Chronic absenteeism of young students often overlooked
By Ellie Ashford
01/09—Everyone knows children can’t learn if they’re not in school. Yet, many school board members are not aware that they might have schools with large percentages of “chronically absent” students.
This term refers to truants, but also includes students in the elementary grades who have excused absences due to illness, family problems, or other reasons. The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) defines a chronically absent student as one who misses 10 percent or more of the school year, regardless of whether an absence is excused or not.
The problem “has largely been overlooked,” reports Present, Engaged, and Accounted For, a study published in September by NCCP.
“Few elementary schools monitor the combination of excused and unexcused absence for individual students,” the report states. “High overall schoolwide attendance rates can easily mask significant numbers of chronically absent students.”
NCCP estimates one in 10 kindergarten and first-grade students is chronically absent nationally, although there is wide variation among districts and schools. For example, in one district cited in the report, 13.8 percent of students were considered to be chronically absent, while the rates among individual schools in that district ranged from 1 percent to 54.5 percent.
According to experts, it’s important to address this problem because students who are absent in elementary school are more likely to struggle academically, use drugs and alcohol, and eventually drop out.
And it also has an impact on a district’s budget. School board member Yolie Flores Aguilar, says the Los Angeles Unified School District loses $300 million a year due to students absent when the official enrollment is taken to determine state funding.
Many causes
The NCCP cites a number of factors that can contribute to high levels of absenteeism among young children, including poor communication with parents, insufficient monitoring of attendance, high mobility, parents who don’t value education or feel welcome in school, poverty, and high levels of violence in the community.
A recent report by the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, Missing School: The Epidemic of School Absence, notes that people tend to blame individuals -- “neglectful parents and/or lazy, undisciplined youths” -- when students don’t attend school.
But it found school district policies have also “contributed unintentionally to the wide-spread problem of poor school attendance in Baltimore,” where 34 percent of elementary students and 44 percent of high school students were chronically absent in 2006-07 school year.
These include weak and indifferent attendance policies and practices, including lack of follow-up with parents. And because frequently absent students tend to have low academic performance, the exclusive use of standardized test scores to measure school effectiveness offers schools little incentive for encouraging attendance.
Promising practices
A report on chronic absenteeism in the early grades in New York City published in October by the Center for New City School Affairs reports that some principals are working with community-based organizations to make schools more welcoming for students and their families and caretakers.
Principal Paul Cannon at Public School 104 in the Bronx, for example, set up the school’s lobby to look like a living room with a couch, chairs, and lamps. The school offers recreational and tutoring programs on evenings and weekends. Breakfast is served all morning, and the school has a stock room with uniforms, clothing, pencils, and books.
The Check & Connect program, created by the University of Minneapolis, offers a comprehensive approach that calls for at-risk students to be assigned a mentor who helps them stay connected with school, monitors their academic performance and attendance, provides tutoring, sometimes accompanies students to class, and makes sure they and their families are receiving the services they need.
“The cornerstone of the program is relationship building. The monitors do whatever it takes to help students find success at school,” says Colleen Kaibel, who directs the program for Minneapolis Public Schools.
The Baltimore school district has taken a number of steps to curb chronic absenteeism as part of a more comprehensive reform strategy. The district has six privately managed “transformation schools” that offer college prep or alternative curricula for grades 6-12 that keep students together with the same teachers and classmates for several years. Another nine will open next year.
Baltimore school board member Robert Heck says the district has seen an enrollment increase for the first time in 40 years. Heck praises Superintendent Andres Alonso for keeping in touch with parents and community groups. The district spent $15,000 per school to start PTAs at schools that didn’t have them.
The district reduced short-term suspensions from 10 to five days. “The best thing is for these kids to be in school,” Heck says.
The district also ended the practice of long-term suspensions for middle and high school students. In the past, some students had been sent home for 40 to 50 days with work packets. Instead, students are now sent to a Success Academy based at the district’s central office and spend part of the day at a nearby YMCA.
What can boards do?
The NCCP recommends school boards take a comprehensive response that includes high-quality early education, parent education, incentives for attendance offered to all children, early outreach to families with poor attendance, community engagement, and targeted assistance -- and a legal response if necessary -- to families in crisis.
Hedy Chang, co-author of NCCP report, says data gathering is an essential step in reducing chronic absence.
The Los Angeles Unified school system, which has high student mobility rates, is working on a system to create a “universal student identifier,” to track attendance for individual students as they move from school to school, Aguilar says.
Jane Sundias of the Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the author of several studies on the topic, recommends schools “have things in place, like free meals and sports programs, to entice reluctant students to come to school.” She also recommends making schools safe and engaging by ensuring every student is well known by at least one adult and by reinvigorating music and arts programs.
But a single-minded focus on test scores means other activities can fall by the wayside. “When principals are held accountable, and the only metric is test scores,” Sundias says, “how can they justify something like free breakfast or after-school programs?”
The New York City report recommends the city identify 50 to 100 schools with high rates of chronic absenteeism and establish “executive-level partnerships with outside organizations” to address the problem. A school where large numbers of students have asthma, for example, could partner with a community-minded hospital, and a school with many English language learners could partner with a community-based organization with a trusted reputation among immigrant families.
Aguilar believes it’s essential for board members to pay closer to attention to chronically absent students, particularly in the early years. If school leaders fail to take chronic absence seriously among young children, she says, “it sends a message that it is not important to be in school every day.”
NSBA’s National Affiliate program is sponsoring a free webinar on chronic absence on Jan. 14, featuring Hedy Chang, the co-author of Present, Engaged, and Accounted For, and Los Angeles school board member Yolie Flores Aguilar. For more information, visit www.nsba.org/webchannelNA.
Reproduced with permission from School Board News. Copyright © 2009, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789.