Between 2013 and 2014, Attendance Matters said there were 985 fewer students who were counted as chronic absentees, while the number of students with ideal records increased to 103, up from 88.
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A new report on chronic school absenteeism says half of the country’s chronically absent kids are in just in 4% of school districts – including Detroit, where more than half the kids in the city’s school system are chronically absent.
Poor students are the most likely to accumulate absences, but students of color and those with disabilities are also disproportionately affected.
According to analysis by Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center, both national initiatives to improve school attendance, nearly half of all chronically absent students – or students who miss 10 percent or more of all instruction time in an academic year – attend only 4 percent of the nation’s school districts and New Haven is one of them.
“Until recently, (chronic absenteeism has) been a largely overlooked factor contributing to the challenges we face in improving student outcomes”, said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works during the conference call for media. It marked the first time that the biennial survey of school districts included a question on excessive absences. In fact, 31 percent of students were chronically absent, according to the city’s own analysis using the federal definition. Researchers found that about 13 percent of students miss three or more weeks of school each year. “By middle and high school, it is a sure-fire predictor of kids being on the path to drop out”. She said poverty is the leading reason children miss school.
They say chronic absenteeism is when a child has been absent between 19 to 29 days, which they say is actually very common. In the state’s second largest district, Cranston, 18 percent of students missed at least 15 days of school a year. It is also based on additional statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics.
Where is chronic absenteeism in schools an issue, and what can be done to address it?
In the debut year, the average Tri-City middle schooler missed 12 days of school. It found that for black, Latino, American Indian, and multiracial high school students, roughly 20 percent or more were chronically missing from class.
Some districts have challenged their inclusion in the report and the federal data.
“We looked at our own chronic absenteeism data and we were concerned”, Harries said.
“There’s no denying that kids are absent, and we want to bridge the gap”, said Yakima School District spokeswoman Kirsten Fitterer. The DOE is working to promote awareness about the importance of regular attendance in school by outreach to schools and other stakeholders.
“We are implementing family and community engagement strategies”, said Mychael Dickerson, a spokesman for the school system. “Most people do not realize that just missing two days a month can throw you off track for academic success”. Students who are learning English are 1.2 times less likely to be chronically absent. It’s now grown to cover 15 middle schools in seven Mid-Columbia districts, reaching almost 12,000 students. Those 654 districts are spread across 47 states and the District of Columbia.
Even suburbs that do well on academic measures overall may have large numbers of students who are chronically absent.
Urban districts with high poverty rates tend to have higher rates of absenteeism.
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However, as the report noted, not every state counted absences the same. In the early grades, students who are chronically absent have lower reading and math achievement.
