Reply to DC Graduation Problems Extend to Wilson High School, Councilmember Says

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "DC Graduation Problems Extend to Wilson High School, Councilmember Says"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]Sorry - [b]did I miss the post where ANYONE on this thread posted actual data demonstrating that the kids who are absent are underachieving students?  Or if they aren't, data demonstrating causation between attendance for highly achieving students and college or career success? Or any information about who the chronically absent kids are?  Or really any data at all about the impact of all these absences on learning? [/b] Have the people who are advocating that kids who have met graduation requirements be forced to sit around in school presented any data (or, God forbid, even any anecdotes) to support that notion?

I get that you think it makes you sound smart to say “anecdotes are not data,” but please learn how to evaluate, present and discuss data to support your ideas before trotting out the tired catchphase you learned to sound smart.[/quote]

OP here, dipping my toe in this discussion for the first time since initial post.  I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that there is a correlation between absenteeism and lower academic achievement.  Haven't yet found local data, but did a quick search and found some national data that provides some info about who these students are--for example, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders apparently have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, whereas Asian students have the lowest rates, followed by white students.  Black and Latino students are in the middle.  Students who are chronic absent are also [i]less[/i] likely to be English-language learners, and more likely to have disabilities.  Chronic absenteeism is linked to poor academic achievement and later life outcomes, including poor reading proficiency in early elementary, increased risk of dropping out of high school, and later involvement with the criminal justice system.

I'm sure a few highly achieving students also have many missed days (wasn't there a story about some piano prodigy who missed a lot of days a couple of years back?).  But, it sounds like this is not what's going on in the aggregate with respect to absenteeism and academic performance.

Of course, not all of these data may apply to DC, but it's still interesting and presumably at least partially applicable:

https://ed.gov/datastory/chronicabsenteeism.html

Also, apparently program's like Obama's "My Brother's Keeper" were created to address this and other issues related to academic achievement:

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/my-brothers-keeper

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics