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Lesson 4.8

Attendance:
Don't Miss School!

When kids miss school, it’s usually because…

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School is required for children in California beginning in first grade, but huge numbers of elementary school children miss an awful lot of school.

The reasons are generally mundane. Parents or caregivers can fail to get kids to school for all sorts of reasons.

Children who miss school can fall behind quickly, and schools are generally not equipped to support family interventions that can make a difference.

Did a student miss school? Take it as a warning sign

Parents have a legal responsibility to get their kids to school. It is easy to think of truancy, which is defined as "missing more than 30 minutes of instruction without an excuse three times during the school year" as a law enforcement issue — a problem of willful teenagers. But most truancy is better thought of as absenteeism or just students who miss school.

The school system in California is set up to take attendance very seriously because early absenteeism predicts later problems, including failing to graduate high school. Districts need to address absenteeism early and often. School Attendance Review Boards (SARBs) work to enforce attendance.

Read more in the Ed100 blog.

Most kids never miss school, or miss it rarely. When districts focus on improving attendance, they need to focus on students or groups of students who miss school the most, especially in early grades. To help drive focus on this issue, in 2018 California began collecting data about chronic absenteeism in grades K-8 for the California School Dashboard. You can read much more about that in our blog post on Attendance and absenteeism.

Enrollment vs. attendance

The school finance system in California has been designed with a powerful incentive to keep students in school: it funds school districts on the basis of Average Daily Attendance (ADA), rather than on the number of students enrolled. This is also a part of the reason why schools take attendance every day. Districts take this very seriously. Most states base funding on enrollment, not attendance — California is one of only a handful of states that enforce attendance through the school finance system.

Because attendance directly affects school district finances, districts have a big incentive to boost it. Investments that increase attendance can pay for themselves quickly if they work. For example, effective attendance-management systems enable school office staff to call parents of absent students by lunchtime.

In 2018-19 about 750,000 California students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more school days (or 10% or more school days in the school year). This level of absence from school correlates with all kinds of bad outcomes, including failure to finish high school. According to a 2016 report of the State Attorney General's office, 82% of those in prison in America are high school dropouts.

To find out the absence rate in your school district, check out this interactive map. Chronic absenteeism data is also available on the California Department of Education (CDE) DataQuest web site. The reports indicate chronic absenteeism rates of schools and school districts and which student subgroups have the highest chronic absenteeism rates.

AttendanceWorks infographicThe infographic above, from Attendance Works, breaks down the risks of chronic absence from school for young students. (Click for full size to see the impact on reading for kids who miss many days in kindergarten and first grade.)

California's strict attendance rules are a hardship for student organizations and athletic groups. For example, even students that serve on school boards or as advisors in school accreditation teams need permission to attend meetings during school hours. School districts receive funding based on attendance; in 2018 each missed day, regardless of the cause, cost the district about $75.

Pandemic effects

In 2020, the pandemic threw a giant wrench into the connection between funding and attendance. Suddenly, the priority was no longer physical attendance, rather it was online engagement. Huge numbers of students lacked access to a computing device or stable internet. Even in normal times, students in poverty or living in rural areas generally miss school at higher rates, which in turn suppresses school funding in those areas. Attendance became a fixture of California's education finance system in the middle of the 20th century. In the context of the pandemic, leaders re-evaluated the long-discussed change of switching to using enrollment-based funding formulas, as a majority of states do. For the 2019-2020 school year, the state used attendance data to calculate school funding. With kids back in person, the state switched back to using average daily attendance, its pre-pandemic policy.

Suspended

Sometimes students miss school because of their behavior. Out of school suspensions and expulsions are a tool that schools use to punish students and maintain order in schools. However, these disciplinary approaches also keep kids from learning, especially those kids whose achievement is of the greatest concern.

The California Endowment has been a leading voice in creating a movement to find other ways to address student misbehavior. They argue that suspensions are largely counterproductive, and that it is better to "suspend" students in a way that keeps them in a learning environment. A study of school suspension practices by the ACLU in 2018 found that students in America miss about 11 million days of school annually due to suspensions. The rate of suspensions is significantly lower in California than in other states, but varies by county.

