Attendance Works

May 17th, 2012

Missing Matters: New Study Estimates 5-7.5 Million Chronically Absent Students

An estimated 5 million to 7.5 million students miss nearly a month of school every year, a trend that goes largely unnoticed despite the devastating effects on student achievement, according to a new report  released today and featured in the New York Times.

“The Importance of Being in School,” compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center and the Get Schooled Foundation, offers the first national glimpse at the prevalence of chronic absenteeism in our schools.

Johns Hopkins researchers Robert Balfanz and his team studied trends in six states that have calculated their numbers: Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island.

Among the findings:

• A projected 10 to 15 percent of students nationwide are chronically absent, generally defined as missing 10 percent of school days.
• Chronic absenteeism affects students in urban, rural and suburban communities. In some urban districts, a third of the students are chronically absent, while poor rural areas are in the 25 percent range.
• The rates are highest in kindergarten and in the high school years.
• Children in poverty are more likely to be miss school regularly. In Maryland, more than 30 percent of poor children were chronically absent, compared to 12 percent of others.
• Chronically absent students tend to be concentrated in a relatively small number of schools. In Florida, 52 percent of chronically absent students were in just 15 percent of schools.

This research reinforces what we’ve found about the prevalence and pernicious effects of absenteeism on school performance. It also underscores how little attention is paid to this critical early warning sign. We hope that the report and the policy recommendations it offers will encourage more states and school district to start monitoring chronic absence data so they can intervene and prevent students from missing so much school they fall behind academically.

Parents and students can track absences on this online calculator on the Get Schooled website. Get Schooled is a nonprofit that runs nationwide Attendance Challenges to improve school attendance and high school graduation rates. Get Schooled also links to several of our tools for parents, schools and cities.

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May 10th, 2012

New York Launches “School Every Day NYC” Ad Campaign

The posters show children texting, playing handheld video games or just walking the streets of New York. The caption asks: It’s 9 a.m. Do you know where your where your kids are?”

New York City’s new ad campaign aims to alert parents to the consequences of chronic absenteeism. And it directs parents to a website where they can find government and nonprofit resources, borough by borough, to help them get their kids to school every day.

“Chronic absenteeism is often a child’s first step down the wrong path in life,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference today. “Many parents and guardains either don’t recognize the serious consequences of chronic absenteeism or don’t know what to do about it.”

The “School Every Day NYC” ad campaign builds on the work of Bloomberg’s Task Force on Truancy and Chronic Absenteeism, which has already seen improvements in attendance at its 50 pilot schools. The task force’s work combines public awareness–through celebrity wake-up calls and the new ads–with a mentoring program for at-risk students. (So far, students with mentors have attended 11,820 more days than similar students without help.) Businesses and community organizations are also working to improve attendance in targeted schools. The $9 million ad campaign was created chiefly by in-kind services and donations.

The mayor also announced a partnership with libraries across the city to combat chronic absence. Library staff will be trained to help parents access the on-line help center, and four times a year the city Department of Education staff will also meet parents in libraries to connect them to the information.

The ads direct viewers to text  “school” to 30364. Parents will then receive the website address and access to attendance information on their children and help centers. These centers will serve all parents, providing information on their children’s attendance and linking them to city agencies, as needed. Parents can also call 311, where operators can connect parents to computerized attendance information and can direct them to government resources.

The ad campaign, launched in collaboration with the Ad Council,  is expected to reach millions of New Yorkers, with a special focus on ads placed in communities with high rates of chronic absenteeism. The ads will be placed on 500 bus shelters, 50 newsstands, 5 million Metro Cards and other ad spaces. They expect to distribute 3,000 posters and 40,000 palm cards this spring, with another wave in the fall.

The  campaign is valued at $9 million, including pro bono creative production from the Publicis New York advertising campaign and free ad space in subway platforms and bus interiors donated by MTA. AT&T support the project with a $250,000 grant.

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April 24th, 2012

California schools chief, new handbook embrace chronic absence

We were delighted last May when California’s state schools chief Tom Torlakson agreed to join us for a forum on attendance last May. Since then he’s become a regular champion on the issue, speaking out on the need to intervene with children missing too much school and urging attendance boards across the state to pay particular attention to chronic absence data.

This week, the state posted a revised handbook for local School Attendance Review Boards (SARBs) that emphasizes the importance of looking at the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of school days and intervening to turn around problems early.

“Combating this is one of the best strategies for having students succeed, fighting the dropout rate and saving money,” he said at a recent news conference in San Diego, one of 11 model districts recognized for their successful efforts to improve attendance.

San Diego Unified, he noted, is one of the few large urban districts that has shown success improving attendance by tracking and addressing chronic absenteeism, rather than just truancy and average daily attendance. In his news release on the model districts, he emphasizes how important it is to count both excused and unexcused absences.

“While we need to address problems with truancy, we cannot overlook students and families that may need support due to health or emotional problems, or who may simply not realize the importance of regular school attendance, even in kindergarten,” he wrote.

Several other communities—including San Francisco, Oakland and various cities and counties involved in the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading Network—are beginning to track the chronic absence data, as well.

San Diego Unified’s efforts led to a one percentage point gain in average daily attendance, which may seem modest but it actually quite significant, the San Diego Union Tribune reported.  David Kopperud, chair of the State School Attendance Review Board said that improving attendance by a half-percent in one year would increase the district’s attendance revenue by $3 million.

He also stressed that San Diego Unified’s efforts to include student as early as kindergarten in its efforts.

“Kindergartners and first-graders can miss a few days of school, and it is easy to go unnoticed. They are often the same students who become truant or drop out later,” Kopperud told the newspaper. “It’s important to start this work before students are disengaged and before they hate school.”

The revised SARB handbook reflects many of the same themes as it provides information about how to expand the scope of the attendance practice by emphasizing prevention and chronic absence. The handbook:

• Stresses the importance of early identification
• Offers a three-tiered approach to improving attendance
• Provides sample letters to parents of chronically absent students
• Recommends that attendance boards develop a policy that requires schools with unusually high levels of chronic absence to develop plans for improving attendance.

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