Uprooting children: The risks and rewards of mobility for vulnerable students in California's public schools

这一EHR核心研究项目将在学生流动性对一系列相互关联的学生结果的影响的更广泛的背景下调查K-12数学学习。研究人员将特别关注学生流动如何影响并与以下学生结果相互作用--数学成绩、行为、社交-情绪学习和其他形式的发展，如语言习得和残疾状况？为加州的弱势群体服务。学生流动的定义是，学生在年中或从一年转到下一年(即在暑假期间)的年级与学校的期末年级不对应。弱势群体被定义为经济上处于不利地位的学生、英语学习者(ELS)、残疾学生(SWD)、无家可归者(HL)和寄养青年(FY)。学生流动与居住流动不同，它发生在公共领域，因此其潜在的负面影响更具延展性，更容易受到政策解决方案的影响。对于贫困和脆弱的学生来说，流动性高得不成比例。这类学生经常面临与家庭不稳定相关的深刻挑战，学校往往难以认识和适应流动学生的社会、发展和智力需求。了解学生在搬家后有多容易反弹，需要多长时间，以及搬家发生的年级水平对搬家的反应有何不同，是形成对这些学生的支持的关键。这个项目的发现有可能帮助学区和学校理解和应对非促进学生流动的发生率和后果。研究将集中在加州六个大型学区的所有K-12学生身上，这些学区是项目核心倡议的一部分，核心倡议是一组合作收集和分析数据以实现持续改进的地区。这些城市包括洛杉矶、奥克兰、弗雷斯诺、长滩、花园小树林和圣安娜。这些学区采用了对社会情感学习以及学校文化和氛围的系统衡量，以实现学校问责。这些核心学区为90多万人提供服务-纵向样本包括2010/11至2016/17年度期间的数百万个学生层面的观察。研究人员将使用一个精心设计的框架来解释学生流动的发生率和后果，并使用统计回归技术，全面评估(1)加州弱势学生中年中和夏季流动的发生率，(2)流动对这些学生的数学、行为和社会情绪结果的影响，以及这些结果如何相互作用。研究人员将跟踪学生搬家前后的结果，区分不同类型的搬家--结构性、非结构性、自愿性和非自愿性--比较转校者和留校者。由于流动在某些情况下可能有积极影响，在其他情况下可能有负面影响，这项研究将说明学生转学的时机和原因，并确定弱势群体和其他人口群体中流动的发生率和后果的差异。此外，这项研究将使用有关学生进出的学校特征、文化和气候以及流动学生与他们的环境相匹配或适应的程度的信息，以确定学校特征对流动弱势学生结果的影响。STEM的结果往往被孤立地调查-在这项研究中，重点是了解数学成绩如何与弱势学生的情绪发展和行为相互作用，这些学生正在努力应对转校的挑战。这项研究采取的整体方法将确保充分调查学生对转校的相互交织的学术和社会情绪反应。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This EHR Core Research project will investigate K-12 learning in mathematics within the broader context of the impact of student mobility on an interrelated set of student outcomes. The researchers will focus specifically on how student mobility influences and interacts with the following student outcomes - mathematics achievement, behavior, social-emotional learning and other forms of development, such as language acquisition and disability status ? for vulnerable populations in California. Student mobility is defined as students changing schools either midyear or from one year to the next (i.e., during the summer) in grades that do not correspond to the terminal grade of the school. Vulnerable populations are defined as economically disadvantaged students, English learners (ELs), students with disabilities (SWDs), homeless (HL), and foster youth (FY). Student mobility, unlike residential mobility, occurs in the public realm, so that its potentially negative effects are more malleable and amenable to policy solutions. Mobility is disproportionately high for poor and vulnerable students. Such students often face profound challenges associated with family instability, and schools often struggle to recognize and accommodate mobile students' social, developmental, and intellectual needs. Knowing how vulnerable students rebound after a move, how long it takes, and how responses to moves differ by the grade level in which moves occur is key to shaping supports for these students. Findings from this project have the potential to aid districts and schools in understanding and grappling with the incidence and consequences of non-promotional student mobility.The study will focus on all K-12 students in six large California school districts that are part of the Project CORE initiative - a group of districts that collaborate on data collection and analysis for continuous improvement. These include Los Angeles, Oakland, Fresno, Long Beach, Garden Grove, and Santa Ana. These districts have embraced systematic measurement of social-emotional learning and school culture and climate for school accountability. These CORE districts serve more than 900,000 - the longitudinal sample includes several million student-level observations over the 2010/11-2016/17 period. Using a careful framework designed to account for the incidence and consequences of student mobility and using statistical regression techniques, the researchers will comprehensively assess (1) the incidence of mid-year and summer mobility among vulnerable students in California and (2) the impact of mobility on these students' mathematical, behavioral, and social-emotional outcomes, as well as how these outcomes interact with one another. The researchers will track student outcomes before and after moves, distinguishing among moves of different types - structural, non-structural, voluntary, involuntary - comparing school changers to stayers. Since mobility could have positive effects in some situations and negative effects in others, the research will account for the timing and reasons why students change schools and identify variation in the incidence and consequences of mobility across vulnerable and other demographic groups. Moreover, the study will use information on school characteristics, culture and climate that students leave and enter and the degree to which mobile students "match" or fit in with their environments to determine the effect of school features on the outcomes of vulnerable students who are mobile. Too often STEM outcomes are investigated in isolation - in this study, the focus is on understanding how mathematics achievement interacts with emotional development and behavior for vulnerable students grappling with the challenge of changing schools. The holistic approach taken in this study will ensure the intertwined academic and social-emotional responses of students to changing schools is fully investigated.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.