Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families

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2 Even so, in many neighborhoods, the challenges of child and family poverty are immense, and problems in school overlap directly with problems at home. Consider as one example the relationship with child welfare: Each year, roughly seven of every 100 children in New York City come into direct contact with the child welfare system, either through child protective investigations, preventive family support services or foster care placements. 1 This rate of involvement more than doubles in the city’s low-income communities, which generate the vast majority of child protective investigations and foster care placements. The majority of these children are school-age boys and girls. The large majority of these children also come from those city neighborhoods where they are most likely to live in poverty. ELEMENTARY CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM WIDESPREAD THROUGHOUT NYC This map illustrates that chronic absenteeism is a problem in elementary schools throughout the city, but is particularly high in low-income areas like the South Bronx and Central Brooklyn. See the chart on page 16 for full details, by district. LEVELS OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM BY DISTRICT 0–9.99 PERCENT OF STUDENTS CHRONICALLY ABSENT 10–14.99 PERCENT OF STUDENTS CHRONICALLY ABSENT 15–19.99 PERCENT OF STUDENTS CHRONICALLY ABSENT 20–24.99 PERCENT OF STUDENTS CHRONICALLY ABSENT 25–29.99 PERCENT OF STUDENTS CHRONICALLY ABSENT 30 PERCENT OR MORE OF STUDENTS CHRONICALLY ABSENT 31 20 2 21 SOURCE: Department of Education, ATS school-level data on individual student absences, SY 2007–08. Includes all schools designated as elementary schools by the DOE, which includes both elementary schools and elementary-junior high schools. Charter schools were excluded. Districts 75 and 79 were excluded. 15 1 2 13 17 22 14 16 3 18 32 23 4 5 19 19 18 30 24 6 4 7 9 27 12 27 10 8 28 27 25 11 8 29 26
Not surprisingly, these are the same districts with the greatest levels of chronic absenteeism in the early grades. And these problems are substantial. According to our analysis of city schools’ attendance data: ■■ Last year, in 12 of New York City’s 32 school districts, well over 25 percent of primary school children were chronically absent from school, missing more than 10 percent of the school year. ■■ In five of these districts, fully 30 percent of primary school children, kindergarten through fifth grade, were chronically absent. ■■ In six of these districts, between 8 and 11 percent of primary school children missed 38 or more days of school during the 2007/2008 school year. ■■ And in 123 individual New York City primary schools, at least 30 percent of the children were chronically absent. Notably, not every school in these districts has this problem. Some have learned how to reduce absenteeism. Others work with community-based organizations to reach out to families, to find resources to help them, or to seek intervention when problems are dire. This research project began as an effort to determine whether community organizations and the city’s public schools could work together to ease the burden on the city’s child welfare system, which was swamped by reports of suspected abuse or neglect after the much publicized murder of Nixzmary Brown in early 2006. New York City experienced a 25 percent increase in reports of abuse and neglect from 2005 to 2007. By far the most substantial increase came from educational personnel. Today, reports from schools continue to come in at a historically rapid pace. Many of these reports are filed because of excessive absenteeism in the early grades, which can be defined by authorities as “educational neglect.” We soon learned of research currently underway in other U.S. cities that reveals associations between early-grade chronic absenteeism and poverty, on the one hand, and children’s poor educational achievement on the other. With this knowledge, we decided to assess the degree of chronic absenteeism in the early grades in New York City—and to explore effective school- and communitybased counter strategies that might benefit families while improving attendance. We wanted to see if efforts to build close working relationships between community-based organizations and schools might serve a dual purpose: stronger families and higher levels of student achievement in the schools. We found notable efforts in various neighborhoods, ranging from the all-inclusive “community schools,” with a wide range of social services, to more targeted programs that offer roving social workers to assist with behavior issues or family problems. Some of these efforts are designed to address absenteeism directly, while others are geared more toward providing mental health care or some other type of family support that can prevent a severe family crisis. Strong research has found that chronic absenteeism among primary school children is often associated with “poverty, teenage motherhood, single motherhood, low maternal education, welfare, maternal unemployment, food insecurity, poor maternal health and multiple siblings.” 2 The authors of a recent study, Hedy Chang and Marajosé Romero, found that rates of chronic absenteeism “jumped significantly once families were confronted with three or more risks . . . Multiple risks were most commonly found among children living in poverty, from a racial/ethnic minority group or in poor health.” In the following pages, we provide data on the full extent of early-grade chronic absenteeism in New York and identify the neighborhoods and schools most affected. We also provide data on chronic absenteeism in middle schools: In 96 of the city’s 366 middle schools, more than 30 percent of 1 This is a conservative estimate based on the number of children interacting with child protective services, preventive services and foster care, and accounts for the duplication of the substantial number of children who interact with more than one of these systems. 2 Chang and Romero, “Present, Engaged and Accounted For: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades,” National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, September 2008. Page 14. In many neighborhoods, the challenges of child and family poverty are immense, and problems in school overlap directly with problems at home. 3
Page 1 and 2: Strengthening Schools by Strengthen
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Page 13 and 14: ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS WITH HIGH NUMBER
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Page 23 and 24: 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% ATTENDANCE IMPR
Page 25 and 26: SCHOOL WORKERS TOPS IN CALLS TO CHI
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Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families

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