Good afternoon everyone my name is Linda
Muskauski from the National Student
Attendance Engagement and Success Center
welcome to today's session Perspectives
from States the Implications of
Including Chronic Absence as a Measure
of Accountability. Please allow me to
share some brief details about the
Session. Today's moderator is Hedy
Chang. Hedy directs Attendance Works a
national and state-level initiative
aimed at advancing student success by
addressing chronic absence
Hedy spent more than two decades
working in the fields of family support
family economic success education and
child development. In February 2013 Hedy
was named by the White House as a
Champion of Change for a commitment to
furthering African American education.
Today's session will last for
approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes and
is being recorded. We'd like to encourage
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questions before I hand the session over
to Hedy I would like to remind folks of
the upcoming webinars that will be held
in November you'll find more information
and a link to register for these on the
last slide of the presentation also I
would like to share with you the mission
of the National Student Attendance
Engagement and Success Center. The
mission of the Center is to disseminate
evidence-based practices and build and
facilitate communities of practice to
help students attend every day be
engaged in school and succeed
academically so that they graduate high
school prepared for college career and
civic life and with that I turn it over
to Hedy Chang fabulous thank you so much
Linda it is such a pleasure to join you
here today and so you know what I'd like
to do is start off just by making sure
that we all have some common background
on what is chronic absence why it
matters and how are we seeing it become
part of state accountability systems so
could you turn to the next slide please
so the first thing I just want to do and
I know that many of you may be repeat
customers this is a familiar slide but
it's really important to think about
that there are multiple measures
of attendance they actually tell you
different things chronic absence is one
of them and when you look at these
multiple measures of attendance I think
one of the things that might help is to
understand what question are they trying
to ask and answer average daily
attendance which by the way in the past
had been more used for accountability is
how many kids how many students show up
every day for school and it really gives
you a sense for example of how many
which days during the school year are
you more likely to have challenges oh
the day after Halloween is problematic
or the day where there's a snow day or
the day whether the part day
professional development activity going
on for teachers and it helps you to
think about general overall patterns
around attendance that might be
affecting whether kids show up or
challenges that effect whether kids show
up every day
then there's truancy which we've had a
long history in this country about
tracking which is who's missing so much
school without permission that they
might actually need to trigger you might
want to be eventually triggering legal
intervention to be able to make sure
that kids comply with compulsory at laws
and then there's chronic absence which
is who's missing so much school they're
academically at-risk and honestly you
know about attendance which was started
in about 2010 when we first started this
work we found out that no one realized
they weren't looking at chronic absence
they thought they were monitoring
attendance because they looked at
average daily attendance or label
concurrency and they didn't realize that
they were actually missing looking at
who's missing so much school for any
reason including excused unexcused or
suspensions that they actually are
academically at risk because they've
missed so much instruction in the
classroom the Office for Civil Rights
started producing data on how many kids
are missing 15 days which is helpful for
just getting attendance of as an
end-of-the-year metric and has given us
a real sense of the scale and scope of
the challenge but I think what we're
seeing and we'll talk a little bit more
about this that a particularly useful
way of defining chronic acids is looking
at missing 10% of the school year
because it allows for you to notice
early on at the early warning measure
when kids are just missing two days the
first months of school say so you can
take action and intervene next slide
please
one of the things so that I've seen over
the past I guess 7 years 8 years is just
the incredible growth in research
showing that there is a real impact on
attendance this is common sense you know
you would think of instruction in the
classroom matters that it's you know
then matters if you're not there but we
actually didn't have as much research as
one would have hoped and over what we've
seen in the last decade is an incredible
of growth in research that shows even
starting in pre-k if you're chronically
absent in kindergarten pre-k K first you
know by second grade you're off track
for reading but also there's a lot of
evidence to suggest that if you don't
show up to preschool regularly you
actually can't benefit from that high
quality instruction and you're lower on
almost every dimension of school
readiness that you might imagine you
know as you go through both
elementary and then middle and
High school chronic absence is a really
good indicator not that there aren't
other behavior and academic measures but
there's a lot to be said for just
looking at attendance and alerting to
you to kids who are actually falling off
track for graduation it's even an
indication of whether kids are college
and career ready there is evidence to
show that kids who are chronically
absent even if they somehow managed to
graduate from high school are less
likely to persist enroll and then
persist in college so this is a measure
that has now a real incredible base of
research showing that it matters next
slide please
what we know is that we also know how to
turn it around and that's really this is
sort of an inverted pyramid I know
typically people see tiered support
systems as the other way around we've
actually been inverting it to get people
to think about that
what really improves attendance is when
you have a deep rich tier one sort of
prevention early intervention that's
both about positive engaging school
climates so kids want to be there as
well as helping families to notice when
kids are absences are adding up to too
much and my apologies I am in an airport
so there may be a little background
noise and hopefully that'll end soon
but you really need to have these tier 1
interventions and then if that's not
sufficient you want to engage into your
two interventions that are much more
personalized and then engaging tier 3
interventions and one of the good things
about chronic absence is you can
actually use prior year attendance to
figure out how many kids need tier 1
tier 2 or tier 3 and then plan so that
you work and make sure that as you move
into a next year or the coming school
year you actually have sufficient
resources in place given what you need
in terms of this tiered support and
often when you don't have sufficient
tier 1 or tier 2 you're almost
overwhelmed by the number of kids in
tier 3 next slide please
what we've also seen is that how do you
help people adopt these new practices
around attendance is something that
occurs over time it's not overnight and
what really helps is when you can create
peer learning networks so much of this
is using data but also common sense and
then make sure that you're not always
reinventing from scratch but that you're
learning from the present experiences
about what works as well as what doesn't
work and you're creating opportunities
for communities to share with each other
we even find that peer learning networks
are best when you can do them let's say
over a course of an 18-month period where
they meet three or four times and each
time you're meeting to look at data
share practices and you have a kind of
piece of homework that then you can
report on and when that group meets they
also start to identify what our actions
or policy challenges that really require
