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Three schools in two states in 10 months.
That’s been the life of siblings Thailand Martin, 8, Antonio Martin, 9, and Indiasa Wallace, 12. With their mom, Aisha Randolph, and two younger siblings, they moved from California last May, to their first home in Fort Wayne, to a bigger place in the city, where they currently live.
Three schools in 10 months may seem like a lot, but in an urban setting like Fort Wayne, it’s not that unusual.
In fact, if they stay put, Randolph’s children will eventually attend Paul Harding High School, where nearly three-quarters of the students have moved in or out since the beginning of the school year, according to data provided by East Allen County Schools.
At Village Elementary, which Thailand and Antonio attend, 60 percent of the students have moved in or out since August.
“It was kind of tough on them as far as the friends and them being comfortable,” Randolph said. “Then their grades shot up and down, because I felt they weren’t stable with the moves and stuff.”
Moving from school to school is not only troublesome for students by taking them out of their comfort zones in their home schools with their friends, as Randolph’s children complained of, it also affects test scores, performance in the classroom, teachers and the culture of the classroom they move into, experts say.
“When you start getting lots of moving in a school, … everybody gets hurt,” said Eric Hanushek, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, who has researched student mobility in New York and Texas.
Nationwide, student mobility is highest among low-income students – specifically black students – in cities, Hanushek said. This trend is reflected in various schools in Fort Wayne Community Schools and East Allen County Schools. The highest mobility rates in both districts are in schools with large low-income and black populations.
Randolph’s divorce from her first husband and a desire to move closer to her grandparents led her to uproot the kids and leave California for the Summit City.
Their first house had only three bedrooms and wasn’t big enough for Randolph and the six kids between her and her new husband, so they moved to a bigger place with five bedrooms.
That meant not only a switch in schools for Thailand, Antonio and Indiasa but also a change in school districts, from Fort Wayne Community Schools to East Allen County Schools.
Thailand and Antonio switched from St. Joseph Central Elementary to Village Elementary, and Indiasa moved from Lakeside Middle School to Prince Chapman Academy.
Randolph’s move was due more to personal circumstances, but frequently a family’s move is related to finances, local school officials say.
That’s the case, for example, at South Wayne Elementary School, 810 Cottage Ave., which has the highest mobility rate in Fort Wayne Community Schools. So far this school year, 39 percent of students have moved in or out of South Wayne from the first day of school, according to data provided by FWCS.
There are a lot of rental properties around the school, and due to the recession, families are moving out, Principal Tim Bobay said.
The poor economy is also forcing families to move from the homes they own to ones they can afford. At South Wayne, 93 percent of the students receive a free or reduced-price lunch – a common indicator of poverty in schools – and nearly one-third are black.
“Every month we’ll get new kids in, and we’ll get some kids that move out,” Bobay said. “The economy has really taken its toll, and I don’t think just on South Wayne parents and students.”
South Wayne’s mobility pales in comparison to percentages at some East Allen schools. Harding High School, 6501 Wayne Trace, has the highest percentage of movement in the district, with 74 percent of students moving in or out this school year.
Jeanne Zehr, Title I administrator for EACS, said she doesn’t know why Harding has such high mobility. But when matched with national trends, Harding’s statistics fit; 66 percent of the student body is black and 68 percent receive a free or reduced-price lunch.
Next comes Village Elementary, where 60 percent of the student body was transient this year. Village is the current school for Thailand and Antonio Martin, who join a 59 percent black population; 78 percent of Village students receive a free or reduced-price lunch.
High mobility is also difficult on teachers, who must spend time helping students catch up with their classmates . When a student moves between school districts or is from out of state, there’s no telling what material the student has or hasn’t learned in the school year.
Zehr believes there’s a correlation between schools’ high mobility rates and test scores. It’s surely the case for Harding and Village, which have scored lower on the state ISTEP+ exam than other East Allen schools.
But that comes back to the types of students most mobile: low-income and black, two groups that struggle nationwide on standardized tests. Zehr said the longer a student stays in the same school, the more likely that student will get a higher score on ISTEP+.
Fort Wayne Community Schools prides itself on building relationships with students to help them engage in learning. But usually the ones most in need of those relationships are students who are the most mobile, said Matt Schiebel, principal of Shawnee Middle School.
It’s frustrating for educators because many factors are out of their control.
“We have children, … (where it’s) no one’s fault,” Zehr said. “Parents can’t help it. They’ve got to do what they’ve got to do economically for their family, and sometimes, it means a school change.”
There are tactics school officials can employ to cushion the blow of a move, Stanford’s Hanushek said. Some districts, including Fort Wayne’s, have a standard curriculum in every school, so if students move within the district they won’t fall far behind.
What’s being taught at a certain point in third grade should be similar to a third-grade classroom in another district. If possible, FWCS administrators try to persuade parents to keep their children in the same school until the end of a grading period, said Dan Bickel, the district’s elementary area administrator.
“The system we’ve built really minimizes the need for that to happen because they can move from place to place and we’re all on the same page,” Bickel said.
If Schiebel knows a student is moving out of Shawnee’s attendance area, he tries to persuade the parents to keep the student in the school. FWCS has a choice program where students can attend other schools in the district as long as their parents provide transportation.
East Allen established a Neighborhood Action Center in Autumn Woods Apartments, 1004 Fayette Drive, partly to provide assistance for transient students, Zehr said. A social worker provides parents with resources, she said, so maybe they can remain in their homes.
That’s the hope of Aisha Randolph for her children: to stay put.
“They always ask me, ‘Are we going to stay here or are we going to move again?’ They don’t want to move again. They have friends now. I think they get shaken up sometimes,” Randolph said. “It was my mistake to do the moving, but it took awhile for me to get stable, but I think I’m here to stay. Not just for me but for them because I see it takes them through a lot.”
