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A 3rd of Hoosier highschool seniors missed 18 or extra days of college final 12 months as Indiana seeks options to persistently excessive charges of absenteeism.
Persistent absenteeism has steadily improved within the state since hitting a excessive of 21% in 2021-22. The absenteeism fee for the 2022-2023 college 12 months was 19%.
However at round 18% in 2023-24, the speed remains to be a lot greater than in 2019-20, when solely round 11% of scholars had been chronically absent.
Indiana Division of Training officers introduced this 12 months’s attendance information to the State Board of Training Wednesday, together with two new dashboards meant to assist decide which college students want interventions.
It comes as lawmakers put together to satisfy to check the difficulty of absenteeism and make suggestions for the best way to enhance attendance amongst older college students. A invoice handed earlier this 12 months has already mandated that colleges meet with the dad and mom of absentee elementary college students to handle their attendance. These households whose college students don’t enhance could face felony prosecution.
Round 205,000 college students had been chronically absent in Indiana final 12 months, or sufficient to fill 2,805 college buses, mentioned John Keller, the division’s chief know-how officer. That’s lower than the 220,000 who had been chronically absent the 12 months earlier than.
“I imagine we now have turned a nook. These will not be insignificant enhancements however clearly we now have not returned to pre-pandmeic attendance,” Keller mentioned.
Like in earlier years, absenteeism continues to be worse within the earliest grades and in highschool, when one-quarter of juniors and one-third of seniors miss not less than 10% of the college 12 months.
Poor attendance impacts educational efficiency throughout all grade ranges, division officers mentioned. Whereas 84.2% of scholars who weren’t chronically absent handed the state’s third grade studying take a look at, the IREAD-3, simply two-thirds of scholars who had been chronically absent did the identical.
“[Absenteeism] is loads greater than it needs to be when our academics are engaged on the foundations with children,” mentioned Secretary of Training Katie Jenner.
College students who had been continuously absent additionally had considerably decrease scores on the ILEARN examination, in addition to on the SAT. On the mathematics portion of the ILEARN, for instance, simply 18% of chronically absent college students scored proficient or higher, in comparison with 44% of not chronically absent college students.
Division officers highlighted a decline within the variety of colleges with excessive absenteeism this 12 months. Nonetheless, there are 74 colleges in Indiana the place greater than 50% of scholars are chronically absent, down from 82 final 12 months.
To fight the difficulty, the division needs to make attendance information extra accessible to each colleges and members of the general public by way of an internet dashboard.
Faculties have already got entry to the dashboard and may see a scholar’s attendance in real-time, in addition to how attendance fluctuates all year long. Members of the general public could have entry to the dashboard starting subsequent month, based on Keller.
The general public dashboard is not going to supply real-time information, which might change, however as an alternative present insights from previous years from colleges and districts throughout the state.
This week, the division additionally started testing a pilot model of its Early Warning Dashboard, which makes use of information from previous highschool graduates to foretell which present college students are vulnerable to not graduating.
The dashboard, which is being piloted by 11 college districts for 2 months, pulls data on attendance, coursework, and conduct amongst different elements to assist colleges decide the best way to intervene. The dashboard is about to roll out to extra colleges over this college 12 months.
Its objective is to “present actionable information for educators and households as they work collectively to assist college students most vulnerable to not graduating,” based on an IDOE press launch.
One scholar highlighted within the pilot program had missed 325 days of college over the course of their academic profession, Keller mentioned.
Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana schooling coverage and writes about Ok-12 colleges throughout the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.