broader changes to effect and then
you can influence policymakers educators
informed by what's happening at the
local level and then having that spread
through technical assistance in policy
and we've seen this both work for
example within a district where the
peers are actually schools or at a state
level you can have districts working
together or counties in California for
example working together and that's a
really important way of creating
learning and creating a change pathway
that make sure that policy and practice
is grounded in what we know from
localities next slide please
ultimately what we've seen is that
taking a systemic approach to reform
really requires paying attention to
these five kind of key ingredients and
this is true whether you're talking at a
sort of a district level or at a state
level or at a national level but
particularly district and state on one
hand you need to have actionable data
that's accurate accessible data that's
regularly reported another way that
people can use it to figure out where
they need to take action and take action
as soon as possible before kids
are missing so much school that you
require a mediation you want positive
engagement so when you see that
something needs to happen you're
engaging students families teachers
schools in a positive way the
relationships so that you can unpack
what's going on figure out how you can
message the importance of going to
school every day and really helping
motivate through positive relationships
change and you want to build capacity so
people can take that actionable data and
engage in that positive engagement and
you want to have shared accountability
so that people can be constantly
reminded and seeing that really it's
everyone's responsibility to improve
attendance and reduce chronic absence
and this is also a fifth ingredient
which is strategic partnerships we know
that often when chronic absence is
severe whether it's an individual who's
facing severe levels of chronic absence
or it's a state or let's say a school
with a high level of chronic absence
where part of what your need is actually
through partnerships with community
members to help address the barriers
whether it's transportation or health or
lack of safety that may in fact go
beyond the capacity of the school to
address next slide please
what we're seeing is that this is truly
a watershed moment for advancing the
work with the every student succeeds act
you know we are in a huge shift in
mindset but from No Child Left Behind to
the every student succeeds act where
success is determined by academic and
non-academic standards not just
academics where states are setting goals
and creating a supportive framework and
have much more control and influence
over how this plays out where you should
were there to continues to be
accountability and data for student
subgroups and in the case of chronic
absence it's both a required reporting
element but it also was allowed to be an
optional school quality metric that
really allows States to think about
another metric for looking at how are
they going to improve schools next slide
please
and what we've seen you know as of
September is an overwhelming interest
support for using chronic absence as a
metric I think because it really met the
requirements of what makes for good
additional metric gets reliable it's
already somewhat collected it can be
disaggregated it's directly related to
academics and so we saw 72 percent of
states 36 states plus DC adopt chronic
absence in that as a metric and when
most of these states the vast majority
chose to take the 10 percent metric some
did a kind of reverse metric attending
90 percent there's a few that still did
they that's missing a number of days and
a few using other attendance metrics but
it's been really exciting to see how
this data is now going to be broadly
used and even in the states that so for
example our colleagues in Mississippi
decided not to adopt it as an
accountability metric because they still
they felt that they really needed to
look at the data quality which makes
most sense but they are still starting
to pay attention to chronic absence
because across all 50 states there is a
requirement that you report on this in
your local and state report cards so
that means that this data is more
available and is on the top of people
sort of radar screens in a way that has
never existed before it's quite amazing
I think there really was accountability
for this officially in policy and maybe
two states Connecticut in California
prior to the eff implementation plans
being do and now we're at 72 percent the
vast majority of states in the country
next slide please
one of the reasons that we want data to
be looked at is we think that when you
again look at the levels if you look at
prior chronic absence it can tell you
something about your strategy it can
help you think about how to efficiently
target and use your resources so in this
case we actually took the 13-14 data
this is with the
of Johns Hopkins and everyone graduates
thank you so much Bob and Vaughn who
were really instrumental to this work
but we were able to take that data and
look at what do we know about the
concentration of chronic absence and we
found that in eleven percent one out of
ten schools essentially you have at
least thirty percent or more of your
kids missing fifteen days or more
essentially thirty your kids
chronically absent and another eleven
percent twenty to twenty-nine percent of
kids you know once you reach high levels
of chronic absence so that's in one out
of five schools it both suggests that
there are systemic challenges and
barriers going on it also suggests that
there are that you're going to need
additional community partners in this
and that this is probably really
something that's requiring a lot more to
get put in place those Tier one and tier
two if it's a systemic issue which it's
affecting that many kids and in fact the
churn when chronic absence reach that
those high levels are affecting the
academic experience not just as the kids
who are chronically absent but of the
kids who are also in the classroom and
teachers are trying to deal with all
that turn so knowing that you know in 20
percent of schools you go these high
levels where you're really going to have
to think about how to bring an extra
partnerships at a significant level and
knowing that let's say half your schools
have less than 10 percent of their kids
trying to grab them and so while you
might need support for an individual kid
you're not necessarily looking at
supports to put in place a whole
comprehensive tiered support system next
slide please
what we saw from our data was that there
was huge variations in chronic absence
across states ranging from a low of two
percent to a high of 29 percent of all
schools experiencing 30 percent or more
levels of chronic absence so it is
really quite amazing to see the
variation we haven't had a chance to
explore what that's about how much is
that about the differences in the way
they collected that how much is that
about
princes and maybe underlying community
conditions like health and poverty but
it's really quite astonishing to see
that and it points to the need to look
at your own state data which there are
we have we produced and it's available
on our website next slide please
we also were able to look at poverty
levels in schools and how that connects
to chronic absence and I just want to
point out that if you look at the far
left of this slide you see that in
school where you have 75% or more of
kids in poverty you have about 19% where
there's the 30% or more of their kids so
it's a high level at the same time it
strikes me to see that there's almost
there's an equal number of schools high
poverty that have less than 5 percent 5
less than 5 percent of their kids
chronically absent within those cases
you're both looking at where is there
huge need for additional support and
where are there may be those bright
spots schools because you don't get low
levels of chronic absence and high
levels of poverty by chance you get that
because someone was intentionally doing
something and when states look at this
data they can actually figure out which
schools might be adopting practices that
in fact others can use so this is
