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Dayton Daily News
Ohio schools target
chronic absenteeism after law change
By Jeremy P. Kelley, Staff Writer
Aug 13, 2018
Ohio schools are attacking chronic student absenteeism as a way to
improve academic performance, two years after state law changed the way
schools have to track attendance.
Ohio Department of Education data shows that 16.4 percent of students
were chronically absent in 2016-17, meaning they missed 10 percent of
the school year or more — with or without excuse. State officials said
that percentage has stayed relatively flat the past few years.
Ten percent of the school year is the equivalent of missing 17 or 18
days of classes. But schools are now required to track absenteeism by
hours, not just days, so missing two classes for a doctor’s appointment
goes into the total just as a sick day or truant day would.
“There’s the traditional notion of measuring (school-wide) attendance,
but chronic absenteeism is a different angle,” said Chris Woolard,
senior executive director for accountability and continuous improvement
for ODE. “When you start looking at individual student-level
attendance, that’s where it really makes a difference. Kids who miss a
lot of time are at-risk on a whole variety of important success
indicators.”
Woolard said research shows kids who are chronically absent are less
likely to read by third grade, more likely to drop out, less likely to
graduate and less likely to be college-ready or workforce-ready.
House Bill 410, which took effect last school year, prohibits schools
from suspending or expelling students based on truancy, and requires
them to establish an “absence intervention team” to work with students
who are “habitually truant” without legitimate excuse — missing 30
consecutive hours, 42 hours in a month or 72 hours in a year.
Greene County Career Center spokesman Ron Bolender walked through the
multiple steps the school takes under the new law.
“GCCC has hired a truancy intervention specialist who meets with
students prior to the student becoming habitually truant,” Bolender
said. “When students fail to attend school, she will also do a home
visit in order to understand the situation. An attendance secretary
uses state software to track and monitor students’ attendance. Once a
student crosses the threshold and becomes habitually truant, a truancy
intervention team meets with the student and creates a plan, (with) a
parent included on the team.”
Reasons for student absenteeism can vary by community, age group and
family circumstance.
Dayton Public Schools Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli said illness is a
common reason, but she added that many Dayton high school students are
absent because of transportation problems, as DPS does not bus high
school students. The district just added two more employees in the
attendance office.
“Sometimes they don’t have enough money to get on the bus, and some
kids have to work to help provide for the family,” said Thurgood
Marshall senior Xodus Thompson. “But everybody’s pretty connected to
each other here. If you’re in a sport, the coaches will come out and
give rides or help out.”
Warren County Career Center Superintendent Rick Smith said top reasons
for students to miss school range from family conflicts and
oversleeping, to homelessness and disinterest in school. Oakwood school
officials said family travel is a leading reason for absence, and Alter
High School Principal Lourdes Lambert cited students traveling out of
town for club sports events. Piqua schools’ Director of Student
Services Mindy Gearhardt said sometimes the district just doesn’t know,
as no reason for the absence is communicated.
Woolard said it’s important for schools to examine students’ individual
issues. Is a struggling student skipping school purely because they’re
academically frustrated, or is the root cause an undiagnosed vision
problem or depression issue that might be solved by connecting them
with a health-care provider?
Woolard acknowledged steps like that are outside the school’s
traditional academic role, but he said it’s in line with the new State
Strategic Plan for education, which pushes schools to consider “the
whole child.”
Franklin schools try that, as Superintendent Michael Sander said his
district has an alliance with Centerpointe Health Center to help get
students examined by a physician if they don’t have insurance or a
family doctor. And Tecumseh Superintendent Paula Crew cited the “direct
correlation between a student’s attendance rate and their academic
success” as the reason her district works to minimize any obstacles to
student attendance.
“Chronic absenteeism improvement” will be a new measure on the 2017-18
state report card for schools this September. Schools must meet a
minimum threshold, or show improvement from the previous year to get
credit.
In the 2016-17 data, Oakwood and Springboro schools ranked in the top 5
percent of Ohio, with chronic absenteeism rates below 4 percent. A
group of districts just northwest of Dayton – Marion Local, Fort
Loramie, Russia, St. Henry and Versailles – were five of the best six
in Ohio, all below 2 percent. Dayton’s chronic absenteeism rate was
30.7 percent, ranking 603rd of 608 districts. Northridge, Jefferson
Twp. and Springfield, also districts that struggle with poverty and low
state test scores, were above 20 percent as well.
Woolard said school districts are getting creative. Cleveland schools
ran a phone bank to call chronically absent students, and got some
Browns NFL players to help make the calls. Districts with high poverty
sometimes offer laundry services to students embarrassed that they
don’t have clean clothes. Woolard said other districts are using data
to track which type of days have high absenteeism, then adjusting
school lunches to put the most popular foods on the menu that day.
Superintendent Nick Weldy said Miami Valley Career Technology Center
has used technology to improve its tracking of attendance hours —
students scan their ID when arriving late or leaving for an
appointment. Parents get a ‘robocall’ notification when their child is
not at school.
“House Bill 410 was not meant to have an antagonistic approach,”
Woolard said. “When you think about the whole child, it’s more like,
attendance is important, your daughter has missed seven days, what can
we do to help? Sometimes ‘How can we help?’ is a hard question. There
are a lot of districts that are doing a great job at this, but some of
this work is new.”
Read this and other articles at the Dayton Daily News
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