Next Steps

Parents and PTAs can help get kids to class on time and not miss school. From creating a regular bedtime routine to making sure backpacks are ready to go in the morning, time-proven strategies really work, if parents know about them. Attendance Works provides useful web-based handouts for preschool, elementary, middle and high school in several languages.

This lesson concludes the Ed100 coverage of the topic of Time as a lever for educational success. This is a good moment to reiterate the organizing framework of Ed100: Education is Students and Teachers spending Time in Places for Learning with the Right Stuff in a System with Resources for Success. So Now What?

The next series of lessons picks up the topic of places for learning, including primers about neighborhood schools, charter schools, and learning beyond the classroom.

Updated July 2017, December 2017, January 2018, October 2018, June 2019, May 2020, December 2021.

Quiz

Regarding attendance, which ONE statement is FALSE:

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Questions & Comments

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user avatar
Carol Kocivar April 26, 2023 at 8:00 pm
California’s Nutrition Safety Net
from the Public Policy Institute of California

The state’s three largest nutrition programs—CalFresh, WIC, and school meals—serve almost 4 million California households. This fact sheet offers a snapshot of these programs and their impact on poverty.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-nutrition-safety-net/?utm_source=ppic&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=epub
user avatar
Carol Kocivar April 26, 2023 at 7:00 pm
Attendance Works and PACE released the report Examining Disparities in Unexcused Absences Across California Schools which shows how overuse of the “unexcused” label for absences could be deepening education inequities and interfering with efforts to improve attendance.

https://www.attendanceworks.org/new-report-how-do-unexcused-absences-disrupt-efforts-to-improve-attendance/
user avatar
Carol Kocivar March 24, 2023 at 4:40 pm

Absenteeism and Truancy in California Schools: PACE March 2023

The report makes several recommendations, including using attendance data to identify disparities and bright spots; strengthening monitoring of reasons for absences; updating policies related to unexcused absences; improving communication of attendance policies to students and families; and investing in professional development to improve attendance practices.
https://edpolicyinca.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=dcb5c37ddafe5d3418812162d&id=5421e5b98d&e=d78a703d24
user avatar
Carol Kocivar March 24, 2023 at 4:40 pm

Absenteeism and Truancy in California Schools: PACE March 2023

The report makes several recommendations, including using attendance data to identify disparities and bright spots; strengthening monitoring of reasons for absences; updating policies related to unexcused absences; improving communication of attendance policies to students and families; and investing in professional development to improve attendance practices.
https://edpolicyinca.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=dcb5c37ddafe5d3418812162d&id=5421e5b98d&e=d78a703d24
user avatar
Carol Kocivar August 4, 2022 at 2:11 pm
Absences related to pandemic and declining enrollment

The state 2022-23 Budget invests $2.8 billion ongoing and $413 million one-time Proposition 98 General Fund to cushion the financial blow of increased absences.

The Budget allows school districts to use the greater of current year or prior year average daily attendance or an average of the three prior years’ average daily attendance to calculate LCFF funding.

The Budget also enables all classroom-based local educational agencies that can demonstrate they provided independent study offerings in fiscal year 2021-22 to be funded at the greater of their current year average daily attendance or their current year enrollment adjusted for pre-COVID-19 absence rates in the 2021-22 fiscal year.
user avatar
Carol Kocivar August 4, 2022 at 2:03 pm
The 2022-23 state invests $2.8 billion ongoing and $413 million one-time Proposition 98 General Fund to help schools struggling with loss of revenue because of absences related to the pandemic and declining enrollment.

The Budget allows school districts to use the greater of current year or prior year average daily attendance or an average of the three prior years’ average daily attendance to calculate LCFF funding.

