Transiency

Transciency is an issue I never realized would be such a big deal as a teacher. Obviously, I knew that urban populations are highly mobile and move around a lot... however, I was staggered by the statistics even in the students I teach.

I was looking at our mastery tracker, where we keep up with how well the kids know each of our science standards. When a student leaves our school, their name stays on the tracker (in case they come back) but their scores are obviously blank. Today, I counted the blanks.

THIRTY THREE students have left our school since August. Our total number of students is roughly the same. That means we've gotten about thirty new students in the same time period.

That number (33) does not include three students who left but then came back at some point during the year.

That is almost 20% of the students I teach.

20% turnover!!!!

It is a fight to establish a consistent classroom culture...

Assuming that the same statistics apply to our school, we have had almost 100 students leave and 100 new students arrive throughout the course of the year. It's a fight to establish a school culture!!

And it's only January... who knows what those numbers will be by May.

Holy cow. One more reason why Memphis needs excellent teachers-- to counter the effects of lost instruction and time in school due to high transiency.