Education Law

Lost learning

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but when we're talking school, it does nothing for the brain. That's why BoardBuzz was so distressed to come across a startling report in the New York Times which found that 20 percent of the city's elementary students missed at least one month of classes last year. Say what? That's one in five schoolchildren. By high school, that figure balloons to 40 percent of teenagers who miss one month or more of school.

It doesn't require a lot of imagination to understand the impact of such absenteeism. You can't teach kids who aren't there. And weak attendance doesn't just lead to academic failure. Chronically absent students are more likely to feel like strangers in the school.This double whammy -- failing grades and disengagement -- are the two most powerful signals that this kid is on the way toward dropping out altogether.

As with many things in education, the key is to get kids and their families to understand the importance of being in school early on. And there's no single solution. According to the article,

At Public School 55, where 20 percent of the students were chronically absent, the principal, Luis Torres, said he had worked to expand a school health clinic so children would not have to miss a full day to visit the doctor. He also hired an outreach counselor to work with immigrant parents to explain that every school day really mattered.

?Other times, it was just that it was raining,? Mr. Torres said. ?I had to say, ?I understand that it?s raining, but that?s not a reason not to come to school.? And then I just had to get them an umbrella. Sometimes it?s really just as simple as that.?

But seemingly simple problems are not so simple to solve. At Public School 146, one and a half miles from P.S. 55, 36 percent of the students missed at least 20 days last year, and the principal said absences routinely spiked on Mondays and Fridays. The authors of the report hypothesized that Public School 2, also in Morrisania, had a high rate of chronic absences last year, more than 40 percent, because it moved to a new building. And nearby at Public School 140, attendance averaged 94 percent in September and October but dropped to 80 percent in June.

?It really is about training a mind-set that you need to be at school every day,? said Paul Cannon, principal of P.S. 140, where overall attendance improved to 90 percent last year from 85 percent in 2002-3.

Chronic absenteeism is more likely to occur in high-poverty schools, but it is certainly not limited to them. The Center for Public Education reports that nationally 45 percent of teachers say that it is a moderate or major problem in their school. (The Center provides data for your state here.)

NSBA also has many resources to inform effective policies for improving student attendance such as school health, school climate, and preventing drop outs.

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on October 21, 2008 (boomark / email).