something this is an again example of
how you can use date data strategically
next slide please
next slide please
we did see that chronic absence levels
tend to be higher in high school but we
also have seen there's some variation in
states around this I also want to point
out that low levels of chronic absence
in elementary school could be masking
that you have very high levels of
chronic absent kn1 because actually 2nd
3rd 4th and 5th tends to be the grades
with the best levels of attendance and
then it starts to go up in middle and
high so this is again data with this
helps you to understand me we do have a
high school issue but for some schools
it's high in the elementary levels and
you're going to have to look about this
more carefully with your own local data
next slide please
I worth noticing that across the country
we really did see typically alternative
schools as well as schools with high
levels of special ed experiencing
extremely high levels of chronic absence
and that may be something for us all to
keep in mind and think about what's
happening around the educational
experience of those kids next slide
please
so with our report we really recommend a
few things that states should do first
of all and all states will have their
data you need to take a look at your
data review it and think about its
quality and make sure that you can see
trends and if you do need to improve
quality of data then figure out how
you're going to do that we do think it's
important to take it form of state
leadership team that's interagency this
cross-sector that can take a
responsibility for thinking about how to
organize responses in action
particularly in the places with the
highest levels of chronic absence but
you really can create a data informed
comprehensive system of ta how that will
look like is going to really have to
depend upon every state and I think it's
really important for states to publicize
the nature of the challenge and what are
the available resources that people can
turn to so that's the section that I
have for you know just sharing with you
some of our resources and what we have
available and it's now my pleasure to
make sure that you get a chance to hear
from your colleagues so can we turn to
the next slide and I'd like
to welcome our panelists we have such
an incredible cross-sector of colleagues
from states who represent diversity of
geography and our country diversity and
size of states diversity and the kind of
infrastructure they bring what I do know
since I've had the pleasure to work with
all of these states is that each the
folks in these states these key
administrators bring passion dedication
to kids and family that desire to make
sure that every kids have had an
opportunity to be in school so they can
learn and succeed really cuts across
each one of them so we're going to be
joined first by Dr. Susan Zelman the
executive director at the Ohio State
Department of Education and she'll be
presenting with Brittany Miracle who's
the program administrator for the Center
for accountability and continuous
improvement at the Ohio Department of
Education they've played an instrumental
role and helping to make sure that Ohio
started to look at its data crunch its
data take it seriously and start to
think about how they build capacity
that's districts I'm so pleased to bring
in Mary Batiwalla, is the executive
director of the office of accountability
of the Tennessee Department of Education
she'll be presenting on Tennessee after
Ohio it's so exciting to see the office
of accountability starting to take this
on and integrating into this work
Tennessee is just been stellar and the
kind of research that it's been
producing and then last but certainly
not least we're going to be hearing from
Gordon Jackson the director of
coordinated student support services in
the division at the California
Department of Education who has just
been tireless in his efforts over the
years to make sure that we pay attention
to chronic absence school climate and
making sure that there's real equitable
access to education in the state of
California with that next slide please
and just real quick we'll be talking
about this with each one we're going to
start off with questions asking each
panelists to talk about the kind of
reports and data they have on chronic
absence and then I'll be asking them to
share a bit how if chronic absence
integrated into their
ESSA works and then how are they
building chronic absence into their
school improvement strategies all right
now I'm going to turn over to Ohio and
I'm going to ask dr. Zelman to start us
off tell us about the kind of reports
and data that's available in Ohio on
chronic absence well thank you having
it's a pleasure to of these year Ohio
we've been collecting data from schools
and districts on chronic absenteeism and
we've been featuring it on our school
and district report cards since 2014
this year we actually went back full
report on our 2016 to us state report
card so we featured chronic absenteeism
in our state of report cards a report we
should I'm going to ask the if they
could keep moving our slides and remind
you to say there's lied every time you
want to see one okay great our next
slide um we we began to delve into our
data and analyze it at the state level
last year and as a day like our platform
to which to use and analyze this data
and waves we quite honestly interview
before we began talking to districts
about chronic absenteeism versus average
daily attendance and truancy and on the
next field so slide you're going to see
how Ohio has broken down its state-level
data to shine a light on student groups
that many that we at the State
Department and our districts may not
have noticed okay so next slide chronic
absenteeism right psychology when the
data will broken down into district
topologies we do see that both
pathologies in a while
have chronic absenteeism so we have had
conversations about how to reduce
chronic absenteeism in a high poverty
district
so then we'll in urban areas this data
really apply
to see that a real poverty suburban
students have variants to regular
tendance as well for those apologies
have higher rates than other every
topology can implement processes and
interventions to reduce their
absenteeism rates Ohio has begun to use
this data to plan and also differentiate
it differentiate our resources and
support to our different types of
districts on the next slide you'll see
chronic absenteeism by Ohio subgroup
disaggregating data by a subgroup shines
the light on justice students that might
otherwise go unnoticed for example if
you look at the aggregated data rate you
might average rate you might not see
that our students with disabilities are
migrant students and our bilingual
students and even our gifted students
are facing barriers for where you were
attended this allows us to have
conversations around our state about
specific regions where students may be
absent at higher rates this intentional
conversation of course our department
and of course our state where people who
are dealing with these specific
categories the students we think will
lead to a better align system of support
at the state and at the local level yet
on our next slide you will see
chronic absenteeism by grade levels now
when we look at this data it is been
quite an eye-opening experience for us
in Ohio so it is certainly aligned with
the national research candy that you
just explained higher races in the
garden and other transitional breaks our
weights have progressive early got
higher throughout high school experience
and our high school seniors having the
highest rate of absenteeism in the state
so we've been able to use this
either to start conversations about how
to engage a high school to use
differently in fact our state
superintendent today is addressing that
in at least 200 speeches particularly
focusing in on high school seniors and
with that I'm going to take a turn it
over to our very talented
Brittany miracle who is working very
hard on this issue goodnight thank you
dr. Bowman and honey I think we'll all
head into the next question great so um
tell us a little bit more about how are
you incorporating this again sure our
next slide will show a screenshot of our
state report card the doctors on I
