Reply to Chronic absenteeism and truancy in DC

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Did I really just read that a HS kid who is arrested and convicted of a crime be excused from truancy?[/quote]

I think the poster was trying to absolve the school, not the student. Schools are being faulted for not  adopting policies and programs that increase attendance. But sometimes (like when the student is absent because he’s incarcerated or hospitalized), it’s beyond anything the school could possibly do.[/quote]

Part of this is a function of DC's lottery system that encourages comparison of schools with extremely different populations. So a school is blamed for the high truancy rates and low test scores of its large at risk population and compared 1:1 with a school with a largly high-SES population where truancy rates are low and test scores are higher even though the school could actually be doing very little to make those things happen -- they are highly correlated with higher SES families.

The truth is that there are highly effective schools in DC with very high truancy rates because "highly effective" when it comes to populations where poverty and family dysfunction is the norm may mean moving truancy rates from 70% to 50% (a huge lift actually). But when you look at it in terms of absolute comparisons between schools the school with the 50% truancy rate will be viewed as bad no matter what.

What we really need to do is look ONLY at the population of schools with large at risk populations and then compare attendance and truancy. Then look at the schools that are doing better in these areas despite high at risk numbers and ask why. It might be something about the way the school encourages attendance (or punishes truancy) or it might have to do with overall culture or something specific about the family population. There may also be external factors like if a school has a high OOB percentage in addition to having high truancy rates it raises the question of whether we should be doing more to make it easier or possible for at risk kids to attend IB or nearby schools that make attendance easier on the family.

I don't mean to simplify the issue -- it's pretty complex. But in DCPS often these issues get obscured by the huge disparities in the district. I mean the first page or so of comments to this thread were people arguing DCPS doens't have a truancy problem (it definitely does!) because their experience at no-doubt high-SES schools (likely in upper NW or CH) is very limited to stuff like getting flack from DCPS for their kid missing school for a family vacation. But none of the high SES schools have what would be considered low attendance or high truancy rates -- they aren't even part of this conversation really. But that's the limited experience of a lot of posters as well as unfortunately a lot of policy makers. Too few people in positions of authority really understand the challenges of schools serving large at risk populations in DC.[/quote]

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