The Budget enables all classroom-based local educational agencies that can demonstrate they provided independent study offerings to students in 2021-22 to be funded at the greater of their current year average daily attendance or their current year enrollment adjusted for pre-COVID-19 absence rates in the 2021-22 fiscal year.
user avatar
Carol Kocivar June 14, 2022 at 12:50 pm
Attendance-Based Funding for Schools: LAO Fiscal Outlook Attendance Projections
Three Major Drivers of LAO Projected Attendance Changes
• Longstanding declines in the school aged population. Project a reduction of 170,000 students by 2025-26.
• Recovery of pandemic-related declines. Assume increase equivalent to 140,000 students by 2025-26.
• Increased Transitional Kindergarten enrollment. Assume 230,000 additional students by 2025-26.
https://lao.ca.gov/handouts/education/2021/Attendance-Based-Funding-113021.pdf
user avatar
Carol Kocivar June 14, 2022 at 12:40 pm
Enrollment and Attendance Declines Have Been Steeper During the Pandemic. Private school enrollment data do not suggest large shifts in enrollment from public to private schools. These enrollment declines, however, have now occurred for two consecutive years and may suggest a steeper decline in enrollment than previously anticipated. The Legislature will want to continue to monitor attendance data as it decides how to best allocate school funding and consider whether changes should be made in response to these trends. Source: The Legislative Analyst sets out the data.
https://lao.ca.gov/reports/2022/4595/K-12-Student-Attendance-Update-051122.pdf
user avatar
Carol Kocivar May 23, 2022 at 11:40 pm
Is there a better way to measure student absenteeism?
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/better-way-measure-student-absenteeism
user avatar
Carol Kocivar May 15, 2022 at 3:11 pm
Showing Up Matters for R.E.A.L.
A Toolkit for Communicating with Students and Families This toolkit is designed to help educators and their community partners integrate attention to attendance and engagement into school daily operations. The goal is not to add more work to school staff who are stretched thin, but to enhance the effectiveness of what they already do. https://www.attendanceworks.org/resources/toolkits/showing-up-matters-for-real/
user avatar
Jeff Camp - Founder April 13, 2022 at 7:03 am
Measurements of attendance correlate strongly with wealth/poverty measures. To make sense of which schools do well at getting high attendance relative to comparable schools? https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/imperfect-attendance-toward-fairer-measure-student-absenteeism
user avatar
Jeff Camp - Founder March 17, 2022 at 5:07 pm
Few states base funding on attendance, not enrollment. Should California switch to join the norm? Carol explains why this question matters in How should students be counted on the Ed100 blog. Writing for PACE, Carrie Hahnel closely analyzes pros and cons against ten relevant goals. She finds scant evidence that a financial incentive at the state level makes ANY difference in whether kids show up to school.
user avatar
Selisa Loeza October 23, 2021 at 10:39 pm
Another issue cause by the pandemic is absenteeism based on COVID/contact.

When I tested positive for COVID, my children missed 8 days of school to quarantine although I was isolated and they tested negative.

It makes complete sense from a health standpoint of keeping others safe, but it can still feel devastating to consider the impact.

Children are now also required to stay home if they have runny noses, etc because it could be a symptom.

We are now faced with health vs attendance and because of state requirements, not allowed to have access to online class time.
user avatar
Benjamin Lemasters Tahir March 13, 2021 at 9:44 pm
Research shows it is harmful for students to miss class, research also shows opening up schools is completely safe, even without the vaccine. So why are schools still shut down?
user avatar
Jamie Kiffel-Alcheh November 5, 2019 at 2:58 pm
I grew up with a family that believed you don’t miss school unless it is absolutely critical. I was shocked when I learned that there are families who pulled her kids out of school for vacation. I was extra surprised when I saw it happen during the first month of school at my privileged district here in Burbank. A friend of mine pulled out her kindergartner for a week’s vacation without thinking twice. At the same time, I can’t help thinking that my privileged friends’ kids are not being set back by these days of missing school, since they have no special needs. But in the end, maybe it will be a case of the tortoise and the hare.
user avatar
Anoush Voskanian November 20, 2019 at 4:37 pm
Responsible parenting brings out responsible children. I've seen that a lot too.
user avatar
Susannah Baxendale January 17, 2019 at 1:09 pm
One of the things I admire about Head Start is that it works hard to educate parents on the importance of the child not missing for reasons other than illness: it's raining! let's go to Disneyland! I'm late for work so just stay home with Gramma! This goes to the cumulative effect of education (critical in math I might add) in the short and long haul. I may sound like a grumpy old lady, but I think time management is a big part of the problem. So many parents seem incapable of organizing sufficiently to get themselves and their kids out of the house in time. The kids are dependent on the adults to get to school (at least through MS if not HS) and the parents fail miserably.
user avatar
Jeff Camp August 23, 2018 at 10:49 pm
Could dirty clothes be one reason why some kids miss school? After amassing some evidence to that effect, Whirlpool (the company that makes laundry machines) began giving grants through a program they call Care Counts. With Teach for America, the company tested a program to add laundry facilities to schools in high poverty communities. They observed significant gains.
user avatar
Susannah Baxendale January 17, 2019 at 1:13 pm
I suspect things like this (hadn't heard of it but it makes sense) are factors with absenteeism as opposed to just being chronically tardy which is a time management issue first and foremost but also a prioritizing issue. I think in a different comment I conflated absenteeism with tardiness--but both contribute to a gap as well as an attitude towards school (cavalier) and then work possibly.
user avatar
nkbird August 9, 2018 at 5:10 pm
Boy oh boy do I see this is my role as a reading intervention specialist! Health issues, of course, problems with kids being "too tired for school" because they are up too late (for reasons both avoidable like lack of limits and unavoidable like work schedules)... And then of course parents of kids who are struggling who feel they "need a break." Sigh.
user avatar
Carol Kocivar May 20, 2018 at 2:46 pm
From The 74:

