In the article, Student Mobility: A negligible and confounded influence on student achievement, researcher Dan Wright, “examined the effect of student mobility on achievement test scores” (Wright 1999, 347). Risk factors such as low family income, and ethnic minority status were reviewed and were found to have a great influence on the factors of mobility being tested. Wright perceived the effects of student mobility had, “broad implications beyond student achievement (Wright 1999, 348).

Participants for the study were third and fourth grade students in a total of 33 elementary schools, all of which were located in a large urban school district in the Midwest. All 33 of the schools have completed state and national standardized tests prior to the study. The student demographic included, 68% ethnic minority status, and 71% were eligible for free or reduced lunch programs.

Wrights objective in conducting the study was to, “examine and compare the influences of two distinct aspects of mobility; moving either into or out of the district (location mobility), and moving either before or after the spring assessments (temporal mobility) (Wright 1999, 348). The two types of mobilities being assessed were associated with different types of research question. In order to answer the first Wright conducted, “a series of univariate, two factor analyses of variance (ANOVA’s)” (Wright 1999, 349). He used location and temporal mobility as independent variables, and the four achievement measures were used as dependent variables.

I found the group of participants used in the study to be very beneficial. The age range Wright chose (third and fourth graders) was helpful to the study because in my mind these would be the students who would have been most affected by a change in mobility. They are at the age where they are old enough to realize what is going on and can easily be affected by a change. Especially a change in their schooling.