2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

280 Strengthening Communities with Neighborhood Data
Shared accountability. For attention and action to be sustained, chronic
absence needs to be built into ongoing accountability systems used by
district to measure progress and identify where additional support is needed
to improve student performance. For example, schools should be required
to examine the extent to which chronic absence is a problem and if it is,
describe in their school improvement plans how they will improve student
attendance, especially among the most vulnerable populations. Schools
should know whether students are missing so much school they are unable
to benefit from investments in improved teaching and curriculum or if they
are struggling academically even though they show up to school every day.
Chronic absence can also be built into contracts with community-based
organizations offering services to students at schools. For example, the
Family League of Baltimore requires after-school programs to serve students
with poor attendance and monitor whether their services are helping
to reduce chronic absence. Evaluations of local after-school programs also
show that participation in a high-quality after-school program improves
the attendance of students with a past history of chronic absence (Olson,
Connolly, and Kommajesula 2013; Traill, Brohawn, and Caruso 2013).
What Are the Implications of Chronic Absence
for Neighborhood Initiatives?
Chronic school absence is a natural issue for neighborhood initiatives to
tackle and address. It is an easy-to-understand measure that reflects the
conditions of families, neighborhoods, and schools and can be reduced
through successful collaboration. Easily monitored to detect changes
over time, it can help communities and schools demonstrate that programmatic
interventions are having a positive impact. It is a leading
indicator that can help initiatives determine if they are on the right track
because attendance data are collected every day. Chronic absence data
are available well before many other measures that are collected only
periodically through the year.
Neighborhood initiatives can play a significant role in helping expand
attention and action around the issue of chronic absence if they work in
partnership with school districts to perform the following tasks:
1. Support regularly calculating and reporting on levels of chronic
absence, defined as missing 10 percent of school for any reason, by