Inferring Adequate Yearly Progress of Schools from Student Achievement in Highly Mobile Communities.

Many attempts at educational reform, among them No Child Left Behind and a recent Philadelphia effort, assume that the quality of the educational programs being offered by schools can be inferred from the achievements of the children who attend them. This article explores the reasonableness of this assumption for Philadelphia public schools by following a cohort of students for 3 years after the completion of est grade, when most students would conclude 4th grade. It examines the rates of school-to-school mobility and exit from schools. Using a family of hierarchical models, it explores how est-grade report card marks predict the odds and character of within-district school-to-school transfers, and the odds of student exits from the public schools. The analyses then examine the effects of two est-grade school-community variables, a poverty index and a performance index, on the mobility of students. The study found high mobility prevalent in most schools. Moreover, combinations of student and school-community variables typically associated with the need for school improvement were present at schools with the highest mobility rates. The article concludes that a policy of inferring the success of school-based educational endeavors from school-level statistics can often be invalid in urban school districts due to student mobility, with the risk of error likely to be the greatest al the schools where reform is most needed and No Child Left Behind sanctions are most likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]