Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children

As we’ve written before, student mobility can hurt academic outcomes. Children who move during the school year are at greater risk of doing poorly in school than children who have stable homes. Housing officials and education officials could offer more help by having more conversations about how they can work together to improve children’s outcomes.

Fortunately, there are policy solutions worth discussing, as Harvard Law School student Ethan Prall explains in a new study conducted on behalf of Strategies for Children, “Housing and Early Education: Policy Opportunities for Reducing Student Mobility.”

Student mobility is a widespread problem. “The ‘churn’ or mobility rate for K-12 students in Massachusetts was 9 percent in 2013,” the study notes, “However, the rate is higher for students from low-income families (14 percent), African American and Latino students (15 percent and 17 percent respectively) and English language learners (22 percent). In Gateway Cities, mobility rates exceed state averages: 16 percent in Chelsea, 19 percent in Worcester, and 24 percent in Holyoke.”

To meet the challenge of mobility, “Massachusetts needs innovative ideas and cross-silo policy discussions. Public housing and public education (both K-12 and early education and care) can and should collaborate to address this problem in new ways.”

There is a new policy opportunity that could be a “starting point for collaboration,” Prall notes. Massachusetts’ Early Learning Challenge–Race to the Top grant establishes an interagency agreement between the Department of Early Education and Care and the Department of Housing and Community Development.

“That agreement creates and funds a position that focuses on the interaction between the two departments,” a position for a staffer who could shepherd innovative ways to address student mobility.

The report also points to “ample opportunities for collaboration between public housing and early education programs, both center- and school-based.”

Recommendations

The study provides four categories of recommendations for policymakers:

1. Data

“State agencies should devise data tracking systems to monitor student mobility patterns. Insights gained should inform policy and programmatic support strategies.” Some data on children’s housing exists, but more is needed. The study also notes that local districts could “examine kindergarten registration protocols and add ‘housing status’ to the information collected from incoming students and their families.”

2. Vouchers

“The state should use its discretionary power to contract for family stability.” For example, Massachusetts could consider using federal housing funds more creatively by allowing “families to allocate increases in income to escrow accounts” rather than to a higher percentage of their rents. The money in these accounts could be used to defray the costs of high-quality early education and care programs.

3. Public-Private Partnerships

“Local and regional civic leaders should partner to meet this challenge.” While public funds remain limited, “local leaders can take matters into their own hands and direct philanthropic efforts to the issue, raise awareness through local media, and organize likely and unlikely allies into an initial base of support.”

4. Mitigation

“School districts should devise creative solutions to minimize the negative effects of mobility on student learning.” One example is Chelsea where schools superintendent Mary Bourque worked with school leaders in neighboring communities to “standardize curricula so when children move between any of the five districts, the curriculum of their new classroom will look familiar and their learning trajectory can continue with minimal disruption.”

Local Models

The study points to two local efforts to blend housing and education policy.

In Springfield, there’s Talk/Read/Succeed an early literacy project for residents of public housing that’s supported by the Irene E. & George A. Davis Foundation as well as the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. And in Washington state, the Tacoma Housing Authority works with McCarver Elementary School to improve early education: To get help with rent, parents have to keep their students in school.

Tacoma’s housing authority offers these words of wisdom: “The McCarver Elementary School Project seeks to prove that by providing housing and supportive services to needy families, it can improve school outcomes for their children and improve outcomes for the schools that serve its communities. Housing authorities should embed these strategies into their normal program operations as part of the appropriate mission of an alert and engaged public housing authority.”

Children who move frequently and struggle in school can be helped by innovative, flexible public policies that expand access to high-quality early education programs and provide support through grade school and high school. It’s up to policymakers to undertake more of this work.

To learn more, please read the study.