Bouncing from school to school: the housing crisis disrupts the classroom.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Cover Story

It's 8 A.M. on a September morning, three weeks into the school year, and a scared-looking second-grader is standing in the office at Miles Park School in Cleveland, Ohio, waiting to be enrolled.

"You don't know your last name, Billy?" the secretary, Ella Kirtly, asks, prompting him gently.

He shakes his head. "I forgot!" he squeaks, sounding panicked. He starts sucking his thumb.

"OK," says Kirtly. She's filling out forms, getting as much information from Billy as she can, and assigning him to a classroom. Late-starters like Billy are common here at Miles Park.

It's a school of mostly low-income students--90 percent receive free or reduced lunches, and many come from the local homeless shelters. Turnover is constant.

A student teacher, Janice Smallwood, leads Billy to his class. He's dragging his backpack behind him. Miss Smallwood asks what school he came from. Billy says he doesn't know. A group of older boys stop and stare at him as he walks down the hall.

By the end of this particular day, six children at Miles Park will have moved on or off the rolls. Two, Billy and his sister, were added when they registered this morning. Within hours, four other students officially transferred out. Not counted in the list of transferring students are the kids who signed up but never came to school, or those who simply disappeared without warning and can't be found. According to school district data, between 19 and 26 percent of the students at Miles Park move while school is in session. But principal Bill Bauer says that doesn't come close to telling the story. From one year to the next, most of the school's population can turn over, he says.

Miles Park and other urban schools are trying to cope with a revolving-door phenomenon created by a host of social ills, including a record shortage of low-cost housing. For many poor families, moving all the time has become a way of life. According to a 1994 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, one in six third-graders has switched schools at least three times since first grade. The effects on children's learning are dire.

According to a 1993 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), kids who move frequently are significantly more likely to fail a grade, and to have multiple behavioral problems. "The magnitude of the effect of frequent moves was comparable to that of minority race, parental education, or poverty," the study's authors found.

The impact of moving is worse when kids have other problems associated with poverty--unstable families, parents who have been in and out of jail, and shortages of food, clothing, and money to cover basic needs. Poor families are 50 to 100 percent more likely to move their children frequently (five or six times during their school years) than families that are not poor, the JAMA study found.

The problem of kids bouncing from school to school hasn't received the kind of attention focused on vouchers, teacher testing, or national standards. But it is one of the biggest problems our educational system faces.

NEA Today, the newspaper for members of the National Education Association, published an article in February 1998 called "Moving Targets: How do you educate kids who are here today and gone tomorrow?" The article includes tips like forming welcoming committees for new students, and using computer testing to place kids who have no academic records. Students and teachers tell stories about their valiant efforts to overcome the sense of powerlessness everyone feels when kids come and go.

At Miles Park, principal Bauer has struggled with the many problems faced by students with no permanent homes. With the help of a full-time social worker, a community liaison, a homeless shelter liaison, and a cadre of parent volunteers, he is trying to create some stability in the chaos of children's lives.

"You have to look at education more broadly than just teaching kids," says Bauer. "You have to understand what's going on in their homes, in their parents' lives." This morning he is standing in the hallway talking intently with a mother, who is homeless. Later, he will help find a case of Rid for another mother, who sent her three children to school with lice. He will drive the children with lice home, and on the way back to the school he'll pick up a group of kindergarteners and first-graders who are throwing rocks at cars. Their parents are nowhere to be found.

The school building itself--which sits in the middle of a deteriorated industrial neighborhood--is a physical monument to the triumph of hope over despair. From the outside, the building is not much to look at. The outer walls are a mass of cracking, crumbling concrete. The "playground" is just a gravel and asphalt parking lot. The swing sets have been stripped of swings because drug dealers used to hang around in them. But inside, you can see the results of a massive clean-up effort. When Bauer arrived four years ago, he got teachers, parents, and community volunteers to paint the rooms with bright colors. Plants now hang in all the hallways above all the lockers.

The best part of the school is its central courtyard, which used to be nothing but a mass of weeds. Today there is a tinkling little waterfall and a pond, complete with lily pads, goldfish, and a live turtle. Flowers planted along the walls attract Monarch butterflies. A weather station allows students to monitor temperature and barometric changes. Bauer organized volunteers to clear the place out, and a local developer, Nathan Zaremba, donated dirt. The Cleveland Botanical Society and the Episcopal church also pitched in to help with the beautification effort. Next, Bauer says he wants to do a complete renovation of the playground, with the help of private donations and foundation grants. He believes that if it is made over new in one sweeping effort, it will be less likely to be vandalized. Listening to Bauer talk passionately about plans for the playground, you get the impression that things are looking up.

Maintaining an open, positive...