In Reply
In a Letter to the Editor, Odom insightfully notes that school mobility is an understudied factor that may influence adolescent health by disrupting adolescent social networks and reducing their social capital. Alternatively, mobility may be a marker for risky behaviors, as students often change schools because of academic or behavioral difficulties. In the Reducing Inequities Through Social and Educational Change Follow-up (RISEUp) Study,1 we found that students who won the admissions lottery and were offered a spot in a high-performing charter school were less likely than lottery losers to engage in substance use and also less likely to change schools during the study period. Odom is correct that we looked only at whether students moved schools and not the type of move. However, because we examined school mobility as an outcome, this variable definition choice did not affect the analyses of any other outcomes.
Nevertheless, we agree that it is important to better under stand both the type of school moves observed in our sample and the reasons for those moves. Overall, 266 of 1270 students (20.9%) changed high schools by the end of 11th grade, and 228 of these students (85.7%) changed schools more than once, for a total of 494 school moves. Only a handful of participants moved out of the Los Angeles area (less than 0.5%). Students reported their reason for changing schools in 378 of 494 moves(76.5%).The most common reason cited for moving was a desire for a better academic environment (111 of 378 moves [29.4%]), followed by wanting to be closer to home (78 [20.6%]), moving homes (73 [19.3%]), low grades (40 [10.6%]), extracurricular activities (29 [7.7%]), friends (21 [5.6%]), safety (15 [4.0%]), and disciplinary problems (11 [2.9%]). Interestingly, in most cases where data was available (112 of 177 moves [63.3%]), students moved to a school with a lower Academic Performance Index score.2
Studies suggest nuanced and complex social implications of moving during adolescence that may differ by race/ ethnicity,socioeconomicstatus,andsex.3,4 For example, the Moving to Opportunities study,5 which randomized poor families to receive housing vouchers, found that moving to a more wealthy neighborhood with higher-quality schools improved educational and health out comes for young children 12 years or younger. However, among older children aged 13 to 18 years, moving did not help and may have even led to worse mental health problems among boys.2 Further, when such youth moved back into less safe environments, they lacked the deep knowledge and long-standing social ties they needed to maintain their safety.
Together, these studies demonstrate that the health implications of school and neighborhood mobility are not fully understood and are difficult to separate. Future areas we hope to explore in the RISE Up sample include whether school mobility is directly associated with risky behaviors; whether this relationship varies by student factors, such as sex, race/ethnicity, the type or quality of school, or the reason for moving schools; and whether the association of winning the admissions lottery with substance use was mediated in part by a decrease in school mobility.
Acknowledgments
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Dudovitz has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and LA Trust for Children’s Health. Dr Chung has received grants from the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Health Resources and Services Administration, and Lucille Packard Foundation. Dr Wong has received grants from the National Institutes of Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Contributor Information
Rebecca N. Dudovitz, Department of Pediatrics and Children’s Discovery, & Innovation Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, University of California, Los Angeles.
Paul J. Chung, Department of Pediatrics and Children’s Discovery, & Innovation Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, University of California, Los Angeles; Department of Health Policy and Management, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles; Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, Pasadena, California.
Mitchell D. Wong, General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, University of California, Los Angeles.
References
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