The Business of Education: John Hopkins has released the report, The Importance of Being in School: A Report on Absenteeism in the Nation’s Public Schools.

If we are ever going to close or eliminate the achievement gap we need to start by ensuring the students are in the classroom on a consistent basis. This requires the support and effort of parents, teachers, schools and the larger community; however, the responsibility begins at home. Like any major issue plaguing society; student absenteeism is growing at faster rate and reaching national concern as highlighted in the John Hopkins’s report released yesterday and picked up by every large media outlet in the market.

Chronic absenteeism is becoming an epidemic concern and focus as nearly 7.5 million students miss nearly a month of school each year according to a new national study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. One disturbing finding in the report was the fact that only six states track chronic absenteeism in schools, New Jersey not among them. According the data released only six states address this issue: Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Nebraska, Oregon and Rhode Island. How these states measure chronic absenteeism, however, differs by number of days and by whether or not data include transfer students.

Cost associate with lost $tate Aid in NJ

This however, is all changing in New Jersey as the Governor’s education commissioner, Christoper Cerf released the The Education Funding Report on February 23, 2012, which detailed the Christie Administrations plan to return to the former calculations prepared under SFRA (School Funding Reform Act). Most notably is the firm language of the 83 page report which time and again focuses on the need for reform in funding levels and accountability of those funds in order to address the achievement gap. The report focused on attendance and other aspects of the educational reforms associated with continued aid such as accountability, performance and innovation along with the departments restructuring plans to better assist districts in the field with guidance, implementation and resources.

As reported in my April 23^rd post, SFRAs Return - A Bold Step Back in NJ School Funding – “Perhaps the hardest hitting measure for low wealth districts is the move from the traditional October 15th counts capturing one day's enrollment for funding calculations to a broader year round average or (ADA) average daily attendance. Many critics cite the automatic disadvantage for low wealth districts that typically have lower attendance; however, based on the aforementioned and the At-Risk absenteeism graph in the report; it is clear apparent that the Christie Administration not only recognizes the disparity in attendance of At-Risk in low wealth compared to high wealth districts, it expects the low wealth districts to reverse this trend in order to attain full funding.

As taken from the report, “Chronic absenteeism is not the same as truancy or average daily attendance – the attendance rate schools use for state report cards and federal accountability. Chronic absenteeism means missing 10 percent of a school year for any reason. A school can have average daily attendance of 90 percent and still have 40 percent of its students chronically absent, because on different days, different students make up that 90 percent.”

“Such limited data produce only an educated guess at the size of the nation’s attendance challenge: A national rate of 10 percent chronic absenteeism seems conservative and it could be as high as 15 percent, meaning that 5 million to 7.5 million students are chronically absent. Looking at this more closely sharpens the impact. In Maryland, for instance, there are 58 elementary schools that have 50 or more chronically absent students; that is, two classrooms of students who miss more than a month of school a year. In a high school, where chronic absenteeism is higher, there are 61 schools where 250 or more students are missing a month or more of school.”

Based on the data presented, the six states reported chronic absentee rates from 6 percent to 23 percent, with high poverty urban areas reporting up to one-third of students chronically absent. The figures for poor rural areas were even more alarming as one in four students were found to miss at least a month’s worth of school. “The negative impact chronic absenteeism has on school success is increased because students who are chronically absent in one year are often chronically absent in multiple years. As a result, particularly in high poverty areas, significant numbers of students are missing amounts of school that are staggering: on the order of six months to over a year, over a five year period.”[i]

Chronic absenteeism is most prevalent among low-income students. Gender and ethnic background do not appear to play a role in this. The youngest and the oldest students tend to have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, with students attending most regularly in third through fifth grades. Chronic absenteeism begins to rise in middle school and continues climbing through 12^th grade, with seniors often having the highest rate of all. The data also suggest that chronic absenteeism is concentrated in relatively few schools, with 15 percent of schools in Florida, for example, accounting for at least half of all chronically absent students.

“In School Absenteeism: Absent from the classroom leads to absence from participation in this society, moi said: Education is a partnership between the student, the teacher(s) and parent(s). All parties in the partnership must share the load. The student has to arrive at school ready to learn. The parent has to set boundaries, encourage, and provide support. Teachers must be knowledgeable in their subject area and proficient in transmitting that knowledge to students. All must participate and fulfill their role in the education process.”

http://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/school-absenteeism-absent-from-the-classroom-leads-to-absence-from-participation-in-this-society/

[i] John Hopkins study on chronic absenteeism, May 17, 2012.