New York City has a serious attendance problem. This new report from the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School reveals that 240,000 students in the nation’s largest school district—more than one in five—were chronically absent during the 2012–2013 school year. Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10 percent or more of class time, adds up to almost a month of school per student and is (unsurprisingly) correlated with poor performance on end-of-year tests. Indeed, the authors of the report argue that chronic absenteeism better predicts a student’s academic achievement and school’s test scores than more traditional metrics, such as eligibility for free or reduced price lunch. And schools with high absent rates are more likely to face other poverty-related problems, including high rates of teacher and student turnover, high numbers of unemployed males, low adult education levels, and higher numbers of homeless students. The lattermost factor is particularly startling. Nearly 80,000 New York City school students were homeless at some point during the 2012–2013 school year. Often forced to move from shelter to shelter, they are most at risk for chronic absenteeism. The city is making efforts to fix these problems—and, if successful, these steps that could be applied to other urban areas facing similar issues. For example, the Department of Education is teaming up with the Department of Homeless Services to provide transportation and childcare and build affordable housing. The city also plans to transform nearly one hundred of the lowest-attended schools into full-service community schools, which would provide wraparound services individualized to a particular neighborhood’s needs—although the evidence that the community schools model can raise academic achievement is mixed at best, based on similar programs in Cincinnati, Chicago, and Portland.
SOURCE: Kim Nauer, et al., “A Better Picture of Poverty: What Chronic Absenteeism and Risk Load Reveal About NYC’s Lowest-Income Elementary Schools,” Center for New York City Affairs at The New School (November 2014).
