Another aspect that measures the school environment is student stability.  As reported by each school, it is the percent of students in a school’s highest grade who were enrolled in the same school the previous year.  Student stability is an important component of the teaching and learning environment in the school.  High stability allows students to gain a degree of comfort and security in their school setting: make and retain friends, come to understand the expectations of teachers, and anticipate what each new grade level will entail.  Similarly, high stability allows teachers to get to know their students, communicate with one another about students’ needs, personalities, and potentials.  Low stability, on the other hand, can present challenges to both students and teachers. In general, there is a relationship between a community’s economic health and student stability.  Communities with high stability generally have socioeconomic vitality, parents with steady employment, and elevated levels of home ownership.  Therefore, relatively few families move in and out of the neighborhood and the school has social continuity.  Schools with low student stability, on the other hand, reflect economic uncertainty, where there is less regular employment, lower rates of home ownership, and more transience.  Here, families have to move more frequently as changing economic circumstances have a greater effect.

Given the recent economic recession, it is not surprising that, since its peak of 91% in 2007, student stability in NYS has been decreasing.  It is now at its lowest point (85%) of the five year period.  Long Island has higher student stability than the state.  While it too peaked in 2007 (at 94%), it declined to 92% in 2008 and has remained flat since.

Disaggregating student stability by poverty, again, reveals the compound inequalities suffered in poor schools.  Over the five years, average stability for low- and mid-poverty schools is almost identical and has remained essentially flat at approximately 94%.  In contrast, the effect of the recession on high poverty schools is stark.  For them, school stability peaked in 2008 at 81%, but then plummeted to 73% by 2010.  Clearly in terms of student turnover, the brunt of the recent economic downturn has been concentrated in LI’s poorer communities.