Schools Tackle Absence Rates to Help Raise Student Test Scores

Article of the Week #1

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By The Seattle Times, adapted by Newsela staff

12.09.13

SEATTLE — Students who skip too many days of schools have a much lower chance of graduating high school. Even missing as few as 10 days a year makes a big difference, weakening the foundation of school achievement, studies show.

These findings were a bombshell for researcher Bob Balfanz, who’d spent most of his career trying to understand why 1 million American students drop out each year. He’d paced school hallways and sat through hundreds of hours of classroom instruction.

But in 2007, after tracking 13,000 middle-schoolers for eight years in Philadelphia, Balfanz finally isolated a red flag common to all who, years later, failed to graduate on time: a history of poor attendance. Sixth-graders who missed 20 days of class had, at best, a 20 percent chance of graduating from high school on time.

“You’d think, ‘Hey it’s only sixth grade, you can recover and grow out of this,’ ” said Balfanz, based at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Poor Attendance Equals Poor Performance

More surprising still, school attendance averages, while widely reported, are highly misleading. A district may have attendance rates of 90 percent. But hundreds of students may still be missing weeks of instruction because that number is an average and conceals the fact that different students are absent on different days.

“That’s when the sheer magnitude hit us,” said Balfanz, who recently released the findings of a major study on this effect.

Other researchers have found a similar relationship between poor attendance and low performance.

“Wherever we’ve looked, we’ve seen a clear relationship between missing a month of school and negative educational outcomes later,” Balfanz said. “That has been proven for all kids.”

Improving school performance and reducing high school dropout rates is as simple as improving attendance.

This finding inspired Balfanz to create the anti-dropout program Diplomas Now, which sends dozens of recent college graduates into middle schools to focus on attendance and tutoring. At Denny International Middle School and Aki Kurose Middle School in Seattle, both of which have long struggled with student discipline and poor scores, it is making a dramatic difference.

Until recently, their rates of attendance were extremely poor.

In 2010, more than half of the 590 students at Aki Kurose missed at least 10 days of class, equivalent to two full weeks of instruction. In math, where comprehension of basic principles is essential, the fallout was predictable: 62 percent of students tested below grade level.

According to Balfanz, about 200 of these students were high school dropouts in the making.

Building On Relationships

"Attendance really does matter," said Principal Mia Williams. "I mean, if you’re not here, how are you going to pass your classes?”

Diplomas Now builds on the basic truth that kids respond to relationships.

Every day at 7:20 a.m., in dark rain or cutting cold, a group of City Year staff line up outside Aki Kurose and Denny to cheer sleepy pupils as they trudge to class. The nonprofit City Year is an arm of AmeriCorps. It is working with Diplomas Now.

The City Year staffers provide in-class tutoring and after-school instruction, and have contributed to a 15 percent decrease in the number of students with attendance problems. The schools are also seeing a 79 percent drop in those failing English, and a 96 percent fall in the number failing math.

At Aki Kurose, each City Year staff member is responsible for tracking 10 students. They call parents to question absences and explain that late buses or faulty cars are not acceptable excuses.

Late arrivers must explain themselves and walk to class with a City Year escort.

“A lot of these kids were flying under the radar,” said Katrina Hunt, the Diplomas Now coordinator at Aki Kurose. “We never had any single person following them.”

One eighth-grader had already missed weeks of class when he came to Hunt’s attention. The youngest of seven children, the boy never realized that it mattered to anyone if he showed up.

Hunt learned that there was no one at home waking the youth in the morning. She found out that he showed up at Aki Kurose only 80 percent of the time, or else wandered in around fourth period.

“In his family, that was the culture,” she said. “But we became close, and that’s what made him want to come — ‘Miss Hunt is waiting for me.’”

The success of Diplomas Now hinges on those kind of connections.

A Meeting At Starbucks

Diplomas Now is at work in 41 schools across the country, with results promising enough that the federal government is backing a $30 million study of the program.

