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

EHR核心研究项目将在学生流动性对一组相互关联的学生成果的影响的更广泛背景下调查K-12数学学习。研究人员将特别关注学生的流动性如何影响并与以下学生成果相互作用-数学成绩，行为，社会情感学习和其他形式的发展，如语言习得和残疾状况？为加州的弱势群体提供援助学生流动性被定义为学生在年中或从一年到下一年（即，在夏季），在年级不对应的学校的终端年级。弱势群体被定义为经济困难的学生，英语学习者（EL），残疾学生（SWDs），无家可归者（HL）和寄养青年（FY）。学生流动与居民流动不同，发生在公共领域，因此其潜在的负面影响更具可塑性，更适合政策解决方案。贫困和弱势学生的流动性过高。这些学生往往面临着与家庭不稳定相关的深刻挑战，学校往往难以认识和适应移动的学生的社交、发展和智力需求。了解易受伤害的学生在搬家后如何反弹，需要多长时间，以及对搬家的反应如何因搬家发生的年级而异，是为这些学生塑造支持的关键。该项目的研究结果有可能帮助地区和学校了解和应对非促销性学生流动的发生率和后果。该研究将集中于六个大型加州学区的所有K-12学生，这些学区是项目CORE倡议的一部分-一组合作收集数据和分析以持续改进的地区。其中包括洛杉矶、奥克兰、弗雷斯诺、长滩、加登格罗夫和圣安娜。这些地区已经接受了社会情感学习和学校文化和气候的系统测量学校问责制。这些核心区服务超过900，000-纵向样本包括2010/11-2016/17期间数百万学生水平的观察。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，研究人员将全面评估（1）加州弱势学生的年中和夏季流动的发生率，以及（2）流动对这些学生的数学，行为和社会情感结果的影响，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--结构性的、非结构性的、自愿的、非自愿的--比较转学者和留校者。由于流动在某些情况下可能产生积极影响，在另一些情况下可能产生消极影响，因此研究将说明学生转学的时间和原因，并确定弱势群体和其他人口群体之间流动的发生率和后果的差异。此外，这项研究将利用关于学校特点、学生进出的文化和气候以及移动的学生“匹配”或适应其环境的程度的信息，以确定学校特点对移动的弱势学生的结果的影响。STEM成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情感发展和行为相互作用，以帮助弱势学生应对改变学校的挑战。在这项研究中采取的整体方法将确保学生对改变学校的相互交织的学术和社会情感反应得到充分调查。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.