State schools chief Jack O’Connell announced this morning that the state is implementing a new “Migrant Student Information Exchange” system to help teachers and administrators keep track of students, their academic records and other information.

As described by the California Department of Education, the system is designed to help track students whose parents are seeking temporary or seasonal work in the agricultural, fishing or dairy industries. Students who arrive at a new school will be followed by the transcripts and records via a web-based portal that links each state’s migrant student record database that includes educational and health records.

With the new system, school staff will be able to quickly access the students’ previous enrollment records, course history and assessments to determine the most appropriate placement at the students’ new school, according to the state. In the past, the new school officials have had to wait for those records, slowing down the process of getting the student to the correct class, course of study.

Locally the problem of highly mobile student populations exists not necessarily because of seasonal agricultural work, but families who have lost homes, students who are commuting in from shelters and a host of other socio-economic related issues.

I wrote a story back in December about Steele Lane Elementary School’s dealing with a student population with 50 percent turnover year to year. Teachers there say it has happened that not one student who began the year in the fall made it to the end of the year.

(read that story here http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20091201/NEWS/912011005)

How do teachers cope with a constant change in students? How do students, especially young ones, handle such upheaval and how does that affect their academics?

Will the new Migrant Student Information Exchange System help them?

For more information on the new system, click here 

http://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/account/recordstransfer.html.