Student mobility and oral reading fluency: regional impact among elementary school students

Student mobility, or the act of transferring schools for reasons not required by the school system, is prevalent across the U.S. and is associated with several negative academic, social, and mental health outcomes. Student mobility also disproportionately affects students of historically marginalized identities. One particularly important academic skill that student mobility may impact is reading. However, research on the impact of student mobility on reading skills is mixed. Despite the importance of this topic to educational equity and federal requirements for educating students, this area of research has several important gaps, including a reliance on outdated samples, use of data from a small number of schools or districts, and treating all types of mobility as a single concept. The current study addressed these limitations by analyzing recently-collected data from a broad geographic area, and by analyzing specific mobility types based on the timing and distance and the various combinations of these types. The results indicated that student mobility was not a significant predictor of reading growth among elementary-aged students when treated as a single variable. However, when divided into specific types of mobility, significant differences were observed among the types of mobility. Specifically, any type of mobility that occurred within the same district, regardless of when in the school year the student transferred schools, was related to significantly less reading growth immediately following their move. Several important implications of these findings for policymakers and educators are identified, as well as promising areas for future research.