The crucial issue of providing effective schooling for transient students has not been systematically addressed at the school, community, state, or federal levels. Neither have sustained programmatic nor policy solutions been developed to deal with what is one of the most urgent social and educational issues facing our communities today. Moreover, effective schooling has been too narrowly conceptualized to address the comprehensive social, economic, and academic needs of mobile children. This is an extraordinarily vulnerable population along many dimensions. Their school instability is compounded by high mobility from community to community and, thus, by infrequent or sporadic availability of supportive social services. Transient families are not a monolithic group and so they experience a tremendous range in the types and degrees of services they may need. Moreover, the magnitude of their needs, their entry into new schools and communities-schools and communities that are already stretched to meet the needs of their longer term residents-heightens this instability and strains the resources of the schools and communities in which they reside. The lives of the poor has been well documented, and it is undisputed that they are often characterized by residence in high crime areas, limited access to social and medical institutions designed to mediate the effects of poverty, and, for the children, disproportionately low academic achievement. Highly mobile families experience each of these conditions even more severely than the poor generally do. Moreover, they are rarely the subjects of sustained educational interventions; not surprisingly, educators tend to give priority to the more manageable needs of their relatively stable clientele. The major education reforms put forward-smaller classes and schools, lower teacher/ student ratios, better-trained teachers, improved physical plant and facilities, the increased emphasis on testing and accountability, etc.-all are seriously undermined, if not made irrelevant, if the classroom is a revolving door. (There is, however, some evidence that recognizing the challenge faced by these children and families and creating a more supportive school environment can reduce some types of classroom turnover.) Moreover, the phenomenon of frequent nonpromotional school change is disproportionately experienced by students whom the educational system is most likely to fail: low-income, minority, immigrant, homeless, special education, farmworker, and foster children. And it is not only the frequent movers who suffer. The stable students in a classroom afflicted with high transience experience serious educational and social disruptions. The teaching staff is affected as well, by necessarily retarding classroom progress, dealing with a shifting population that inhibits knowledge of and connection to students, and generally producing a less satisfying teaching experience. Typically, teachers have received little training (through preservice programs or professional development) in how to address the needs of these children. The 14 articles that comprise this special issue of The Journal of Negro Education are designed to provide a comprehensive, detailed picture of the problem, as well as to point to solutions, both at the local level of best practices and the larger systemic changes needed if we are to reduce the incidence of and damage done by disruptive transiency. Our aim is to bring this problem onto the front burner of public policy. While there is considerable literature on the issue (as evidenced by the useful, often lengthy reference lists accompanying the articles that follow), a corresponding level of attention to dealing with the problem has been lacking. With this special issue, we hope to see the beginning of a multipronged advocacy effort to bring about needed change.1 A key observation about school instability is that, largely, it is a function of residential instability: The families of highly mobile schoolchildren move frequently, for a range of reasons, most of which are disruptive, rather than planned and desired. …