Then, in December, Stanford researchers with the National Accelerator for Student Aid released an academic report paper with more details on the announced increase in attendance in Washington. Lee and her research team analyzed lesson schedules for more than 4,000 of the students and estimated that a student was 7 percent less likely to miss school on a day when lessons were on schedule compared to a day when lessons were were not included. schedule. The researchers believe that perhaps students feel like they are learning in these sessions, or they enjoy the personal attention and look forward to them.
Lesson schedules varied from once a week to every day. A student scheduled to receive lessons three times a week, the recommended minimum for effective catch-up, will attend an average of 1.3 total days of school in a 180-day school year.
“I feel minimal, just about a day,” Lee admitted. But she said it’s “encouraging to move the needle at all” with this group of economically disadvantaged students. More than 80 percent of the students taught were black. The rest were mostly Spanish.
What struck me was the high average absenteeism rate among the thousands of students selected for training: 17 percent. In other words, these students missed more than 30 days, excluding holidays. A large proportion of them – one in six – are considered “extremely absent”, missing more than 30 per cent of the school year. That’s about 60 school days. “They’re missing school at an alarming rate,” Lee said.
No wonder these kids and teenagers are so behind. And no wonder Washington leaders wanted teachers for those kids who were at risk of falling further behind and eventually dropping out.
I reached out to Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, an organization that works with schools to improve attendance, to ask how important an extra day of school can be for chronically absent students. She said working with children who miss 30 days of school is important. “I’m a little concerned that this small change (1.3), while promising, may not be enough to turn things around,” she said in an email.
Chang consulted with his research team, and they found a bright spot: Small gains can add up at school. For one student, 1.3 days is not enough, Chang explained. But with 100 students, that’s another 130 days. “This may be a move toward more stability in classrooms,” Chang said.
Average values mask large differences. Some students’ attendance increased by much more. Middle school students are the most likely to attend school on a class day, meaning 2.1 extra days of school for a student who is scheduled three times a week. High school students are the least motivated to attend school. Their attendance did not differ significantly between days with and without training. Lessons scheduled during the school day were more motivating to show up than lessons scheduled after school. Smaller teacher-to-student ratios of 1 to 1 or 1 to 2 were more effective in reducing absenteeism than larger study groups of three or four students. (All training was in-person, not online.)
Much of what schools actually attempt in education is rarely studied and analyzed rigorously. Research like this helps school leaders consider what works and what doesn’t. Washington deserves credit for trying the training, which showed strong benefits hundreds of earlier, albeit smaller, studiesand for opening its doors to researchers to study its wide distribution.
It didn’t work as well as we had hoped for a variety of reasons. Some of the lessons were not planned as often as recommended studyor during the school day when attendance is highest. But the critical lesson we learn from this analysis is that some students may be too disengaged from school to benefit from even well-designed training programs. It’s no use hiring tutors for students who don’t show up.
The Stanford study makes the case that learning itself helps re-engage kids in school and that any improvement in attendance is worthwhile. But I doubt the economic value when the benefit is so small.
I don’t envy school leaders. They are dealing with masses of disengaged students and we don’t have good solutions for them.
