Chalkbeat Examines How Schools are Addressing Chronic Absenteeism
October 3, 2017
Chalkbeat’s Matt Barnum writes that, under ESSA, schools “across the country are about to be held accountable for student attendance—attaching stakes to a measure that previously had much less significance and increasing the risk that schools will try to manipulate that data.” Of course, “one way for schools to improve their chronic absenteeism marks is to add support that helps students to show up to school,” which is “exactly how experts and policymakers hope educators will respond.” And “because states are only using chronic absenteeism as a small portion of the accountability system, the incentives for cheating may not be strong,” though “past experience with evaluation systems suggests that a small number of schools will resort to unscrupulous means.”