mentioned Ohio has been reporting this
data on tool and district report cards
for several years now we do feature the
district and school rate on our district
and school detail suite and that's what
you can see on your screen right now we
also have all school district data and a
downloadable file
it's a downloadable file that
stakeholders can look at and analyze
data across counties and across some
regions in the state and we're working
to include this aggregated future source
subgroups and different pathologies as
well the next slide will show how high
with integrating chronic absenteeism as
part of our graded accountability system
so in addition to providing the support
only data on a report card Ohio is
committed to using chronic absenteeism
as our measure of school quality or
student success beginning with 2018
chronic absenteeism will be included as
a graded measure on all school in
distress report cards Ohio's report card
is currently divided into fixed rated
components one of which is our
achievement component within this
component we have two graded measures we
have an indicators map measure and a
performance and that chronic absenteeism
will be included as part of the
indicators that measure
Ohio still running simulations to
determine exact
how this to be calculated but
essentially it will have a benchmark
data point such as 5% and will also
include an improvement element such as a
district simply by 3 percent or whatever
incident as we said if the district
needs to benchmark or makes the
designated amount of improvement they
will receive a check mark for the
chronic absenteeism indicator within the
indicators map measure on our report
card so the next slide you can talk
about how we're gearing up for chronic
absenteeism as part of our school
improvement system so we've started to
integrate chronic absenteeism into our
continuous improvement activities Ohio
feels an important first step is having
districts look critically at their data
so schools and districts will now be
asked questions about chronic
absenteeism when completing the school
and district needs assessment that
informs their local continuous
improvement plan and this is typically
the title one planets that's required
for the for all districts to receive
federal funding there are two questions
and the needs assessment that populates
are any dishes with an absent children
of five percent or above it's absolutely
the first questions if absenteeism is
concentrated amongst particular grade
level students or subscripts in their
schools think about why that is the
second question is what is the
relationship between attendance patterns
and achievement also what is the
relationship between attendance patterns
and discipline so however has a regional
system of support that assist districts
with these continuous improvement
activities particularly with data
analysis we're training a regional
system to look at chronic absenteeism
data side by side with achievement data
and behavior data to get a root cause
and n citation of while achievement
rates are persistent in some districts
and the past districts to look at
reading data and they may see that their
third grade reading scores well they
would dig a little deeper and they would
see that certain subgroups are having
trouble with great reading but now we're
asking them to dig even a little deeper
why are certain subjects struggling in
Thursday
is it because they're not actually in
this classroom benefitting from
instruction or that they're actually not
attending their after-school
intervention opportunities that they've
been targeted for this is turn to
conversations within districts in
schools to revisit school policies
including bus and federal changing
specific school or student schedules so
that maybe reading something in the
morning or math as a person in the
morning and it's also sort of the
conversation about how students are
children so purposes are interventions
so once districts analyze their data to
identify the root causes they'll be
asked to add minute to integrate student
supports into their continuous
improvement plans
these are those district level plans
that I've mentioned to get federal
funding these support should be
strategically chosen and to the line
with improvement activities as
identified and there needs assessment
supports should include breaking down
barriers that are getting in the way to
regular attendance for their students
using data helps districts to
strategically choose community partners
that will help in this work community
partners are integral so that we want to
make sure I districts are choosing the
right partners for the right reasons
lastly Ohio is incorporated chronic
absenteeism under a model to award
school improvement dollars to our focus
in priority schools as one of four
target areas districts may choose to
spend their school improvement dollars
on research this may include a
partnership with Herbert's proving
ground project and this project empowers
districts use attendance data as an
early warning sign for chronic
absenteeism thank you so much it's a
wealth of information I just want to
double check that there aren't any
questions
so I'm actually having trouble seeing
stuff in chat so - are there any
questions that you're seeing coming up
about Ohio specifically I realize we
could ask just check if there's any
clarifications about what either dr.
Zelman or Brittany miracle just
presented if anything coming up
but not currently but I would like to
encourage all the participants to feel
free to ask questions throughout the
presentations and we will address them
either during the presentation or at the
end great and Sue Fothergill is the
associate director for policy for
attendance works and is helping me with
this presentation you know what I do to
reflect over this particular so because
we invited the questions we do have one
and Brittney do you have any insights
into where chronic absence rates are so
high for certain subgroups for example
students with disabilities oh-o-oh
answer that I mean there's a you know
there could be a variety of different
reasons why students with disabilities
don't go to school you know on a very
personal note I have an autistic or
grandchild who is integrated into the
regular classroom setting and you know
going to school has been hard for him
because he's been bullied on the bus and
and in a particular school which
doesn't have a very good school climate
and receptive to obscurity to think
in a different thing and act in
different ways so I think um
but what I am urging is that our
office of special education look at this
issue and also begin to desegregate this
data so when is it more refined with
regard to different types of children
with different types of disabilities and
see if we could address this in a more
systemic and aligned way and similarly
just students with disabilities or our
migrant students it should really be
looked at on a very case-by-case student
level so even if they're having just
because they're identified as a student
of disability they're still having very
personal and student specific barriers
to getting to school so school should
still approach the very individualistic
we at the state level
that's certainly a good question and as
we develop our implementation plan for
ESSA we will likely look into
evidence-based strategies and getting
each of these different sectors to
school and what is was previously for
the subject and almost more importantly
I mean chronic absenteeism should be
considered as part of the IEP planning
process and a good mechanism to address
and I do think that in terms of the
guidance that our office of special
education issues it's some things which
I will which we will encourage them to
address great question so appreciate
that I also want to offer up that you
can do some bright spots analysis to
look at schools with lots with kids with
disabilities who don't have
disproportionately high levels of
chronic absence and sometimes we've seen
particularly for example that inclusive
engaging climate isn't the reverse to be
true so appreciate all the work that
you're doing on that why don't we shift
now over to Tennessee and we'll have our
friends from Ohio stay with us so that
they can answer questions again but
