students moving from one building to another tend to have lower reading scores.

Terry Ryan, vice president of Fordham’s Ohio Programs and Policy, noted that student mobility is relatively common in this country, with 40 percent of children having moved once by the end of third grade.

What concerns him is “extreme mobility,” which appears to be tied to a student’s socio-economic status.

Educators are concerned about these highly mobile students because they are frequently at risk of problems including lower academic achievement, difficulties developing socially and are at greater risk of dropping out.

Jane McGee-Rafal, Dayton Public’s chief academic officer, said they see a lot of families of “fragile economic means” who move often because of jobs and life circumstances. Some students move to live with different relatives.

McGee-Rafal was among two dozen school and community leaders who met last week to hear about the research findings from Richard Stock, director of the Business Research Group at UD. She came away from the meeting believing the district’s proposed attendance areas “are a move in the right direction.”  The proposed policy would require most pre-K through eighth grade students to attend a school in their neighborhood rather than choosing where to go, as they do now. The 17 attendance areas would go into effect in the 2011-12 school year if approved by the school board.

One district that is doing well despite having a 30 percent annual student turnover is West Carrollton City Schools, which received an “effective” rating on its last state report card.

“I think it’s a problem for a lot of districts,” Superintendent Rusty Clifford said. “The mobility is not a problem for us. It’s an opportunity. We know 30 percent of our kids won’t be with us at the end of the year so we take advantage of every day, every moment, to prepare them to be successful.”

Clifford said his district focuses on hiring the best teachers they can and its a strong proponent of the 40 Developmental Assets principle, building blocks of healthy development developed by the Search Institute.

Clifford said there is no single solution to addressing the mobility issue because “there are so many variables out there.”

The concept of a common curriculum was floated by Tom Lasley, executive director of EDvention, a collaborative dedicated to accelerating science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) talent in the Dayton area, and former dean of UD’s school of Education and Allied Professions was involved in the study.

Other possible policy and considerations to come from the study include that all Montgomery County districts should start collecting data to track student mobility and the state should consider special “performance bonuses” to schools with high mobility rates and high academic performance.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2094 or mkissell@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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