Can a Few Simple Letters Home Reduce Chronic Absenteeism? New Research Shows They Can

Read it here here

user avatar
Jeff Camp - Founder March 28, 2018 at 5:58 pm
If students skip class to join a protest, do schools lose funding, which is based on attendance? In 2018 Sacramento policy leaders tried to provide districts with a legal way out: connect the protests with an educational purpose.
user avatar
Carol Kocivar December 6, 2017 at 11:39 am
Chronic absences remained a bit above 10 per cent in 2016-17. Foster, homeless, Native American, and African American children have the highest rates.

Learn more in this article from EdSource:
https://edsource.org/2017/state-releases-data-on-chronic-absenteeism-to-help-flag-students-at-risk/591243?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
user avatar
Carol Kocivar December 5, 2017 at 11:15 am
Chalkbeat Reports:
"As districts across the country try to drive down absenteeism, New York City leads the way'"
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2017/11/30/as-districts-across-the-country-try-to-drive-down-absenteeism-new-york-city-leads-the-way/
user avatar
Carol Kocivar October 27, 2016 at 2:55 pm
RELATED to this lesson on the Ed100 blog:
Attendance: A Measure of School Success
Missing just two days of school in a month is a key warning sign for trouble. Yes, there are some things your school can do about it.
https://ed100.org/blog/Attendance-Success
user avatar
Carol Kocivar October 27, 2016 at 2:48 pm
Update on Chronic Absences in California from the California Attorney General...
In School + On Track 2016
"An estimated 210,000 K-5 students in California are chronically absent – missing 10% of the school year – making up 7.3% of elementary school students in the state."
"Chronic absence rates are disproportionately high for certain groups of students and are concentrated in a small number of schools and districts:
• 77% of all chronically absent students are low-income
• The chronic absence rate for African American students (14%) is 2X the rate for all students
• 50% of chronically absent students in our sample attend 20% of schools and 10% of districts; 25% attend 7% of schools and 3% of districts."
"In 2013, just over half of districts surveyed said they tracked student attendance data over time. In 2016, 85% of districts reported that they do."
Find the report here: http://oag.ca.gov/truancy/2016.
user avatar
Carol Kocivar June 10, 2016 at 4:14 pm
New Data Illuminates the Extent of Chronic Absenteeism
An inter-active web resource from the US Department of Education takes a close look at which groups of students are more likely to be chronically absent. The data is drawn from nearly every public school in the country and helps us understand who is chronically absent, at what grade levels chronic absenteeism tends to occur, and how chronic absenteeism compares community-by-community and state-by-state.
http://www2.ed.gov/datastory/chronicabsenteeism.html#intro
user avatar
Jeff Camp - Founder February 5, 2016 at 1:31 pm
In 2016, California's State Board of Education began requiring collection of statewide data about school attendance. Amazingly, this data had not been collected previously.
Santa Ana Unified School District (one of the CORE districts) has begun experimenting with ways to improve attendance, which is reported on the district's School Quality Improvement Index. (Yep, it's really called the "squee".) The district began operating a Saturday School for chronically absent students to make up for days missed. The curriculum for Saturday School is evolving: the point is to increase the chance that students at risk will decide that school is worth showing up for. Data in the SQII will help to evaluate the program's effectiveness.
user avatar
Carol Kocivar December 5, 2015 at 11:24 am
Attendance and Chronic Absence: LCAP Template
The California Attorney General’s Office has created suggestions for school districts for inclusion in their LCAP's to address attendance and chronic absence issues.
https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/tr/ago_sample_lcap.pdf
user avatar
Stacey W April 6, 2015 at 8:50 pm
I like what my child's elementary school did for addressing student absences. If your child was absent during the month, they were invited to "Saturday school". Kids would participate in enrichment activities or they could bring their homework if they needed assistance. RSVP's were requested. Attending Saturday school erased one of the absent days (for which the school received funding) and the child could receive tutoring. This was especially helpful during the flu season and sometimes students missed quite a few days.
