School Attendance Matters (Part One)

Last year, the Alabama State Department of Education issued its first "School Report Card" for each public school in the state.  For middle schools like ours, the report card is divided into three sections:

• Student Academic Proficiency
• Student Academic Growth
• School Attendance

Corner Middle School received a B on its report card (Bagley Elementary received an A, and Corner High School received a B) based on 2016-2017 data.  The scores in our feeder pattern were good, but as we know we can always get better.  We are constantly working on our academic proficiency.  However, one of the other factors as to why our school  received a B was our school attendance rate. I believe if we were all truly reflective, we can improve on student and teacher attendance alike to address both areas in which we can grow.

The attendance rate is more than just a number, however.  The attendance rate of any school is very important because that school's students are more likely to succeed academically when they attend school on a regular basis.  It is challenging for any teacher and his/her class to build skills and master standards if large numbers of students are frequently absent from school.  

In addition to falling behind academically, students who are not in school on a regular basis are more likely to experience discipline issues, not participate in extracurricular or co-curricular activities, and experience social problems upon their return.

It also impacts you and your community financially.  Realtors sites like Zillow and Realtor.com (as well as many others) use these school statistics in their ratings of neighborhoods.  They can attract (or detract from) persons looking to purchase a home in a given area or bringing businesses to an area.  

Students who are chronically absent tend to struggle on the ACT in high school due to gaps in learning.  This hits your wallet directly because the higher the ACT score, the more money your student will qualify for academically for college.  The higher the score, the fewer the remedial classes your student has to take in the first years of college for which you have to pay, but for which they will receive no credit.

Consider this information . . .

There are 365 days in a standard calendar year.  Students go to school for 175 of those days.  That means they have 190 days in which they are not in school.  Those 175 days matter to us! Do we understand that illness happens?  Yes.  Do we understand that sometimes circumstances arise that cannot be avoided?  Yes.  However, when we do school attendance math, those days should be the exception rather than the rule.

The data from the state report card for 2016-2017 looks like this . . .

We own our performance data and look to improve it every day. But attendance in 2017-2018 did not improve.  In fact, we believe our attendance data will impact us more heavily with the upcoming state report card.  The State of Alabama defines "chronic absenteeism" as such time a student has 15 or more absences.  This past school year, 79 out of 460 students met that standard.  That is 17.2% of our student body who are chronically absent. (They fall into the yellow or red categories.)  When almost one out of every five students is chronically absent, it is time for us to work together to make a change.

Therefore, we are kicking off a plan that we hope will help us improve our attendance in 2018-2019 in order to better serve our students and their families.  That plan begins with understanding the attendance policy.  This week, I will break down the new attendance policy that we sent home in the end of year report cards.  Jefferson County has "beefed up" the policy district wide to help all schools address the alarming trend of students not coming to school. We will spotlight specific sections of the policy that are in the board approved Jefferson County Code of Student Conduct for the 2018-2019 school year each day this week.

It is our hope that understanding the policy and the impact of chronic absenteeism on your student, school, and community will help us navigate the waters of absences, tardies, and make-up work as we sail in to a new year at Corner Middle School!  Part Two of our Attendance Matters series continues tomorrow.