let's hear more about what's happening
here in Tennessee so tell us a bit more
about what kind of reports and data do
you have in Tennessee very sure thank
you for having me here today
as possible can you advance to the next
slide please thank you so I'll start
with just a small bit of context most of
what the speakers on the webinar thus
far have shared in terms of rates for
different grade levels rates for
different schools and rates for
different student groups pertains to
Tennessee as well so here is just a bit
of our data last year when we look at
our 1617 school year data we saw on
average in our state thirteen point six
percent of our students were chronically
absent we actually use the term
chronically out of school for this and
you can see that we have the student
group
those historically underserved groups
that we include in our accountability
system as a focus on equity that that
can either have higher or lower rates so
the second bar there represents our
racial minority students those students
that fall into the black Hispanic or
Native American student group you can
see they have slightly higher rates of
chronic absenteeism than all students
you can see the top bar there's our
economically disadvantaged students with
quite high rates at 21.4% Tennessee
English learners would actually have
lower rates on average of chronic
absenteeism and then finally as Ohio was
suggesting we do tend to have slightly
higher rates for students with
disabilities and this process generally
has given us a chance not just to talk
about chronic absenteeism and put some
stakes around it but to really engage
multiple program areas including our
folks who work with students with
disabilities next slide so to speak
specifically about the reports we
provide in Tennessee we like to think
about the way we provide data to folks
in two ways and the first way and
actually to me the more exciting way is
the formative data we provide so through
our student information system at the
state level we actually have a number of
standard reports and research queries
that actually aggregate data that
schools and districts send to us and
display it back to them in ways that
they can take action with so one recent
report that we just put in place over
the summer is actually a by student
report that all districts and schools
have access to where they can see each
one of their students as well as the
total number of absences each one of
their students has to date and we
actually go ahead and provide an
absenteeism wait that that's based on
the current number of instructional days
that they've been enrolled in that
school so far so we hope that folks can
use this tool in two ways the first way
is that they have access to historical
data and so we hope that when they're
planning for the upcoming school
year so when we launched this it was
July and as they were planning for this
card school year we encourage folks to
use this to identify students who's the
store
pull data identified them as being
chronically out of school but more
importantly it actually provides them a
real-time glance at the students who are
on track to be chronically absent for
this school year so that as was
mentioned earlier they can actually see
okay there's only been one month it's
August and already the student as of now
hasn't happened T as a rate of 10% this
is a student I need to flag in a student
that I need to investigate further to
see what types of actions I can take to
make sure that they are available for
for direct instruction more frequently
than they probably do so that's our
first type of report next slide and then
we have a much more summative class and
and we provide these reports to folks in
the same platform that would provide
them their assessment data at the end of
in the end of the year so the report
that you're looking at now is a report
that we provide to districts we provide
at the district and school level and we
provide data for the previous year for
all students in each one of the
historically underserved subgroups that
we include in our accountability system
they provide them the percent of
students in each of those groups who
were chronically absent in the prior
year and for districts we actually break
this out into k-8 at 912
so on the first line there you can see
that the percent of chronically absent
in the district for all students nine
for 12 for this district was 14 point 8
percent we then actually in the same
file provide districts and schools a
target to reduce this percent which is
part of what we use in our
accountability system so for this
particular school we expect them to
reduce their rate by six point two five
percent so we would ask that they aim to
have a rate of 13 percent in 2018 next
slide and actually I think I'm ready for
the next question yes this is about the
ESSA one right so the next thing I'm going to
addresses help Tennessee is approaching
this data in terms of our accountability
systems in Tennessee action has two
accountability system the first is a
district accountability system and the
second is a school accountability system
but it
thing to note is that both systems
provide schools and districts multiple
pathways to show success so for schools
schools can earn a high grade because we
are an APL state by either having
overall low chronic absenteeism rates or
reducing the rate so even schools with
the highest rates of chronic absenteeism
in our state have the opportunity to
show success if they are reducing the
rate at them at the level that we expect
and this is the metric that in our
accountability system is worth 10
percent of a school's grade next slide
drive I mention we have a school
accountability system but we also have a
district accountability system and this
area in order to align with our school
accountability system is also included
in terms of factoring a districts final
determination so you can see here
chronically out of school is one of our
six areas which captures chronic
absenteeism next slide so here you can
see that when we calculate our quantum
absenteeism rates as you saw on the Data
Report slide that we're not only looking
at all students were actually looking at
the performance of historically
underserved subgroups as well and these
are the forming student groups that we
include when we're factoring a school or
districts determination and performance
of these students actually counts 40% of
both the district and school
determinations next slide
so districts like schools have multiple
ways that they can show success on this
indicator but districts actually have a
third pathway that schools do not and
that's a pathway that we refer to as
value-added in our system so now you
added is actually a metric that
encourages districts to focus on those
schools who have historically been
chronically absent because we know the
research shows students who's been
chronically absent are very likely to be
chronically absent in the current year
so we're encouraging folks to look at
that data and we're actually giving them
credit for reducing the percent of
students who are chronically absent in
the current year who were chronically
absent in a primary we set this growth
expectation off of this
so and employees the signs and districts
or based off of half of state performs
on this metric but I've been a really
exciting additional metrics that we use
in district accountability in addition
to looking at absolute performance and
overall reduction next and finally this
slide here just gives you an overview of
our school accountability indicators and
as I mentioned before you can see here
10% of the school's determination is
actually based on chronically out of
school both for Cade and for high
schools and so how are you embedding
this into your kind of school
improvement systems that may be broader
than just your ESSA accountability
system yeah I think having an F s been
really helpful in terms of putting
additional weight on it so to speak in
the minds of our schools and districts
like absenteeism has an area that we've
been trying to focus on for the past few
years and we actually have our
programmers doing a lot of work in this
area with schools specifically we've
been focusing on decreasing exclusionary
disciplinary practices focusing on
programs like restorative justice
