I.M.C. Guy

Do you ever wonder what makes parents think that moving their children in and out of a school mid year is a good idea? Now, I realize that many moves must happen and are simply no one's fault - parents lose their jobs, get evicted, get divorced, etc., but the impact on their child's education is unbelievable. The school I'm at has a pretty high rate of students moving in and moving out. I would bet that over 75% of our classrooms do not have the same class list now that they did at the beginning of the year. Who loses in these situations? The kids of course. What is taught in one district, may not be taught in another. Maybe something taught at the beginning of the year in one district will be taught again to the student who moved in another district later in the year, resulting in the same material being taught twice. The opposite of this is also probably true. Students are missing valuable instruction in some areas because of the timing of the lessons. Throw all of this high stakes testing into the mix and these children are at a disadvantage.

A recent article discusses the need for a national student tracking system. This isn't a bad idea. I certainly know that when we get new students at our school, our secretaries don't get records from the previous schools in a timely manner, if at all. How can we find out the needs of the children without that information? This national tracking system could help. Having this system online would be great. Sure, there are many obstacles in the way of making this actually happen - one being money. Who's going to pay for it?

Our elementary school, with a population of about 400 students, has had way too many students moving in and out during the school year. We have a family that left our school about a month ago and are starting back tomorrow. What's going on? By an estimate from our secretary, the number of students who have moved in or out is at least 75 - and it's only the beginning of March! That number will probably be 100 by year's end. That's amazing to me. You know as well as I do that these are the kinds of kids who need stability in their lives. We make connections with these kids and they make the connection with us. Just when we are starting to make progress, they move. Mrs. Whatsit certainly feels the same way. I have no idea how to solve this problem, but something needs to be done.