New:

California posted a revised handbook for local School Attendance Review Boards (SARBs) that emphasizes the importance of looking the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of school days and intervening to turn around problems early. Read more about the handbook and the state’s commitment to chronic absence tracking in this blog post. 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.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Policy Forum: May 2011

Taking Attendance Seriously: Promoting School Success by Preventing Chronic Absence

Attendance Works, in collaboration with  the Chronic Absence and Attendance Partnership, co-sponsored a policy forum on chronic absence in California in May 2011. The forum was hosted by Tom Torlakson, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

PowerPoint Presentation for California

Statewide Policy

  • Legislation: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) signed legislation in September 2010 that encourages districts to collect chronic absence data and add the data to the CALPADS longitudinal student data base. This supports an early warning system for identifying students at high risk of dropping out. See analysis about the law.
  • State Attendance Review Boards: State compulsory education laws established State Attendance Review Boards at the local, county and state levels. In general, SARBs have focused on addressing challenges facing students who are truant. However, after a presentation by Attendance Works, the state board has been developing new guidelines that would strongly encourage local boards to add chronic absence to their annual reports. The extent to which local SARBs review and use chronic absence data will also be considered in selecting the annual model SARB. Learn more here.

Local  Policy

  • San Diego: Recognizing the need to get local policymakers on board, the Children’s Initiative made monitoring student absences a key element of its local county report card.
  • San Francisco: The school board adopted a resolution calling on the San Francisco Unified School District superintendent to analyze chronic absence rates and create a pilot program to reduce absences at several struggling schools
  • Oakland: The mayor’s Education Cabinet brings together education leaders, social service agencies, higher education leaders, workforce development providers and foundations to address Oakland’s critical education needs. One of the cabinet’s top priorities: reducing chronic absence. The cabinet recently reviewed a data analysis that showed one in seven students is missing 10 percent of the school year, with information broken down by grade, race, ethnicity and poverty level. The analysis, supported by philanthropic dollars, also mapped attendance by census tracts.
  • Grade-Level Reading Network: Sixteen California communities are working with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading to increase the number of low-income third graders who read proficiently. One of the community solutions they are all pursuing is reducing chronic absence in the early grades. The communities submitted action plans in March 2012 and will be implementing plans starting in the fall. The communities involved are:
  • Berkeley                   Oakland
  • Buena Park              Richmond
  • Capitola                    Sacramento
  • Chula Vista              Salinas
  • Fresno                      San Francisco
  • Kern County            San Jose
  • Los Angeles             Stockton
  • Long Beach             Truckee/Tahoe