user avatar
Tara Massengill April 27, 2015 at 9:06 am
That does sounds like a good plan.
user avatar
aimeef23 April 27, 2015 at 4:09 pm
Our school has the same program. Seems to benefit both the student and the school.
user avatar
JH McConnell October 19, 2015 at 11:25 pm
If these "Saturday school" days were truly for the benefit of the student and not just a way for the school to increase its state funding they would be a good idea. A student out for a week or two because of the flu might need some extra instruction, or not, depending on what the teacher was covering, and how easy the material was for that particular student.
user avatar
cnuptac March 22, 2015 at 6:44 pm
I had no idea if a young child misses school just a few day each year that it would cause them to get behind so much in reading and that by 4th it shows up
user avatar
JH McConnell October 19, 2015 at 11:08 pm
I don't understand your assertion that missing a few days in school would cause a student to fall behind in reading. This unless you are talking about a first grader, which is where reading skills should be acquired. Once the student learns to sound out words, and reads enough to recognize the more common words, everything after that is simply building vocabulary.
user avatar
Rob M April 10, 2011 at 8:11 pm
If a student is not in school he or she can’t learn. And early absenteeism is a strong predictor of failing to graduate high school. Districts need to address absenteeism early and often. This is an area where we can learn from other states by implementing improved student information systems. For example, Texas is in the process of updating its student information to ensure that every teacher and parent can have instant access to their student’s information including recent attendance. Their data system immediately flags students who are having an attendance problem so that the school administration, teacher and parents all know that there is a problem. This collaborative approach leads to shared ownership of the problem, and quicker corrections instead of the problem going unaddressed.
Having the state create incentives for districts to focus energy on increasing attendance is important. At the same time, the state’s finance system will need to focus on more more than just seat time for schools to be able to take advantage of new learning opportunities such as distance learning or self-paced learning. In the end what we care about is how much students learn, not whether they have lots of seat time. This will be a difficult policy balance to retain the important focus on attendance while allowing districts to experiment with alternative methods of instruction.
user avatar
JH McConnell October 19, 2015 at 11:18 pm
I strongly disagree with your assertion that "if a student is not in school he or she can't learn." It is true that if a student is not is school that the school doesn't get paid for that day. A few days off now and again isn't likely to harm the student, except as he or she is punished by the teacher or the school. This especially if the days off are to accompany a parent somewhere on a long weekend.

There is some truth, however, that students who are not going to school may resist going to school because they are not doing well there. In that case not going to school is an indicator of an existing problem, and not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem may very well be inadequate or ineffective teachers or sub-standard instructional material.
user avatar
Jeff Camp - Founder October 20, 2015 at 9:58 am
Perhaps "can't" overstates the case, JH. This lesson isn't intended to make a fringe argument that "a few days off" automatically predicts a student's academic doom. The point is that a pattern of missed class tends to be an indicator of something wrong, especially for young students. There is a powerful predictive connection between early absenteeism (parents don't get their child to school) and later problems. Patterns like this are important to address.
user avatar
Lisette October 3, 2017 at 4:30 pm
Children get ill at times during the year where they may miss more than three days in a school year. I understand the importance of our children attending school, but this whole section seems unreasonable!
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