School Financial Incentives and Student Mobility Analysis

DC, like many jurisdictions, ties school budgets to enrollment on a specific day in the fall of each year. While this provides school administrators with budgetary and operational stability, it also means that as students transfer in and out schools during the rest of the year, school budgets may not align with actual enrollment. We developed a statistical model to estimate whether a second “count day” in the spring would affect transfers in and out of schools. We found that student mobility had the potential to drastically increase or decrease depending on how the policy was structured and how much schools decide to focus on recruiting or retaining students.