The Impact of Student Mobility, Gender, and Title I Status on Measures of School Accountability

The purpose of this study was to explore how student mobility affects school achievement in math and reading using archived testing data provided by Catawba County Schools, North Carolina. This study also explored relationships between student mobility, Title I school status, and gender when measuring academic outcomes. When measuring school achievement, non-mobile students performed higher academically than their mobile peers in math and reading. Non-Title I students also showed higher achievement in math and reading than Title I students while females outperformed males in reading. Differences in math scores were not significant. No significant interactions in math and reading achievement were found when measuring possible relationships between student mobility, Title I school status, and gender. Although the results did not show any relationships between student mobility, Title I school status, gender, and school achievement, the finding that student mobility has a significant impact on academic outcomes supports the inclusion of factoring student mobility into state and federal accountability models. It is recommended that this study be replicated in other school districts.