The Chronic Absence and

Attendance Partnership
Dear LEA

Chronic absence is a critical issue to consider for any school seeking to

improve its academic achievement and any district committed to
reducing drop-out. It is an essential element to consider as you
develop plans for the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. This
toolkit provides background information and resources to help you
understand why chronic absence matters for SIG applicants and what
you can do to address poor attendance as you develop your plans for
turning around underperforming schools.

I. Why Chronic Absence Matters for Developing Your SIG

application?

According to the U.S. Department of Education, performance of

participating schools in the School Improvement Grant program will be
assessed using nine leading indicators, including the collection of
student attendance rates. As part of addressing attendance, schools
should examine data on chronic absence (missing 10% or more of
school over the course of a year for any reason), not just school wide
attendance figures. High levels of chronic absence can be easily
masked by average daily attendance or truancy figures. (See
Attendance Counts Power Point.)

Yet, chronic absence—at any age—is one of the best known early
warning indicators of school drop out. The impact also goes beyond the
students missing school. If a significant number of children in a
classroom or school are chronically absent, it can adversely affect all
students by slowing the pace of instruction and lowering levels of state
funding. Regardless of which of the four intervention models chosen
under the School Improvement Grant program, a school district should
know whether the lowest achieving students or schools are suffering
from high levels of chronic absence so they can design appropriate
interventions.

Improving achievement requires knowing if students are struggling

academically because: a) they aren’t in the classroom enough to
benefit from the instruction, or b) they regularly attend but what
happens in the classroom isn’t helping them achieve. In addition, if a
school has a significant chronic absence problem and understands the
factors or barriers preventing students from attending school—such as
lack of health care, poor transportation, fears of community violence,
or boredom with the curriculum—they can use that information to
determine how to proceed, especially by working with families and in
partnership with community agencies that offer relevant resources
(afterschool, preK, health services, etc.)

II. What Can Be Done to Address Chronic Absence?

Addressing chronic absence requires:

a) Using attendance data to find out if chronic absence is a problem

in your school or district and if any particular classes, grades, or
sub-populations of children are most affected. This school data
template (embed link to sample school attendance report)
provides you with one approach to analyzing your attendance
data. You can modify “Type of Absence” codes to reflect local
policy and practice.

b) If chronic absence is a problem, identify the most significant

contributing factors. Asking students and parents about barriers
to attending school regularly is especially key. These guidelines
(embed link to Contrib. Factors doc) suggest ways of identifying
key factors contributing to poor attendance in your school .

c) Working with families and community agencies to 1) create a

culture of good attendance among all students and their parents,
and 2) reach out to students struggling with poor attendance and
their families to connect them to resources that can help
overcome barriers to attendance, and 3) enable students to
make up for lost instructional time due to absences. We
especially encourage schools to consider how they can draw
upon the assets and skills of afterschool providers since they are
especially well-positioned to partner with schools to address the
needs of struggling students. We know that 85% of the schools
 identified as eligible for SIG in California have some form of state
or federally funded afterschool program. This self-assessment
tool (embed link) can help you crafting a school plan to improve
attendance.

d) Where does this fit with the SIG application? Regardless of the
type of school intervention model selected, SIG applicants should
use data on chronic absence to inform how they:

• Analyze the needs of each school to determine an appropriate

intervention (If chronic absence levels are high, then an
intervention should help to improve school attendance)

• Align other resources with the interventions (Data on which

students are chronically absent can be used to target
resources to those students who might need them most);

• Modify practices or policies, if necessary, to enable

participating schools to implement the interventions fully and
effectively (Student level attendance data can provide
immediate and timely feedback on whether students and
their families are being engaged by the new practices or
policies) ; and

• Sustain the reforms after the funding period ends

(Documenting improvements in attendance due to the
reforms helps to justify sustaining efforts since it reveals they
are helping to increase funding allocations)

We hope you find this overview, materials and bibliography (embed

link to Bibliography) useful to your efforts to ensure all students in
California an equal opportunity to learn, succeed and achieve in
school. We also welcome your feedback about whether you found this
toolkit useful and how it might be improved. Please use this feedback
form (embed link to feedback form).

The Chronic Absence and Attendance Partnership (CAAP)

Attendance Counts Education Trust – West*

California Family Resource Association Fight Crime: Invest in Kids
* California
California PTA * League of Women Voters of
California School Health Centers California* Partnership for Children
Association* and Youth
Children Now PICO California *
Public Advocates*

*Indicates that I do not yet have confirmation to add your

organization’s name to this letter.