Attendance is to school what rebounding is to basketball—it is hard work, requires effort and persistence, and it often goes unrewarded and unrecognized, but schools can’t be successful without it.
Archive for the ‘Dropouts’ Category
The Wrong Message
January 25th, 2012
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Raising the age to 18 sent the right message to our students. Education is critically important!
Miss School and Miss Out
January 11th, 2012
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Ninth Graders: Still Overwhelmed?
September 6th, 2011
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“It’s a huge transition. They come in at 14 and they leave as adults.” Ninth Grade-Our Last Chance I learned from experience that a successful ninth grade experience predicted future high school success. Conversely, I learned that when students struggled in ninth grade, they rarely graduated.
Graduation Rates: Mission Impossible
August 5th, 2011
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by Stuart Singer, The Teacher Leader In a recent post, Mel Riddile highlighted several of the shortcomings associated with the latest method for determining graduation rates mandated by the U.S. Department of Education. While the goal of this policy is worthy—standardizing the calculations throughout the nation—the resulting process is flawed, unfair and ultimately inaccurate. The [...]
An Education Obsession
February 24th, 2011
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This week I am blogging from the NASSP Conference in San Francisco. I used to say, "show me the data." However, it has gotten to the point that I no longer need to look at a school’s data to know that a school is thriving or struggling. I can simply listen to what the staff [...]
Attendance: Wake-Up Calls Go High Tech
February 21st, 2011
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"Truancy is a nationwide epidemic and the old tools don’t work."–Travis Knox, President of AIM Truancy Solutions Desperate to improve student attendance, schools are now using GPS devices to track truant students. According to a recent report schools in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Kentucky, Kansas and California "have resorted to fitting students with hand-held GPS devices the [...]
Jobs for Students: Lowest Since 1948
December 15th, 2010
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In difficult economic times the poorest and under-resourced schools and students suffer the most. A new report on workforce employment tells us what many high school teachers and principals already know–there are few jobs for our students. The report points out that the number of people 55 and older holding jobs is on track to [...]
Class Size: As Though They Were Our Own
December 13th, 2010
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Just before I went on stage to deliver a keynote speech on dropout prevention before over a thousand people, my host grabbed my arm and said, "See that large man in the front row? He controls the finances in the state legislature and he is very interested in what you have to say." I looked [...]
Attendance: How do we improve if no one shows up?
December 3rd, 2010
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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 [...]
