Abstract
School attendance is important for student long-term academic and career success. However, in the U.S., our current practice often disenfranchises more at-risk students than it helps. Students slated for suspension and expulsion are often recipients of these practices. This manuscript offers a recommended change in how we frame student absenteeism and attendance using attendance markers and conceptual information by identifying the discrepancies, proposing options, and recommending a new way to actively leverage attendance data (not absenteeism data) for proactive student support. Particular attention is paid to how excused and unexcused absences and in-school suspensions are treated. An emerging pivot program, the Evaluation and Support Program, engages students while they receive school services, community support, and complete consequences is discussed as a possible, promising intervention.
Highlights
Failure to be present in the school environment can thwart development (Carroll, 2010) and seriously impair mental, cognitive, and socio-emotional outcomes (Kearney, 2008; Maynard et al, 2012; Heyne and Sauter, 2013; Gottfried, 2014) especially in the early schooling days
The frames of how we currently look at these issues are focused on labels such as absenteeism and truancy
For the purposes of this discussion, absenteeism is the study of the various forms or interplay of policies and procedures governing attendance ranging from presence to absence and all its corollary constituents, outcomes, interventions, and consequences (Gentle-Genitty et al, 2015; Heyne et al, 2018)
Summary
Carolyn Gentle-Genitty 1*, James Taylor 2 and Corinne Renguette 3 on behalf of the Student Researchers. School attendance is important for student long-term academic and career success. In the U.S, our current practice often disenfranchises more at-risk students than it helps. Students slated for suspension and expulsion are often recipients of these practices. This manuscript offers a recommended change in how we frame student absenteeism and attendance using attendance markers and conceptual information by identifying the discrepancies, proposing options, and recommending a new way to actively leverage attendance data (not absenteeism data) for proactive student support. Particular attention is paid to how excused and unexcused absences and in-school suspensions are treated. The Evaluation and Support Program, engages students while they receive school services, community support, and complete consequences is discussed as a possible, promising intervention
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