programs we're actually today our
joint house committee in the state met
to talk about health issues actually
with school nurses and we're looking at
whether or not we're adequately funding
those positions so we definitely have
been approaching this from multiple
angles because we know that the
underlying causes of chronic absenteeism
can vary from place to place and student
to student but we definitely see chronic
absenteeism as a leading indicator when
it comes to comes to schools and school
outcomes and it's specifically an
important indicator that we think about
when we think about equity because we
know that gap like you saw at the state
level for Tennessee like you saw in Ohio
those gaps in this leading indicator
ultimately represent gaps in our
outcomes as well and so it's one area
that we really think if we push around
and by adding it into our accountability
system we're getting a little bit more
traction we're really going to be able
to see improvements in achievement and
those other things that matter
students in student outcomes thank you
there are two questions that we've seen
so far one is about disaggregated data
for students of color and another is
about what you do I wanted to let the
audience know we're actually going to
come back to that as a cross-cutting
conversation but giving everyone a heads
up on the panel that we are I'm going to
after we hear Gordon share about
California I'm going to come back and
talk about this issue of disaggregated
data for students of color and
population specific as well as have you
guys share what you've been where if
you've seen any examples of particularly
effective approaches to reducing chronic
absence but that's a little infomercial
for the end and before I do that I
actually want to turn this over to
Gordon Jackson because the California
Department of Education I think
represents a different approach in part
because California is such a large state
and I think the situation of trying to
move in a direct this is emerged a bit
differently given the environment so
Gordon give us a sense of California and
how this issue of chronic absence has
been emerging here and that would be my
pleasure Hedy and it's great to have
this opportunity with everyone and I'm
so impressed and listening to both Ohio
and Tennessee to look at the progress
that they've made and it's inspirational
in the best of ways I think the
California story is an interesting story
and I think to put it in context it's
important to recognize that our state's
population is larger than either Canada
or Australia and that the 6.2 million
kids that make up our system are
incredibly diverse when we think about
the role of the State Department and how
we you know intervene and interact with
our system of 10,500 schools makes it a
little bit limiting when it comes to
going out and actually having dialogue
and having direct work with schools we
have 58 county offices we work more
directly with our county offices fully
recognizing that we have over 1,000
school districts so all of this is to
say this is this is quite a system that
calls for
kind of an intricate way of working
together to make it work next slide
please
I think it's also important to note that
you know we have had quite a trail and
it's been I think a real emphasis on the
part of my division and my work in the
department with amazing colleagues is to
truly make chronic absence matter so
that folks understand that all the
resources all the great things that
you're providing our students are then
have very little impact if in fact the
seats are empty in 2010 we had Senate
bill 1357 which finally defined a
chronic absentee and really put things
in motion to look at our longitudinal
data system to start recognizing we need
data we need to move forward with this
in 2011 the state superintendent
convened that a chronic absence
absenteeism Policy Forum and that was a
really critical step because we invited
agency leads and other key individuals
including legislators together in one
room to talk about chronic absence and
to talk about its impact and really that
was the beginning of all of our
messaging to make it matter and to more
importantly make it matter to everyone
in all of these different walks in the
students life in 2013 we had a local
control funding formula into our lives
which was huge
just dynamically changed how funding
happens in California how school funding
happens and really provided I think the
impetus to start looking at it's great
to recognize that chronic absence
matters but what do you do with it how
do you measure it out of you how do you
help it to become a part of
accountability and we've done that next
slide
so the local control funding formula
includes this companion piece which is
called a local control accountability
plan it's a three-year plan that
describes the goals actions and services
and expenditures to support positive
student outcomes that address state and
local priorities so schools and
districts are obligated to create this
plan and that plan must make reference
to these priorities and fortunately and
because of those of us who sit where I
sit that are just totally committed to
making the difference about chronic
absence we're pleased that people
engagement that attendance rates chronic
absenteeism rates dropout rates
graduation rates are a part of this plan
are a part of the priorities and in
essence districts and schools have to
actually write that out what is it what
are going to what are going to be the
goals what's going ok Gordon we're doing
a comment that we need you to speak a
little louder in the mic if you don't
mind okay sure
and so which is rare for me and that's
okay so next slide please
so as we start looking at this path to
California's efforts to really address
chronic absenteeism the superintendent
convened a second chronic absenteeism
Policy Forum in 2013 much like the first
again working with some of our
colleagues working with the California
Endowment working with legislators
working with agency leads to really help
them to start looking at what is it that
they might do to contribute how might
they message throughout all of to their
constituents that have in your school in
your child in school matters and 2016
the State Board of Education announced
that the local control funding
formula Valiant evaluation rubrics would
include chronic absenteeism rates so as
you can imagine there was a celebration
in my division because that was an
opportunity to make this real and in
2017 I'm just not too long ago and in
September our State Board approved
California's every student succeeds act
plan and it includes chronic absenteeism
as a part of the accountability index
for pupils in kindergarten through
eighth grade so this is a great
beginning next slide so we started
looking at what's next in the spring of
2016 17 the 2016-17 school year chronic
absence he absent leaves were collected
and now through our longitudinal data
system we have to review that we have to
spend the time to really understand the
results and review that data and to
complete that as soon as possible early
in fiscal year to help us then determine
the baseline and establish some of the
associated goals this is new for
California it was new for our districts
and schools to really look at this data
to have it accessible then ultimately
quite an offer just a little context
which is that so one of the things that
people may not know about California is
California has been funded by average
daily attendance for years
so in 2010 when Gordon was talking about
how we had to have legislation defining
chronic absence and suggesting it would
be added to our longitudinal student
database the issue was a tenth most
states have chronic have attendance in
their longitudinal student data systems
but they weren't calculating chronic
absence so for example both Ohio and
Tennessee that was their situation they
had the data
they hadn't been calculating it in
California and there's a handful of
other states for whom this is they're
just starting to add a tenant state in
it we actually didn't even have the data
in the in the system in order to be able
to crunch numbers so just one make sure
that people could we have a national
audience and in fact part of the problem
California was that when people knew
