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3. Southern Region MTSS PLC
Welcome back!
Housekeeping
Reasons for Chronic Absenteeism survey
Dr. Amber Brundage, FL PS/RtI PreK-12 Alignment Coordinator
Wrap up

4. Housekeeping Welcome Dr. Brian Gaunt, FL PBIS
Thank you Stephanie, Devon & Robyn for you continued leadership and support!
Needs Assessment data…

5. PS/RtI Needs Assessment – May 2016
Southern Region
Respondents: PS/RtI District Contacts
Rating Scale: Level of Need = 1 (low) – 5 (high)
Secondary MTSS implementation – 4.18
Providing MTSS fidelity data to staff – 3.36
Increasing student engagement with instruction – 3.36
Understanding how SWDs are served and fully included within an MTSS – 3.27
Tier 3 behavioral intervention practices – 3.27
Average item score

6. Florida’s PS/RtI Project: RCA ADMINISTRATION TRAINING

7. Advance Organizer Chronic absenteeism background information
Group discussion: problem-solving chronic absenteeism in your district
Content domains, scoring, and item overview and description
Administration procedures
Questions -

8. What is the RCA?
The Reasons for Chronic Absenteeism (RCA) is 41 item survey for middle and high school students who are chronically absent
Completed online
Measures the reasons for chronic absenteeism
Designed for use at the aggregate or individual level to inform data-based problem solving and intervention development

9. Chronic Absenteeism

10. What is Chronic Absenteeism?
No standard definition
Often based on total number of days missed
Doesn’t differentiate reasons for absences
States vary in threshold for number of days (15-21)
Frequently defined as:
Missing 10% or more of instructional days
Florida one of few states that collect data on CA
FL reports students missing 21 or more days per year
Missing 15 or more days of school per year

11. How does this differ from truancy?
Truancy typically defined as specified number or frequency of unexcused absences within a given time period
Often an underestimate of the absenteeism magnitude
Florida law defines "habitual truant" as a student who has 15 or more unexcused absences within 90 calendar days with or without the knowledge or consent of the student's parent or guardian, and who is subject to compulsory school attendance.

12. What is the prevalence of CA nationally?
Based on national research, conservative estimates:
10% of US students miss 21+ days of school per year
14-15% of US students miss 18+ days of school per year
5-7.5 Million students each year!!
13/14 OCR data found 6 million students missed 15+ days of school
Balfanz & Byrnes, 2012; U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2016

13. What is the prevalence of CA in FL?
According to data reported to FL DOE during the 2014/2015 school year, 9.7% of K-12 students were absent 21+ days
304,060 students

14. 2014-15 Chronic Absenteeism Rates by District
 0 – 9.9%
 10% – 14.9%
 15% – 19.9%
 20% – 30%
Source: Education Information and Accountability Services, Florida Department of Education

15. What is the Pattern of CA?
Rates of chronic absenteeism drop from a high in kindergarten each year through fifth grade and then rise significantly in middle and high school (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2012).

16. What are the Implications of CA?
Missing 10 percent or more of instructional days has significant impact on student outcomes. Chronic absenteeism is associated with:
Decreased reading levels and overall academic performance,
Decreased on-time graduation rates and post-secondary enrollment
Increased dropout rates (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2012; Chang & Romero, 2008).

17. What are the Implications of CA?
Students with chronic absenteeism in middle grades are at high risk for course failure in high school (Allensworth, Gwynne, Moore & de la Torre, 2014)
Among 9th graders, attendance was the strongest predictor of course performance which was the strongest predictor of graduation (Allensworth & Easton 2007)
GA DOE found moving from 5 absences to absences reduced graduation rates by 7-10 percentage points
Moving from 6-10 to absences resulted in percentage point decline in graduation rates (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2012)

18. What are the Reasons for Chronic Absenteeism?
Balfanz & Byrnes (2012) 3 reasons:
Barriers/Can’t- something prevents them from attending (illness, transportation, child care or family obligations)
Aversions/Won’t- avoidance of interactions or events at school (affective or perceptions physical/psychological safety issues, school climate, stress)
Disengagement/Don’t- would rather be somewhere else, do not make the effort to attend school and/or don’t see the value in school

19. Chronic Absenteeism in your district/School

20. Problem-Solving Chronic Absenteeism in Your District
Poll Questions
At what levels does your district and schools engage in problem-solving for CA at the secondary level?
Systemically/ Tier1 (school/district-wide, regions, grade-level, sub-groups, etc.)?
Small Group/Tier 2
Individual/Tier 3
What sources of data do you use to assist with problem- analysis?
Absence codes
Pattern of absences (day of week/month, frequency, time of day, etc.)
Student surveys
Student interviews
Parent interviews
Other

21. Why This Instrument?
In order for educators to develop interventions aimed at reducing absences, they must accurately understand why students are not coming to school.
Currently, there are not comprehensive, yet efficient tools for middle and high schools students that measure students’ self-reported reasons for chronic absenteeism aligned with current research.

