More than 90,000 of New York City’s elementary school students–20 percent–missed at least a month of classes during the last school year, according to a new report from the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.
In the early grades, attendance is a strong predictor of long-term success. National research suggests that chronic absenteeism in the early grades sets the stage for school failure later on. Children who miss a large number of school days in kindergarten or first grade tend to have lower levels of academic achievement throughout their school careers. Sadly, there are high levels of chronic absenteeism in New York City elementary schools, particularly in low-income neighborhoods.
It’s great to see this issue getting some attention, but forgive me if I’m utterly unsurprised, and a little disgusted. The New York Times calls chronic absenteeism an “invisible problem” but it’s anything but to teachers in New York’s most blighted inner city neighborhoods. Frankly, it’s also another unintended consequence of system in which The Test is the alpha and omega. In my South Bronx elementary school we regularly promoted students who missed dozens of school days, as long as they passed — or even came close to passing – a single standardized test. In a particularly acute case, I fought unsuccessfully to have one of my 5th graders held over who missed nearly 100 school days. He received a 1 (below grade level) on his state math test and a 2 (”approaching” grade level) on his ELA exam and was passed without even having to attend summer school. As long as he scored a 2 or better on either of the tests, I was told, he had to be promoted. God help that kid. Three years later, I still get angry thinking about it.
In theory, I asked an administrator, could a child come to school only on the day of the state test, pass, and still be promoted? It was a rhetorical question. The answer was sitting in my classroom. Occasionally.
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In DC we started the last week in August, but there were a number of students who year after year didn’t show up until the Tuesday after Labor Day. I taught a class for a child who was labeled mild MR - I looked at his record and found that he’d missed around fifty days of school every year since pre-K. Another child was really gifted and had a very supportive family, but his mother and sister had some health issues, which in turn made his mother a hypochondriac, and so she kept the whole family out of school whenever any of them had so much as a sniffle.
Of all the things that happened while I taught, chronic absenteeism was possibly the most frustrating - you can’t teach anything if they’re not there.
Well said, Morgan. And while social promotion debates have focused (as far as I know) exclusively on test scores, perhaps it’s time to include attendance in the mix. As the example I cited shows (and no doubt every teacher can add his or her own anecdotal evidence) it’s entirely possible to show up infrequently, trip over the bar, and still “earn” promotion. Let’s not fool ourselves into believing we’re actually educating such kids.
Attendance definitely can be a problem, but we should promote students based on whether they are authentically ready for the next grade. Adding an additional punishment at the end of the year for poor attendance isn’t going to change habits, it’s just going to punish.
There needs to be intervention early in the year. We need to show students and parents that attending school supports other goals that they are already interested in, sort of like the data that shows that college grads tend to earn more than high school grads, and they all earn more than dropouts.
I agree Dave, although I wonder what you mean by “authentically” ready. Having been required to assemble portfolios to “demonstrate proficiency” for students who failed ELA tests, I’m more than a little wary of “authentic assessment.” The student I described in my post was in no way, shape or form ready for the next grade by any sane definition. If you set the bar low enough, almost any kid will trip over it and fall forward. I’m not suggesting that attendance alone should be enough to determine promotion, although I wouldn’t necessarily object. What’s the point of compulsory education if you’re not going to compel attendance? If you establish a culture where non-attendance is a non-issue, we will get exactly what we have.
We see the same problem here in Chicago and it receives nary a mention in the local press. Last year Chicago Public High Schools had an enrollment of slightly more than 108,000 students. On any given day over 17,000 or 16% were absent. Thirty-five of the 110 schools, with an enrollment of 32,000 students, had an absentee rate of over 20% with the worst of the group coming in at 37%. If students don’t show up, competent teachers, NCLB, and infinite funding won’t have an effect on the deplorable education results we currently “enjoy”. Until this problem is scrubbed clean by the sunshine of truth, big city schools are bound to fail and that is to the detriment of us all.
I agree completely. On a less important note, link up this post with your previous post, and the Columbus newspaper’s description of Ohio test results being dropped due to attendance, it’s over at This Week In Education. Districts have delayed the inevitable by dropping the scores of students with absentee and mobility problems who don’t pass, although they probably count the scores of truants who do pass. Its no different than the balloon mortgage and Fannie Mae coming due with NCLB.
The solution, though, is not more of the blame game. We knew that NCLB accountability would increase the incidents of those tricks. But we didn’t know how completely the law would monopolize our attention, encouraging us to ignore real problems like absenteeism. I don’t have an answer for abesenteeism, but its a problem we have to tackle.
I saw that story on the wires this morning, John, and I’ve been staring at it ever since. Where to begin?
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/20/testscores.html?sid=101
Why isn’t somebody going after the families of these chronically truant elementary school pupils? These aren’t teens whom the parents may legitimately be having difficulty getting to actually attend class (there’s only so much a parent can do with a recalcitrant teen) but little kids.
Are these families receiving any kind of government assistance? If so, they should be required to provide proof of decent school attendance for their children…