| Kristina Zeiser
Pennsylvania State University
Investigating the causal effects of student mobility on negative academic outcomes: Who is disproportionately affected by transferring during high school?
FINAL REPORT:
My dissertation utilizes data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988-2000 to address three primary research questions. First, I test the selection hypothesis that the negative relationships between student mobility and educational outcomes only exist because students who transfer between school districts are more likely to have lower levels of prior academic achievement and belong to more socially-disadvantaged social groups before the transfer occurs. To do this, I perform propensity score modeling to compare the academic outcomes of transfer students and non-transfer students with extremely similar background characteristics. Second, I explore whether student mobility is more detrimental to the academic outcomes of specific social groups relative to others based on differential levels of relationships between families and school personnel before the school transfer occurs. To answer this research question, I utilize OLS and logistic regression techniques that interact levels of student mobility with measures of social group membership. Finally, I investigate whether participation in specific extracurricular activities in the 8th and 12th grades provides academic benefits to transfer students. Using the quasi-experimental statistical technique of propensity score modeling, I find that student mobility after the 8th grade is negatively related to students’ 12th grade GPAs, the number of units students complete in math and science, and levels of educational attainment. While the effects of transferring more than once during high school are larger than the effects of transferring once during high school, many of the differences between these groups of mobile students do not achieve statistical significance. Moreover, this study does not find consistent support for the hypothesis that the effects of student mobility differ across different segments of the population. Finally, this study finds that transfer students who participate in sports and academic activities in the 12th grade experience more positive academic outcomes relative to transfer students who do not participate in these activities even after controlling for prior levels of academic achievement and educational expectations. The results of this study suggest that education policy should not encourage parents to transfer their children between school districts during high school, and schools should consider transfer students as a group of at-risk students that may need extra attention and assistance (particularly when selecting which courses in math and science to attend) in order to achieve academic success.
Back to Funded Dissertation Grants Page
|