Although we focus on attendance throughout the year, the
state has designated the month of September as high attendance month. We all know the importance of being in school
and being on time. We have heard of the
negative educational impact missing school has.
However, I didn’t realize to what degree until I read excerpts from the
following article.
As the debate
rages about the best way to fix America's public schools -- from heated
rhetoric on the role of standardized testing to wonkier discussions about the
intricacies of curricula -- a new report is
arguing that reformers have overlooked a game-changing solution: addressing
absenteeism.
While it may
seem obvious that students who miss more school would not perform as well as
other students, a new report released Tuesday shows just how much of a
difference attendance can make. According to the report, written by nonprofit
advocacy group Attendance Works, about 1 in 5 American students -- between 5 million and 7.5 million of them -- misses
a month of school per year. The report
suggests that missing
three or more days of school per month can set a student back from one to two
full years of learning behind his or her peers.
"All our investment in instruction and
Common Core and curriculum development will be lost unless kids are in school
to benefit from it," said Hedy Chang, the group's director and co-author
of the report.
The new study used survey data from the 2013
National Assessment for Education Progress, a standardized test administered by
the federal government, to compare students' absence rates with their
performance. Students who took NAEP were asked whether they missed no days, one
to two, three to four, five to 10, or more than 10 days of school over the last
month.
Predictably, the students who missed the most
school -- particularly those
absent for three or more days in the last month, the report's definition
of poor attendance -- had
the lowest test scores. "This is true at every age, in every
subject, in every racial and ethnic group and in every state and city
examined," according to the report. "While students from low-income
families are more likely to be chronically absent, the ill effects of missing
too much school hold true for all socio-economic groups."
In fourth-grade reading, students who missed
three or more days per month scored an average of 12 points lower on the NAEP
than their peers with perfect attendance, a number that Ginsburg calculates
represents more than a full year of schooling. Eighth-graders who reported
missing three or more days of school scored, on average, a full 18 points lower
on the test than their peers, which represents almost two full years of
learning, according to the report.
In fourth grade, students with disabilities
and high absenteeism saw an even steeper decline in scores: Those absent for
three or more days scored 16 points lower than those with perfect attendance.
In fourth-grade reading, the difference was 36 points between students with
disabilities who had perfect attendance and those who missed 10 or more days in
a school year. According to the report, that difference represents three and a
half years of learning lost. (The difference in reading scores among similar
cohorts of students without disabilities was 24 points.)
Students with disabilities also posted more
absences then other students. A national average of 26 percent of
fourth-graders with disabilities reported missing three or more days of school
in the previous month, as compared to 19 percent of fourth-grade students
without. "If you're going to narrow the performance gap, what you'd like
to do is offer [students with disabilities] extra assistance," said
Ginsburg. "You might expect these kids to get more time, and if you
measure time in terms of number of days in school, they're not getting it --
they're getting the reverse."
While school absenteeism can often be a
symptom of underlying issues such as poverty or a disruptive family life, Chang
said that some students who increasingly miss school do so because absenteeism
can be self-reinforcing. After missing several classes, Chang said, and as
students learn less and their performance suffers, they can become discouraged
and miss more days through causes such as truancy. Catching these students
early and engaging them, she said, can help address the problem.
Scott County 9th
Grade School’s attendance for the month of August is 95.79. Currently, as of 9/14/14, our attendance
rate is 94.88.
