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Keeping Children from Missing OutTuesday, February 19, 2008Posted by Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, Education Consultant, under Education Post the next comment (6 so far) |
My audacious idea: Track and address chronic absence in early elementary school so every child in Baltimore can reach their full potential in school and beyond.
Last year, one out of six Baltimore children were chronically absent in kindergarten through third grade– meaning that they missed twenty or more schools days for excused or unexcused reasons. In the worst case, 45% of one school’s K-3rd graders missed twenty days or more. When young children miss school, it often signifies that their families are struggling with one or more challenges, frequently confounded by poverty, such as unaffordable housing, poor transportation, chronic illness, family instability or a lack of connection to their child’s school.
Regardless of the reason, chronic early absence is a serious problem. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, chronically absent kindergartners perform worse than their regularly attending peers in reading and math by first grade. Among the poorest children, chronic absence in kindergarten predicts the lowest school performance at the end of fifth grade. Although attending school consistently does not guarantee academic success, missing a lot of school virtually assures academic failure, especially for poor children. The education of regularly attending children is also harmed if the learning needs of chronically absent peers disrupt the classroom.
The good news is that missing a lot of school is not inevitable even when poverty levels are high. Several of Baltimore’s elementary schools – including Cecil, Hamilton, Northwood, Paca and Pinderhughes – have many low-income students with good attendance records. In other cities, schools working together with community agencies and families, have made a tremendous difference in school attendance. Based on these promising examples from around the country, I believe Baltimore should:
• Contact families of frequently absent students, and provide them with social and economic supports.
• Offer incentives for attendance to all students.
• Help families understand that regular school attendance starting in kindergarten is critical.
• Improve schools so that they engage children and families and offer a high quality education.
What do you think Baltimore should do to increase school attendance, especially among those most frequently absent? What can we do before, during and after children enter kindergarten?
posts
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 2:04 pm
We have talked about this ad nauseum. Any teacher ( And I ‘ve been one for 25 yrs) knows that the family and cultural dynamics affecting student attendance and learning are many and complex. They can only begin to be addressed by an overloaded school system.
RE ; Improving the schools;The school system has been the downfall of city life in Baltimore since the 1970’s. Common sense would tell the politicians and real estate developers that if they fixed the school system they would be fixing Baltimore.
Quite a few have realized this but seem powerless to do anything about it.
One path to consider in fomenting real change is finding the legal avenue to make everyone in the school system (the administrators too) re-apply for their jobs thereby keeping competent workers and getting rid of entrenched incompetent ones.
Issues of race and class also play a part in the willingness of those in power to make the needed overhaul.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 3:49 pm
To increase school attendance of children in grades K-3, families, care providers, siblings over 8 years old and professionals in the lives of the children (e.g. social workers, judges, politicians, religious leaders, health care providers) should be helped to understand the research that proves LEARNING BEGINS AT BIRTH.
This approach would provide a frame of reference for those in the life of the child and should include training on the connection between care in early childhood, performance in school and wage earnings in life. Once the connection is better understood, school attendance would increase for children with reasonable primary care providers.
For children in the care of irresponsible care providers, [transporters/assistants] should be assigned to get the child to school and a perk (e.g. invitation to a school wide dinner, free raffle ticket) withheld from the care provider each time the assistant must come to get the child more than [1-2] times per month.
Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 12:30 am
It would be the more effective use of funds
to channel efforts to the children and their families who are just starting school, or actually in infancy before school even starts.
That would be a more realistic approach to encouraging a cultural shift towards educating kids in informal ways from infancy. And also educating parents to understand the value of learning for its own sake.
Then, of course, there would need to be a corresponding shift in the quality of education that the schools would be offering.
Friday, April 25, 2008 at 2:08 am
This is the first year full-day kindergarten is required in all 24 MD school systems. Research shows, you will see an improvement in K attendance.
Furthermore, pre-K and K teachers must be trained in functional behavioral assessment (FBA). Even if it is printed material from the Dept of Ed website:
http://cecp.air.org/fba/
“… A functional behavioral assessment looks beyond the behavior itself. The focus when conducting a functional behavioral assessment is on identifying significant, pupil-specific social, affective, cognitive, and/or environmental factors associated with the occurrence (and non-occurrence) of specific behaviors.”
So often, elementary teachers work thru problems with students and are successful but the methods used don’t get passed on to the students next teacher. Especially in a system with highly mobile students.
I think we all can agree, p-K thru 1st grade socialization is key to further academic achievement on many levels. We as a society are loath the confront a parent so early in their child’s academic career with a request for special education placement. They move on and fall further behind until they need to be pulled out of the classroom, have an IEP or 504 plan.
If pK thru 3rd grade aggressively use FBA to mitigate problems with students, so much could be achieved toward motivation. Parents would be involved from ground zero, and a student need not be Sped or have an IEP or 504 to utilize an FBA.
Often this leadership is not coming from principals so once again, teachers need to be proactive for the benefit of their profession.
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 12:30 pm
The key to increasing student attendance is ensuring both children and their families understand the importance of being in school. Because so many chronic absences have much to do with caregivers’ ability to get their children to school, we need to rethink the ways in which we reach out to families.
The entire notion of family engagement needs to be re-evaluated. One size does not fit all when it comes to parent outreach. Methods traditonally used to effectively reach out to and connect with families – flyers, notes, e-mail, even telephone calls home – are rendered ineffective when said families are subject to constant relocation, cannot keep up with phone bills, are illiterate, or are non-native English speakers. Further, instilling the importance of attending school to parents who themselves had negative experiences in the classroom, or who never attended school to begin with, cannot realistically be accomplished by such traditional methods.
My idea: Rather than rely on children to be the messengers, let’s give parents a reason to come into the schools. Let’s provide full-service models that offer mental health services, family counseling, adult education, and other social services RIGHT INSIDE OUR SCHOOL BUILDING. This gets parents in the door, ups their buy-in, and increases the chances that their kids are in class on a regular basis as well.
Thursday, September 11, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Let’s look at changing attitudes toward education. We all know how powerful marketing can be.
We developed three public service announcements, see http://www.educationpsa.org and Hawaii stations aired them throughout 2007. But the messages need to be heard repeatedly by everyone and absorbed over time.
Want a free copy of the Education PSAs DVD? Just go to the website and look for the order form.
My idea: National (or multi-state coordinated) media campaign with the message “Education is a gift.” Is there anyone out there that knows someone to help get this started?