October 18th, 2010

Suburban Washington schools tackle school absences

We write alot in this space about Baltimore, because 1. They’ve got a big problem with chronic absence and 2. They’re doing some extraordinary things to reduce absenteeism there. But the city is not the only place in Maryland paying attention to student attendance. As Nick Anderson in  The Washington Post reported today, Prince George’s County schools are beginning to focus on absenteeism as a cause for student failure.

Some 19,000 elementary students were chronically absent in Maryland last year, missing 20 or more days of schools. In Prince George’s, a large D.C. suburb,  8 percent of elementary students are missing that much school.

 D.C. Superintendent Michelle Rhee said her principals are also starting to pay attention to the data. “These are in some ways the most vulnerable kids who could fall through the cracks,” Rhee told the Post. “We literally have a kid-by-kid count of which students at which schools have a certain number of unexcused absences.” 

Maryland is ahead of many states in that it requires schools to report the number and percentage of students who are chronically absent. The state Department of Education then posts that data on its website. It’s encouraging to see more schools acting on the data and using the information to improve attendance.

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October 14th, 2010

Early Attention to Attendance Key to Preventing Truancy Later

Education Week’s website featured a great story today on the efforts New York and Providence are making to tackle attendance problems in elementary school, before they turn into disengagement and truancy in the later grades. 

The point is summarized well in a quote from Kim Nauer, education project director at the Center for New York City Affairs:

 “Early attendance is essential; this is where you really want to work on them. By the time you get to 5th or 6th grade, you can really get a cascade effect that you can’t recover from. How much money do we spend in a school system on all of this recuperative stuff in high school—getting the kid back and reengaged—as opposed to making sure the kids don’t slip off in elementary school?”

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October 4th, 2010

Attendance Highlighted in Department of Education Visit to Baltimore

U.S. Department of Education officials came to Baltimore for two days last week as part of their youth listening tour, and students gave them an earful about school attendance. High school students displayed posters they created to urge other students to show up for school regularly and showed a video that included interviews with students about why they don’t come to class. The event at Tench Tilghman Elementary and Middle School turned into something of a pep rally for the middle school audience to attend school regularly. “Even if your absence is necessary, not going to school can hurt your grades and pile up the homework,” said one high school student. “Attendance is a good way of being accountable, and when you’re accountable, it means you’re responsible,” said another.

The visit, organized by the Elev8 Baltimore program in Baltimore, was featured in a broader story on chronic absence in Education Week on Friday. The story noted how Baltimore has shined a spotlight on attendance, with a multi-prong effort to reduce absences. Those include a new transportation initiative launched last week that encourages students to report when city buses don’t show up or arrive late. More than 30,000 students ride Maryland Transit Administration to school.

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