that we were funded by average daily
attendance where districts were sending
up to the state every month you know
here's how many kids showed up every day
they assumed that we had it when that
was actually district level data and not
individual student level data so this is
a huge step forward for California and
given that we're also about 10 percent
of the country I think it's a huge step
forward to the country absolutely and
thank you for spotlighting that heading
absolutely so now that we have this data
and we're going to be able to look at it
and data quest one of our systems that
display data and a new California school
dashboard this is high connection to
accountability obviously and there's
this opportunity for us to really look
at where are the pockets of concern
where are the promising practices you
know where are their ways in which we
can intervene and assist and most
importantly drawing attention to who is
more often than not chronically absent
California is a diverse state you know
the majority of our six-point two
million students are students of color
and when we started disaggregating the
data and looking at the data it's very
clear who more often than not is
chronically absent and therefore when
we're thinking about strategies and
to do that has to be a part of the mix
in terms of deliberate things that we do
for some of our underserved students
next slide please
so as we now recognize that it's a part
of ESSA and s's requirement I was a
wonderful thing that just really kind of
cinch the deal for California that in
essence that expectation on the part of
effort to really use conic absenteeism
was a benefit to us so we're looking
now at aligning their strategies and
looking at some real concrete things
that we can do we have state school
attendance a review board that is
providing statewide guidance to our
superintendent to my staff about things
that they're doing in out in their own
districts as well as giving us trends
and giving us information that's
critically important helping us look at
policy helping us look at what might
need to be reviewed and revisited we
have a model SARB recognition program
that encourages the development of new
strategies you know in a system such as
ours we fully recognize that there
are people that are ready to move
forward and collaborate and cooperate
after we've really done our due
diligence to make attendance matter and
chronic absenteeism matter but what they
need more often than not is and so what
do I do you know what are the strategies
what are some of the things that I can
do
so having model SARBs that go through
this process of really working with both
the leadership of the school the parents
and the student to determine why this
student is absent and going through
this process also influences some of the
very programs that schools and districts
are using and modeling to really make
the difference we have a sob handbook
that we disseminate that provides these
effective practices and so that's
incredibly important next slide
you know we know that it matters in 2016
we had 27 school districts that were
recognized for their best practices in
improving school attendance and the
attendance Institute estimates that if
all California districts use best
practices consistently what a difference
it would make in fact in the number of
chronically absent students in
California in grades kindergarten to
fifth would drop we know in just a
recent mining of their data that Latino
students in these best attendance
practice districts graduated at a rate
of 87 point two percent which is seven
point two percent higher than the
average of our Latino students you know
in the state African American students
they in those best attendance practice
districts graduated at a rate of eighty
five point two percent which was twelve
point six above the state average so we
recognize that it makes a difference we
publicized this we communicate this in
every venue possible so that we're
working with leadership so that they can
say well I want there to I want to make
that happen and in many ways you know
working with improving attendance is
perhaps some of the low-hanging fruit
when it comes to all of the different
things at once trying to do in a school
system this is highly doable
next slide our student a superintendent
has said on many occasions you can have
the best facilities the best teachers
and the best curriculum in the world but
none of them matters of students are not
in school and that's our elected
superintendent Tom Torlakson my division
is in the process of developing
additional web-based assistance to
support schools and districts with
chronic absence data mining it's going
to be a lot easier now that there's
ready access to data so that that's a
plus but most importantly it's what do
we do with this data and in that next
step and how does that how does that
show how is that evidenced in the daily
operations of the school we're in the
process of developing a state system of
support and that's as you can imagine
quite comprehensive and quite
complicated in a state the size of
California
one of the things that that will include
will be some of the deliberate
interventions that deliberate modeling
and examples and guidance about what to
do when you've recognized that you have
this high rate of chronic absence you
have convinced that it matters and you
have definitely joined their team we
don't want people to spend an inordinate
amount of time thinking about their own
customized way of doing things if in
fact we can provide them examples and
samples and models to make the
difference so it's exciting it's been a
long haul I know that five years from
now if not sooner than that we'll have
real clear you know data to show about
our progress and really looking far more
sophisticated than we are now because we
were just getting to that point but I'm
very pleased that we have moved in this
direction thank you so much Gordon so
let's go into some of these
cross-cutting questions I'm going to
first ask a question and bring back our
friends from Ohio and Tennessee as well
what kind of disaggregated data do you
have in your systems and then I want to
ask an open question and involve Gordon
in that and saying what are you finding
is needed to tailor strategies to
particular populations so first let me
um ask Lowe's Ohio first Ohio and then
Tennessee what kind of disaggregated
data you have so it's not a just
students of color of the lump but
specific within that
[Music]
well we do look now at disaggregation
of data likes to buy different types of
students and we have individual student
data so that we could look at it from a
district level and at a school level for
students and one of the things I'm
trying to encourage and if we think
about at a State Department of Education
for the 21st century is to really build
a stronger research planning and
evaluation unit within our department
that would actually work um with
district and million people with data
visualization skills and so forth to
really train them on how to look and
report on that data and that when we
look at the data collaboratively we
would use either national best practices
or we would then sort of collect of
those experiences and we get to our work
and other centers in the department to
see what we can in fact improve upon
with regard to our policies or issues
that we need to alert them to so our
philosophy heading is really sort of
creating a creative tension between
top-down and bottom-up types of
policymaking and work in partnership
with our district thank you
and can we by the way move to the dis
questions slide and that would be really
helpful and so Tennessee are you look
are you just aggregating below the
large be H end category and are you able
to kind of look at what's working for
particular ethnic populations yes
actually we are we deciphered a for each
in
visual racial and ethnic group and we
actually use that in calculating our
targeted support schools so while we use
the combined group largely in our system
for lots of pieces of our state
accountability system we do look
specifically at each of those groups and
will they only break it out we see we
see similar trends to what we see in
terms of achievement our Hispanic
students tend to have lower chronic
