Attendance Works

January 23rd, 2012

Boston Analysis Underscores High School Absenteeism

The Boston media was buzzing last week about an analysis of chronic absence in high schools conducted by the Boston Globe. The story by James Vaznis revealed that one in three high school students missed 10 percent of school days last year. One in five missed 20 percent of the year, Boston’s definition of chronic absence.

Boston’s numbers are not unusual for urban districts, where chronic absence rates in high school often include a significant proportion of students who have been  struggling with academics and attendance since the early grades but whose problems were not identified and addressed early because schools only focus on truancy (unexcused absences) which often overlooks children missing too much school especially in kindergarten and 1^st grade. While the city encourages high school principals to work on attendance, the extent of the chronic absence problem is rarely discussed. Vaznis reports that the school district doesn’t regularly release such data, and he received the information only after repeated requests.

 High schools that pay attention to chronic absence can  turn attendance around. Consider, for instance, the Diplomas Now model used in  27 middle and  high  schools in 12 cities across the country. We recently featured the program in our What Works section.

Diplomas Now uses City Year corps members to mentor chronically absent students and help create a culture of attendance. They target indiviual students for special attention when they miss too many days, one of three indicators that a student is headed off track. T

he emphasis on school attendance is backed by research by Robert Balfanz, one of the nation’s leading dropout experts, who found that three-quarters of all dropouts can be identified as early as sixth grade due to poor attendance, poor behavior or failure in English or math. Working with administrators and teachers, Diplomas Now teams identify those students early and work to get them back on track.

In one New Orleans high school, the percentage of ninth graders missing 20 or more days of school dropped from 79 percent to 52 percent. In three Philadelphia middle schools, the number of students missing 40 or more days of school dropped 55 percent.

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