Purpose of Viewing Dynamic Cohorts, Overview
Cohorts provide a great opportunity to follow a selected group of students’ data longitudinally. With this longitudinal data, we can meaningfully inquire into the data, break it apart into groups, and analyze it.
DPI can create public dynamic cohorts more easily than it can create filter options for each dashboard. Dynamic cohorts allow you to quickly and easily focus in on a narrower scope of dashboard data.
We hope school districts continue to look for ways to improve student outcomes. When you are able to filter and break up data in new ways, you gain a new perspectives, find issues, and discover opportunities for improvement.
Mobile Students Cohort:
Definition of Mobile Students Cohort: Mobile Students are those students who:
- Transferred schools between the Third Friday of September and the end of the school year (in the prior year), OR
- Had a gap in enrollment of equal to or greater than 30 days.
- This gap can be a result of:
- Changing schools within a district
- Changing schools within two or more districts
- Changing from public school/s to private school/s, including a change to home-based private education (i.e., home schooling)
DPI uses the Months in School/District/State data element to determine a student's "full academic year" (FAY) status in a school or district. If FAY is "true" for a student, meaning they spent the full academic year in the same school or district, then that student is not mobile. If FAY is "false" for a student, that student is mobile.
Purpose of Mobile Students Cohort: This cohort provides data on students who changed schools in the prior school year and allows educators to examine equitable outcomes across various student performance indicators.
In WISEdash for Districts, break down data to see test scores, for example, for only mobile students or only non-mobile students using the "FAY District" or "FAY School" filters, as pictured in the screenshot below:
Best Times of Year to View this Cohort Data: Mobile status may impact enrollment records, and enrollment is a demographic data element that can impact Year End status for the December snapshot. However, this cohort group is not intended to be used for data quality auditing.
Rather, use the cohort data to identify problems anytime an LEA needs to analyze any data specific to these sets of students.
- For example, schools could use this cohort group to determine what effects mobility (i.e., transferring students, “transient” students, students hopping from school to school to school) has on student performance (e.g., graduation rates, Forward or ACT test scores).
- If there is a correlation, is the student performance better, the same or worse than non-mobile students?
- How does the data differ for students who have been mobile for one year versus students who have been mobile for multiple years?
- If a problem is identified, why is that and how does the LEA alleviate this?
- How will the LEA process that information to affect educational equity and policies in schools?
FAQs, Details, and Points to Note
Additional DPI resources:
Student Mobility Data Guide:
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has released the Forum Guide to Student Mobility Data (NFES 2026-001). This guide provides best practices for measuring, collecting, and using student mobility data to support students who change schools.
Didn't Find What You Needed?
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If the question you’ve been trying to answer isn’t showing up on our training or web materials, please open a Help Ticket.
Help Ticket for WISEdash - when the ticket is open, select WISEdash for Districts from the Applications drop-down menu.
If there are other public dynamic cohorts you would like DPI to consider creating, please fill out the Submit Feedback form.