In a recent post, The Teacher Leader pointed out “Successful teaching cannot begin until students are regularly attending class." Student attendance is not something any school leader wants to talk about, but it is a topic that we must address. Because time-on-task and direct, explicit instruction correlate highly with achievement, the first responsibility of every instructional leader is to ensure that our students actually show up every day.

Upon arriving at my new school, I proceeded to ask our teachers a simple question. What do we need to do in order to improve? I will always remember what our Science Department Chair, Sherry Singer, said to me. “Mel, our students don’t come to school, and, when they do, they can’t read.”

It was from that simple question and Sherry’s straightforward response that our decade-long school journey began. We believed that turning around our school hinged on attendance and strong literacy skills, it was on those two focal points, attendance and literacy, that we formed our “R-A-G-S to riches” school improvement plan—Reading plus Attendance will result in better Grades and a Safe school.

This month's issue of Education Next featured an article entitled Truants: The Challenges of Keeping Kids in School. The article made a number of salient points about attendance and truancy:

• There is a direct line from truancy to dropping out of school, juvenile crime, gang membership, drug use, teen pregnancy, poor health, receiving public assistance, and a whole host of negative behaviors.
• Schools are losing huge amounts of state funding due to poor student attendance.
• California - Reports that 24% of its 6.2 million students are considered truants.
• Wisconsin - 15.4% of students are truants. 62 percent of African American students were identified as truant.
• New York City reports that 24% of the high school students are truants.
• Washington, D.C. has a 20% truancy rate in which students were absent for 15 days or more without an excuse. D.C. spent $11 million on no-shows.
• Los Angeles posts a 16% truancy rate, which translates into a loss of 130,000 student days of state funding.
• Gender - Truancy is divided equally between boys and girls.
• Family - 50% live in single-parent households.
• Poverty - One-third live in poverty.
• Truancy laws are generally target parents and enforcement is "typically lax."
• Context Affects Attendance - A lack of food, unemployment, a lack of parental education, and parents in poor health all negatively impact attendance.

School staffers, social workers, prosecutors, and police officers repeatedly asserted that "Truancy is never the problem, it is the symptom."

Taking Action to Improve Attendance

• Students who miss school miss out.
• Improving attendance is hard work. It is more about will and determination than it is about technique. We must do everything in our power to encourage students to attend school. Our attendance rate started at a low 89% and, within two years, we improved to 96%. Going from 19 days of absence per student to 7.5 days per student added over two weeks of school of instrution without costing us a dime.
• Attendance is a prime early warning indicator of dropping out. "Information about absences may be the most practical indicator for identifying students in need of early interventions (Allensworth & Easton, 2007)."
• Students with a 10% or more absence rate have less than a 20% chance of graduating. Keep an updated list of students with attendance problems, set up parent conferences and, most importantly, insist that parents attend.
• Establish interventions for rising 9th graders. Don't wait for the problem to emerge. It will be too late.
• Students will attend school when they feel wanted. Make "wake-up" calls. Use technology to call the homes of students who are habitually late to school.
• Students will attend if they feel invited. In fact, the number one reason dropouts cite for leaving school is that no one cared if they were there. Let your students know that you want them in school every day.
• Students will attend school when they believe that they can succeed and that the staff is committed to their success. Set up a system of tiered interventions that ensure that students are never allowed to fall behind. Your students should say, "In this school it is hard to fail. The teachers won't let you fail. They never give up on you."