1. Reducing Chronic Absence
Why does it matter? What can we do?
Hawaii Middle Schools July 26,

2. Why Does Attendance Matter for Achievement? Research summary
Overview
This training module is designed to provide Hawaii Middle School principals and school teams with a basic understanding of what chronic absence is, why it matters and how to address it. It contains five sections:
Attendance Terms: Chronic absence, Average Daily Attendance and Truancy
Why Does Attendance Matter for Achievement? Research summary
Chronic Absence in Hawaii: How many students are chronically absent in Hawaii’s schools? How does Hawaii compare to other states?
How Can We Address Chronic Absence? Understanding reasons behind absences, Recommended Site-Level Strategies, Role of the Attendance Team and Tiered Systems of Support
Free Resources: Materials from Attendance Works
Voice over:
This training module is designed to provide Hawaii Middle School principals and school teams with a basic understanding of what chronic absence is, why it matters and how to address it. It contains five sections:
Attendance Terms: Chronic absence, Average Daily Attendance and Truancy
How Does Attendance Matter for Achievement? Research summary
Chronic Absence in Hawaii: How many students are chronically absent in Hawaii’s schools? How does Hawaii compare to other states?
How Can We Address Chronic Absence? Understanding reasons behind absences, Recommended Site-Level Strategies, Role of the Attendance Team and Tiered Systems of Support
Free Resources: Materials from Attendance Works

3. Find a partner and share:
Warm Up
Find a partner and share:
When you were in middle school, what made it hard for you to come to school every day?
What or who helped you get to school despite the challenges?
Voice over:
Let’s get started. If you are participating in this session with a team, find a partner and share the following:
When you were in middle school, what made it hard for you to come to school every day?
What or who helped you get to school despite the challenges?
If you are watching by yourself, take a moment to reflect on these two questions. You may want to jot down your answers in a notebook so you can draw on your personal experiences when we begin to design interventions for the students in your school.

4. What is Chronic Absence?
Chronic absence is missing so much school for any reason that a student is academically at risk. Hawaii defines chronic absence as missing 8.5% or 15 days of the school year.
Chronic
Absence
Excused absences
Unexcused absences
Suspensions
Section 1: What is chronic absence?
In Hawaii, a student is chronically absent when he or she misses 8.5% or 15 days of the school year for any reason. Unlike truancy, which counts only unexcused absences, chronic absence looks at excused absences and absences due to suspensions as well.
Chronic absence is a measure of lost instructional time for any reason.
Chronic absence is different from truancy (unexcused absences only) or average daily attendance (how many students show up to school each day).

5. Multiple Measures of Attendance
Average Daily Attendance
How many students show up to school every day? The percent of enrolled students who attend school each day. It is used in some states for allocating funding.
Who is missing school without permission? Typically refers only to unexcused absences. Each state has the authority to define truancy and when it triggers legal intervention.
Truancy
Unpacking attendance terms is critical because the word attendance encompasses multiple measures – each of which mean something different. If we aren’t clear about which attendance measure we are using, we can easily get confused and think we are talking about the same thing when we are not. Here are three of the most common measures. The first is ADA– which refers to the percentage of students who show up to school every day. It is often used for funding because it helps us know for example –how many desks do I need in my school to accommodate the typical number of students who show up every day. The second term is truancy – which typically refers only to unexcused absences. But, keep in mind truancy is defined differently across states Regardless of the definition, truancy is typically used to begin identifying when a student may be breaking state compulsory education laws and to trigger the beginning of legal intervention. Chronic absence is a relatively new term that is based upon what research shows about the impact of lost instructional time. Researchers commonly define it as missing 10% or more of schools days which is slightly different than Hawaii’s 8.5% definition but the key point is that chronic absence shows when a student has missed so much school that he or she is academically at risk.
Chronic absence is also a required reporting metric in the Every Student Succeeds Act (the 2015 Congressional reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act)
Who is missing so much school they are academically at risk? Broadly means missing too much school for any reason -- excused, unexcused, or days lost due to suspensions. Researchers commonly define it as missing 10% of school which slightly different than Hawaii’s 8.5% definition. Chronic absence is a required reporting metric in ESSA.
Chronic
Absence

6. In Hawaii, average daily attendance can mask chronic absenteeism
These two measures of attendance are related, but not identical. Measuring average daily attendance without chronic absenteeism can obscure important information.
Large variation in chronic absenteeism exists even in schools with 95% daily attendance rates
Let’s look at Average Daily Attendance and how it can mask high levels of chronic absenteeism. In most academic subjects, scoring 95% will get you an A. But a school with 95% ADA can have a significant percentage of its students chronically absent. For example, take a look at the chart on the left. Each dot represents a school in Hawaii. If you select a school that has 95% ADA on the vertical axis, you can see it has between 15-20% of its student chronically absent. Similarly, if you look at the graph on the right, each bar represents a school with 95% ADA. The school on the far left has a chronic absence rate over 23% while the school on the far right has a chronic absence rate of about 9%.
Do you know your school’s chronic absence rate? How does it compare with your school’s ADA?

7. Chronic Absence Vs. Truancy
Here is a comparison of chronic absence and truancy – students who missed 10 days without an excuse by near the end of a school year in San Francisco.
Take a look at kindergarten.
Using a chronic absence measure, the district identified twice as many students than if it only looked at the truancy data.
This is important for the purposes of intervening early and using the right attendance measure as an early warning indicator.
It is unlikely that a kindergartner is going to be absent without someone knowing about it.
Often time those early excused absences, left uninterrupted, become a repeated pattern and turn into unexcused absences when students are older.

8. Chronic Absence = 15 days of absence = As Few As 2 days a month
Chronic Absence Is Easily Masked If We Only Monitor Missing Consecutive days
It’s easy not to notice when a student may be missing too much school.
8.5% of the school year is about 15 days a year.
That sounds like a lot but when you break it down, that’s just about two days a month.
Most parents, and many schools, don’t get too stressed out when a student misses two days of class in a month.
But when it happens month after month, it becomes a problem.
It’s important for schools and parents to monitor absences to ensure that they do not add up to chronic absence.
Chronic Absence = 15 days of absence = As Few As 2 days a month