School Choice is Great, But the Churn It Allows Comes at a Cost

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On Tuesday, the second week of state testing, I noticed an unfamiliar name on my roster. That was the day I met Darius. 

While it can be challenging to help transfer students get acclimated and caught up, it’s also a joy for me to get to know them. Some of my fondest memories come from students who arrived mid-year and found a good fit. 

That wasn’t the case for Darius. When he walked into my seventh grade classroom, I introduced myself. “Thanks, but don’t get too friendly,” he stated wryly. “This is my fifth school this year, and I doubt I’ll be here long.” 

I fixed my face to hide my shock. In over a decade of teaching, the amount of student turnover has gone up every year. But five times in a year was a new record. I checked his file later, and he wasn’t kidding. Constant switches, from school to school, all within our same district. 

And he wasn’t kidding about his tenure, either. Two weeks later, he was gone. An administrator told me that his mom complained about getting “too many phone calls” from a teacher and transferred him to a new school. 

I felt a flavor of frustration I don’t typically experience as a teacher. There are many valid reasons for students to change schools mid-year: moving, family emergencies, health. But I knew that transferring him was a mistake. He had barely given our school a chance, and changing again so close to the end of the year would do more harm than good. It was just as likely to end up in the same outcome: an interrupted education, devoid of relationships with supportive peers and trusted adults.

No student should be stuck at a school that isn’t right for them. Giving families the choice to change is one way to address this problem. But if we don’t acknowledge the cost of churn that’s baked into our system of school choice, we are in denial about an extremely damaging problem.

Mid-year turnover isn’t just like arriving late to a movie, although it sometimes feels like the plot of one. Students enter classrooms with seating charts already filled, usually getting the last desk available. They have to find a spot in the cafeteria and fit in with a group of friends who’ve known each other for months. They must get people to remember their name after the icebreakers have long passed. 

They must trust a new set of adults, while catching up on content they may not have learned at their last school — some students transfer just in time to take a test! They might be able to join sports teams, but the cutoff has probably passed. They may be waiting a few days for a bus assignment. High school credits may have to be re-earned. If they have a disability, they need to have a move-in conference, and their paperwork documenting their services may take weeks to arrive from their old school.

There are real, tangible impacts on a students’ learning and wellbeing at every churn — especially mid-year. These students see worse academic outcomes, including slower reading growth. They also experience more behavior issues. Students who switch high schools have lower graduation and higher dropout rates, and are more socially isolated and academically disengaged. While we’d hope a student may switch from a poor-fit school to a better one, too often, students end up at another school that they leave.

In spite of the harms, student churn is getting more common. While mobility used to be typically limited to the summer, a growing number of families are considering and actually changing schools mid-year. Especially since the pandemic, this type of mid-year transience has skyrocketed, and not equitably. Low-income students change schools more often than wealthier ones, and urban students more than suburban ones. A sample of students in foster care averaged eight school transfers in seven years. Some critics blame charter schools for disenrolling students mid-year due to academic, attendance or behavioral issues, but the data supporting their contribution to churn is limited and mixed.

So what can be done to address the churn while preserving the choice? 

First, states should provide educational navigators that follow students, similar to health insurance navigators. Right now, schools all pay for their own record-keeping, and the myriad platforms rarely talk to each other. The many social service and housing agencies supporting these students operate in silos. We must keep better track of students as they move. We need centralized information that follows the student so that receiving schools can be better prepared. And we need a single, dedicated point of contact for each family to prevent highly mobile students from getting lost in the cracks. Some states and districts already have models for this to support students experiencing homelessness or in foster care. Let’s scale them to include all students.

Second, states should implement transfer windows at semester breaks, unless there is a qualifying life event, such as a change in address. This limit on choice is far from unusual. Open enrollment windows are standard insurance policies. When a doctor prescribes a new medication, patients are barred from switching rapidly to avoid side-effects and interactions. Even colleges typically prohibited mid-semester enrollment. In every other sector, we regulate choices to minimize collateral consequences. Why not in K-12 education?

And third, parents and students need meaningful and accurate information about schools beyond what shows up on a billboard or a website. Students need exposure to a school environment – sample classes, shadow days, summer building tours, extracurricular events, even having lunch in the school cafeteria. Private schools typically require students to visit the school and meet teachers for informational interviews before enrolling. This is also the norm in higher education and most preschools. Let’s make this the expectation at all K-12 schools, regardless of type.

I hope that after leaving us, Darius ended up at a school that he was successful and could call home. But data and logic tell me that this probably wasn’t his fate. School choice is empowering to families, but that power instills responsibility to steward a child’s education with stability. We should structure the system of choice to encourage that.

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