22. Instrument Overview & item Review

23. RCA Development Steps Literature review Item development
Expert review panel
Cognitive interviews
National pilot (Fall 2016)
“Gold standard” survey development procedures recommended by DeVellis (2012)

24. Initial Item Development
Review of measures of school refusal, absenteeism
Work with two district teams
Review of literature on chronic absenteeism
Controlled for readability level
Feedback from Project staff members

25. Expert Review Panel
13 school, district, state, and national-level experts on RtI/MTSS, chronic absenteeism, truancy, dropout
Feedback on item relevancy, clarity and necessity
70% criterion used to identify quality items
Items not meeting criteria revised by the evaluation team
Qualitative feedback (when provided) from reviewers was used to revise items not meeting 70% criteria

26. Cognitive Interviews 8 cognitive interviews were conducted
4 middle school
4 high school
Interviewees verbalized thought process for each item
Provided feedback on confusing, repetitive, or unclear terms/items
Items identified as problematic were revised by the evaluation team

27. What is on the Survey?
14 demographic questions: (age, gender, grade, race, SES, primary language, disability status, method of transportation to/from school, current grades, estimation/perception of absences)
41 reasons for absences questions
Multiple items for each domain: Barriers, Aversions, Disengagement
3 open-ended questions that ask for:
Any other reasons for absences
Reasons students do come to school
What would help them come to school more often/miss fewer days

28. Content Domains Barriers Aversions Disengagement
Health related, transportation, housing or material instability, adult responsibilities, suspensions, court/juvenile justice involvement
Aversions
Bullying/harassment, personal stress, school stress, school climate, safety/conflict
Disengagement
Value of school, substance use

29. Scoring Rubric For each survey item students rate the item as:
“0” = Never
This is never a reason you have missed school
“1” = Rarely
This is not very often a reason you have missed school
“2” =Sometimes
This is a reason you have missed school more than 3 times
“3” = Usually
This is often the reason you have missed school

30. Administration Procedures

31. What are RCA Administration Procedures?
District facilitator s letter of agreement on district letterhead to Amber Brundage
District facilitator helps participating schools to identify middle and high school students who missed 10% or more of instructional days (18+ days) during 15/16 school year
District facilitator sends SurveyMonkey link to participating schools during survey window: September-November, 2016
School/district coordinator sends home parental permission form at least 1 week before administering the survey for target students
Permission forms can be sent electronically and hard copy
Spanish version available
We must have completed permission form prior to survey administration
School coordinates survey administration
Students will need:
Computer/tablet access (with interenet)
Privacy and opportunity to refuse to participate
Approximately minutes to complete survey- via SurveyMonkey link
District facilitator provides school demographic data on participating schools to Amber Brundage
Type of setting (urban, rural, etc.), Size of school, Percentage of students eligible for free or reduced lunch, Percentage of students receiving special education services, Percentage of students designated as ESOL, Percentage of students by race/ethnicity, Percentage of student chronically absent (Missed10% or more of school days in 2015/2016), Length (number of days) of 2015/2016 school year, and Geographic region

32. What are the Benefits of Participation?
Participation in national validation study
Within 1 month of survey window close the district facilitator will receive data to inform problem-solving around chronic absenteeism
District aggregate reports
School aggregate reports
Disaggregate data reports
Grade level
Race
Gender
Disability status
SES
Mode of transportation to/from school
Raw data file

33. Questions??

34. Additional Readings
Allensworth, E. M., & Easton, J. Q. (2007). What matters for staying on track and graduating in Chicago public high schools. Consortium on Chicago School Research, University of Chicago. Retrieved from Allesnworth, E. M., Gwynne, J. A., Moore, P., & de la Torre, M. (2014). Looking forward to high school and college Middle grades indicators of readiness in Chicago public schools. Consortium on Chicago School Research, University of Chicago. Retrieved from Balfanz, R., & Byrnes, V. (2012). Chronic Absenteeism: Summarizing what we know from nationally available data. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Center for Social Organization of Schools. Black, A. T., Seder, R. C., & Kekahio, W. (2014). Review of research on student nonenrollment and chronic absenteeism: A report for the Pacific Region (REL 2015–054). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific. Retrieved from Chang, H. & Romero, M. (2008). Present, engaged and accounted for the critical importance of addressing chronic absence in the early grades. National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP): The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. DeVellis, R. F. (2012). Scale development: Theory and applications (3rd Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kearney, C. A., & Silverman, W. K. (1993). Measuring the function of school refusal behavior: The School Refusal Assessment Scale. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 22, 85–96. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2016) Civil rights data collection: A first look. Retrieved from

35. Contact Information
Amber Brundage, PS/RtI PreK-12 Unit Coordinator

36. Thank you! Our next online PLC Session:
Sept. 13, 2016 from 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. EST
Access session materials on our wiki:

37. Connect with Us!
Florida’s Problem-Solving/Response to Intervention Project
Facebook: flpsrti
Florida Positive Behavioral Interventions & Support Project
Facebook: flpbis

38. MTSS Technical Assistance Contacts Southern Region
Kelly Justice
Regional Coordinator
Florida PS/RtI Project
Stephanie Martinez
Technical Assistance Specialist
Florida’s PBIS Project
Devon Minch
Robyn Vanover
Brian Gaunt
Inter-project Coordinator