Children in Motion: School Transfers and Elementary School Performance

Abstract Moves from one school to another are a common, yet generally neglected, challenge to children's orderly school adjustment over the beginning-school transition. School transfers were traced through the first 5 years of elementary school for a large, diverse sample of children who began first grade in the fall of 1982 in 20 Baltimore City public schools. School moves were patterned along racial-ethnic and socioeconomic lines. Advantaged youngsters more often transferred outside the city school system, whereas disadvantaged youngsters more often transferred within it. Evidence on the consequences of moves for children's school performance is mixed. After 5 years in school, children who moved had lower test scores and marks, had an elevated risk of retention, and were more likely to receive special education services; but most of those differences fell short of significance when controls were introduced for first-grade measures of school performance and for background characteristics. The analysis thus provides only weak support for the hypothesis that school moves compromise children's school performance, but other important areas of concern have yet to be examined adequately, including, especially, the home or family circumstances that prompt students to move.