Student mobility has been an issue at the schools in Tennessee鈥檚 Achievement School District (ASD) but those elevated rates have improved since the ASD takeover, according to a new Vanderbilt study.
Funded by the , the was created in 2011 and charged with getting Tennessee鈥檚 lowest performing schools up to par within five years. All but one of the current ASD schools is located in Memphis.
Student and teacher mobility rates鈥攁s part of an ongoing evaluation of the ASD鈥攁re the focus of a study by researchers at the at Vanderbilt of education and human development.
鈥淔or schools serving low-income families, high rates of student mobility present a constant challenge,鈥� said co-lead investigator , Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Public Policy and Education. 鈥淚n addition to creating an educational challenge, students leaving or entering a school could provide a signal of whether the schools are perceived as effective by the community.鈥�
Student mobility, though still markedly high relative to higher-achieving schools, improved from 46 percent to 37 percent the first year after the ASD takeover. That figure has remained stable since then, he said.
Teacher mobility was also quite high, but is not surprising given that the existing staff in the schools had to reapply for the teaching positions in the ASD schools or pursue employment elsewhere. As a result, 83 percent of the teachers departed for jobs at other Tennessee schools after the ASD takeover, compared to a 30 percent turnover the year before.
However, those numbers have now leveled off and the ASD schools have added more high-performing teachers, in terms of value-added scores, than they lost, which 鈥渟uggests that these schools hired higher quality teachers than they lost,鈥� said co-lead investigator , associate professor of public policy and education.
In an upcoming report, the researchers will present an evaluation of how mobility has affected student achievement in ASD schools, and if ASD schools have retained the effective teachers they hired.
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