Student Turnover Confounds Efforts to Meet 'No Child' Standards

Gautham Ravichandran, who said he has lived in "about 17 places because of my dad's work with software," remembers joining Silton's class on Feb. 14, expecting that everyone would get valentines except him. "I was new, and they didn't know me," he said.

But he got a stack. Silton, anticipating the problem early that morning, had all the children make cards for their new classmate before he walked in.

One thing the teachers say they don't worry much about is making sure new students are accepted by their peers: Most McNair students know what it feels like to be the new kid.

On a hot June afternoon, most of the children in Silton's class started to play kickball on the school's basketball court during recess. Anita Pathammavong, who had transferred from another Fairfax school in May, lagged behind.

Moments later, Mohmed Mudather wandered over with a Frisbee. "Hey, Anita -- want to play?" he asked, drawing her into a game.

Anita, who emigrated from Laos in 2001, has been a student at four Fairfax schools because her family has moved several times in search of affordable housing. She said that her first few days at McNair were difficult but that it didn't take long to feel part of the class.

"It was kind of sad, because my best, best friend was at Bonnie Brae [Elementary School], and I kind of miss her," Anita said. "But it's kind of fun because I have lots of new friends."

In Fairfax County, where about 166,000 children attend school, about 12,700 enrolled sometime after the first week of the 2003-04 school year, the most recent year for which data are available. About 5,700 were new immigrants, private-school children or others who hadn't attended a U.S. public school that year. About 1,800 moved from public schools in another state. Nearly 4,000 switched schools within the county. During the school year, about 13,400 left Fairfax schools.

Other districts experience similar churn. According to a July 2004 report by the Maryland State Department of Education, more than a half-million students in the state -- about 13 percent -- transferred to a different school between 1998 and 2002.

Immigration fuels much of the flux in Washington area schools, officials said, because many families begin their lives in the United States by staying with relatives or friends before settling into an apartment or a home. With the high cost of housing, some families jump from rental to rental. Other children move because their parents change jobs or divorce.

Another of Silton's students, Tamanna Sahni, started at McNair toward the end of September after arriving from India, where she had been staying with her grandparents while her mother completed a master's degree.

Tamanna said she quickly made a friend who lent her books to read.

But this year, she'll attend school in Loudoun County, because her family moved from a Herndon condominium to a townhouse in South Riding.