The students aren’t staying put.

Not in Columbus, a district that has long struggled with a student population that often changes schools. Not in many suburban central Ohio schools either. And not among charter schools, where just a few in this area have stable populations, according to a first-of-its kind look at kindergarten-through-12th-grade student mobility in Ohio.

The large-scale study followed individual students statewide as they switched schools in recent years, and it paints a picture of instability for many districts that have seemed stable. In the Columbus area, over a two-year period ending in 2011, nearly 19,000 students moved between districts, and roughly 20,000 other kids moved between districts and charter schools. There are about 280,000 students in the area.

The sheer volume of movement — especially in suburban schools — is stunning, the researchers say. It can hurt schools and the children they’re trying to teach, said Roberta Garber, executive director of Columbus-based Community Research Partners, which conducted the study over the past year. Researchers excluded students from the study if they had withdrawn or re-enrolled in a school within the same 30-day period. That was an effort to ensure they were considering only students who had moved.

“The big picture is, if children are changing schools frequently, particularly during the school year but even in the summer, the likelihood is that they won’t do as well academically. The other piece of it is ... if it’s a school that has a lot of churn, it makes it harder for teachers to teach and it hurts the stable students,” Garber said.

But “you can’t shake your head and say, ‘Gosh, it’s bad.’ This is powerful data that can be used in a real-time sort of way.”

The study pinpoints the degree of student movement, including where they’re moving to and from. It also addresses the damage school-switching inflicts on students’ learning. Among the key findings:

• Even when controlling for poverty and race, Columbus students did worse on state math and reading tests with each move they made, even if they switched schools over the summer instead of in the middle of the year.

• While Columbus is one of the least-stable districts in central Ohio, Groveport Mad-

ison, Whitehall and Hamilton have nearly as much student mobility (and more for some age groups). About 1 in 3 students in those districts moved within two years.

• Only five of the 53 bricks-and-mortar charter schools in the Columbus area were able to keep at least 70 percent of their students for the two-year study period.

• The South-Western, Hilliard, Groveport Madison, Reynoldsburg, Dublin and Hamilton districts are particularly mobile. In fact, there were more than 7,000 exchanges between the area’s largest districts, excluding Columbus.

“Anybody on the front lines is not going to be surprised that there’s mobility. They see it all the time. What will surprise and interest them is the form it is taking. There’s so much mobility between the districts, in charter schools and in adjoining suburban districts,” said Mark Real, president and CEO of KidsOhio. The Columbus nonprofit group studies education issues.

Bexley, Grandview Heights and Upper Arlington are exceptions; students there don’t move much, the study shows.

Several years ago, when charter schools were relatively new and vouchers weren’t available statewide, Columbus began studying its student mobility. The district is slightly more stable now than then. And, when compared with the state’s 14 other “major urban” school districts, about half have less-stable student populations than Columbus does.

Still, during the 2010-11 school year alone, researchers found that 23.5 percent of Columbus’ high-school-student population turned over. The statewide median rate was 11 percent.

The new information about how often children are moving (and where they’re going) will raise some difficult questions, said Terry Ryan, vice president for Ohio programs and policy at the Dayton-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.

For example, he said, is school choice encouraging student mobility? Columbus is an open-enrollment district and allows children to attend schools outside their neighborhoods. There also are dozens of charter schools; thousands of students use vouchers to attend private schools using public money.

“Big ideas emerge out of this. It’s no longer enough for Columbus City Schools to try to figure this out on their own,” Ryan said. “I don’t think what we’re seeing here is something that’s going to be resolved by simple answers. I don’t think it’s something as simple as, ‘Oh, let’s have a unified curriculum across schools. Let’s do away with choice.’

“I think the answer is going to be complicated and will require groups of people to talk together who in the past haven’t talked together.”

jsmithrichards@dispatch.com