Hickman Mills' campaign against chronic absence sets up pandemic success
Hedy Chang of Attendance Works addresses the Hickman Mills School District’s attendance teams in a workshop at the start of the 2019-2020 school year.
The jarring pandemic threw a switch that sent the Hickman Mills School District’s campaign against chronic absence down a whole new — and unfamiliar — track.
The relationships that the district’s school attendance teams built with families during the fall of 2019 had to carry on in Covid’s isolating world in the spring. And still now in the 2020-2021 school year.
It’s been a difficult ride. But new data shows it’s been successful — first in the notable gains made in improving attendance among the targeted student audience before the pandemic hit, and then in the connections the attendance teams have been able to maintain, keeping children engaged during these months of remote learning.
The national non-profit Attendance Works is guiding the district’s efforts, and a host of community partners are helping support the program, including LINC, the United Way, Turn the Page KC, SchoolSmartKC and consultant Kia Turner, CEO of Red Apple Education.
LINC site coordinators with the before- and after-school programs at each of the schools have been part of the attendance teams, which also include school administrators, counselors and families-school liaisons.
The value of strong relationships
Attendance Works reported on the Hickman Mills success in a blog post, saying that district and school leaders “responded quickly and effectively when (the schools) abruptly closed their doors and moved to distance learning.”
Early on, Attendance Works reported, teachers reached out to families, and school attendance teams provided additional support when teacher outreach was insufficient or existing attendance data suggested a more intensive approach was needed.
By April, the school district was in touch with 97% of its students and their families and had only lost touch with 3% of its students, which is half of what teachers reported nationally. This high level of family engagement reflects strong relationships and practices put in place over the last year through the launch of a year-long initiative to reduce chronic absence.
“Hickman Mills’ readiness and ability to adapt to distance learning when schools closed for Covid-19 reflects the mindset, capacity and skills emphasized and reinforced by our year-long initiative to reduce chronic absence,” Hickman Mills Deputy Superintendent Carl Skinner told Attendance Works. “This work promoted taking a positive, problem-solving approach to working with families rather than assuming absences are an indication that families don’t care about their children’s education.”
Read the complete blog post here.
Demonstrable improvement
LINC gathered and analyzed attendance data for the 2019-2020 school year up until the closure for the pandemic and compared the results with the corresponding number of months from the previous school year.
The data measured the attendance of students targeted by the program who were classified as “moderately chronic absent” and recorded how their attendance changed from Year 1 to Year 2.
Key findings included:
There was a demonstrable improvement in student attendance. There were 451 students (76.1%) whose attendance improved and 141 students (23.8%) whose attendance declined.
The overall improvement in student attendance moved 365 students (61.6%) from “moderately chronic absent” (Tier 2) to “good” (Tier 1)
Improvement of student attendance was generally greater among elementary schools, though the middle school also showed improvement.
See the full report and accompanying charts here.