Every Friday, a handful of teachers and City Year staffers squeeze into student desks at Denny to review cases and devise plans for students.

A month into the year, one eighth-grader had already missed seven days of class, while another had been late 14 times. Another appeared so depressed that teachers couldn’t even get him to doodle on a notebook.

Jonathan Barajas, 14, has often been the subject of similar discussions.

Jonathan is failing English and arrives late to all of his classes. On a recent day, he slumped into a meeting with the Diplomas Now coordinator, Roxana Amaral, his English teacher and his mother at a local Starbucks.

“Why are you late to class?” Amaral began, her dark eyes steady.

“I don’t know. I don’t want to go,” answered the boy. Jonathan’s attitude, though, has improved from sixth grade, when he walked out of class, taunted teachers, and got suspended. His mother attributes much of the change to Diplomas Now.

“I think he finally understands that teachers are not the bad guys,” his mother, Eva Barajas, said. “I think it’s helping him to grow up.”

Nevertheless, Jonathan looked as though he might collapse when his English teacher urged him to read five pages a day.

“Jonathan, please,” begged his mother, her voice trembling. “I want to go to your eighth-grade graduation.”

“This is your last chance to show us you can move on to high school,” said Amaral.

Finally, he turned back toward his mother and choked out, “OK, yes.”

Due Wednesday, September 10th

_______/5 Close Read

-Student has at least 5 symbols and two comments from first read (2.5)

- Student has at least 5 symbols and two comments from second read (2.5)

Due Friday, September 12th

_______/10 Vocab Entries

- Student has completed all parts of the entries x 4

a. Part of speech (.5) = 2 b. Definition (.5) = 2

c. Sentence (.5) = 2 d. Visual (.5) = 2

e. at least 2 synonyms (.25) = 1 f. at least 2 antonyms (.25) = 1

Due Tuesday, September 16th

_______/15 10% or 20% (type 3 writing) *Turn in on Edmodo*

-2-4 Central Ideas (5)

– ordered as they appeared in the article

- own words – no more than 4 words in a row from the article, unless cited with (name #).

- No opinion

- S “T” A r t topic sentence (5)

-Students combines Step 1 and 2 into a paragraph and stayed within the word limit (5)

10% = 90-110 words

20% = 190-210 words

Due Friday, September 19th

_______/20 Response to Article (type 3 writing) - *Turn in on Edmodo*

- (5) - Student has a claim statement – a one sentence statement that shows the student’s position on the issue and has general but not specific reasons.

-3 points if no clear stance is taken

-2 points if reasons are too specific

-(5) - There are no personal pronouns in the paragraph.

-1 point per pronoun

- -(10) - Students compose a 5+ sentence paragraph with 2-3 reasons to support their claim with examples, including at least 1 piece of evidence from the article.

-2 points - length

-3 points – insufficient reasons

-5 points – lack of examples/evidence

Response to Article Assignment

Argumentative Response to “ Schools Tackle Absence Rates to Help Raise Student Test Scores”

The article states, “Improving school performance and reducing high school dropout rates is as simple as improving attendance.” What can be done at SHS to improve attendance? Would a program like Diploma Now be effective here?

1. Take a stand. In argumentative writing, you cannot be on the fence. You should begin your post with a sentence stating your stand – this is called a CLAIM.

2. Develop 2-3 reasons to defend your claim. You must include at least one piece of evidence from the article – it does not have to be a quote, but it can be.

3. Do not use personal pronouns in the paragraph – no I, me, you, we, etc.

Two-Part Claim:

(insert arguable topic and position without using “I”)

(succinctly state reasons without details in the order they will be presented in the paragraph)

Example: Colleges should be able to use social media behavior to judge incoming students because it allows colleges to “meet” students outside of test scores and can help in identifying desirable characteristics.

Word: _______________ PoSpeech:_________Def:_________________________

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Sentence:___________________________________________________________

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