absenteeism rate than our than our black
students and Native Americans have lower
rates as well we do that combining
largely to include as many students as
possible in our accountability system
but yes we have it
and Gordon you talked about some of your
districts with particularly good better
results do you have a sense of what
they're doing you know I do and I think
that part of it is that they're looking
at kind of a comprehensive approach
there they're focused on of course
student discipline reform because those
absences and suspension or whatever it
maybe that is creating this learning
loss is in essence adding to chronic
absence so looking at reforming their
discipline policies so that students
aren't out of school looking at working
with the home and particularly
especially in California working with
the home in the home language so that
parents are brought on board we not
fully understanding their level of
support and fully understanding you know
the overall concept of chronic absence
that it's absence for any reason and
scheduling doctor's appointments
differently in all of that making sure
that that conversation happens in a
language that they really understand and
I think it's also just working with both
the whole notion of school climate and
school engagement and equity are all
very much connected to chronic absence
and so that when you're having that
dialogue and when you're working with
schools and districts that talk about
their commitment to all students and
their commitment to the whole child
well that commitment falls asunder if in
fact they have high rates of chronic
absenteeism and they're not making that
connection so it's really fortifying all
of that to build the team to recognize
that we gotta walk the talk and here are
some real concrete things that you can
do to really turn that around
thank you so I have another question
here which is and maybe I'll start again
with Ohio and keep going in this
direction which is and what are the
steps that are needed to help districts
transition from truancy and sort of a
punishment modality to chronic absence
early intervention and how are you
trying to foster that approach as a
state so the first step at least when
I'm working with districts is having
them understand that excused or
unexcused doesn't really matter it
matters the student is not in bathroom
in Ohio we've been helped out with this
because we do have any state legislation
that has shifted the conversation away
from the punitive truancy approach to a
more individualized Student Center
approach so now when students are truant
any district with a chronic absenteeism
rate of five percent or above has to
have an absence intervention team at
their school or district so we found
that that particularly helpful in
districts thank you through why students
are missing school not just that they
are but why are they missing school and
what resources can help that student
that family break down those barriers to
attendance we found that to be
particularly helpful
Mary what about Tennessee
yes um so we I liked what Gordon said
that in terms of making connections
because we're really trying to help
folks make connections and understand
that chronic absenteeism is ultimately
impactful when it comes to student
achievement and like I said the reasons
that students miss them you know are
diverse and we have a great program area
that's actually working with supporting
students and supporting schools and I
think you mentioned it earlier you know
when you look at your data you do come
to find those places that are bright
stars or lighthouses and those are
the places we've actually tried to
locate in Tennessee and use as exemplars
to hold up and say yes this is hard work
at yes this takes time but ultimately
whatever the cause is of chronic
absenteeism there actually are some
interventions that you can use and I
think the data pieces really are
important particularly for our smaller
districts that you know don't have the
ability to look at and aggregate all of
their data and I'll say this in
Tennessee we don't necessarily look at
chronic absenteeism data as by it that's
actionable but we do think it can lead
our districts and schools to ask
questions that will ultimately lead them
to take action and we have great
examples of our districts doing that in
recent years and I'm really hoping that
as this becomes a more talked about
metrics and accountability we're going
to see the more of a very great thank
you so much
according what would you add to this
what have you found it's been crucial to
moving the dialogue from truancy and a
for the more court intervention or even
a sort of more punitive approach which
isn't always you know you can do courts
that aren't punitive but that's kind of
modality to more of a prevention
approach you know I think the one thing
that I've noticed that that has made the
difference I think is really working
with those individuals that are closest
to the child and that is the teacher and
when the teacher has strategies that
really create more student engagement
when the teacher has strategies about
how to greet that student that has been
absent and it's now returning in ways
that really
that student to want to come the next
day what what's helpful is for the
student for the teacher to realize that
ultimately it allows them to do their
job easier the class room is not
disrupted as much the flow of
instruction the continuity of their
efforts I mean ultimately it becomes the
gift that the teachers are saying I
had to do a little extra in terms of
paying attention to it in terms of
messaging to the family and to the child
about being here and doing that piece
but the end result is for the reward
that it makes my job easier and so that
is truly I think something that I want
to spread through every classroom and in
every school and district so that no one
looks at attention to this issue becomes
yet one more burden or one more thing to
do when in essence it's the foundation
wear which makes lots of other things
happen far easier and a school
thank you that's so helpful I have one
last question and I'm going to have to
keep it short so C would be volunteering
but I'm actually wondering Mary if you
might offer on this one and maybe it's
because I spent a little time in your
state in Appalachia how do you seem that
you need to take and tailor this work to
rural areas and then we'll see if you
have time to have anyone else but I know
and particularly that's a big piece of
Appalachia of Appalachian a big piece of
the work that you do yeah that's a great
question and actually you know Tennessee
most of our districts 96 of them have
5,000 or fewer students so we're dealing
with a lot of rural districts but
actually although being rule can
sometimes seem like a disadvantage
there's actually a lot of the different
advantages that they have the things
that Gordon was talking about those
personal relationships in the sense of
community in some way so there are
strategies that we've seen these
districts take that what would be
possible in some of our more urban
districts because of the personalization
so I'll just give one antidote briefly
we had one of our smaller districts just
get a detail printed like school you
know absenteeism offer officer and trap
it on one of their cars and even though
they didn't even have the money to
employ that type of person they just
drove it around town and just some mere
presence of having that made parents you
know start talking about how they're
going to start the influence you know
who are actually monitoring attendance
floor and that increase their
attendance rate so we have all this
great types of antidotes but most of
them are really driven and based off of
the personalization that people are able
to take into consideration when they
tailor their strategies to these small
rural communities that is very helpful
the end of our time we do want to thank
everyone so much for attending today and
also thank our presenter and panelists
for their insight and expertise we're
going to ask you if you wouldn't mind to
please stay on the webinar to
participate in just a few quick polling
questions that are related to this
session thank you so much thank you
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