Fifteen years ago, only one state publicly followed the number of students missing enough schools to be considered chronically absent.
Now, 49 states publish online data on chronic absenteeism, which is generally defined as missing 10% or more of the academic year. The data was essential to tackle an attendance problem that climbed almost a third of the students during the pandemic. The rate of chronic absenteeism has decreased modestly in many places, but it remains high compared to pre-countryic school years.
“If you do not know that a problem exists, you do not act on this subject,” explains Hedy Chang, executive director of attendance work, a non -profit organization focused on the reduction of chronic absenteeism.
Why we wrote this
From absenteeism test results, data lead to a large part of what educators know students and how to help them. States are now more involved in the monitoring of trends, but with the extent of an increasingly clear federal role, the door opens to speak of reform.
Chronic absenteeism is one of the many data points collected by those responsible for local, state and federal education in order to improve students’ learning. It is generally a task behind the scenes which is revealed from time to time via the test results, graduation rates and other markers of success for students or struggles.
But the future of federal data collection is disorder given in depth to the education department and a budget proposed for the next financial year which reduces the financing of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The request for financing from the Trump administration for the IES – the department’s research and data branch – totals 261.3 million dollars. This represents a decrease of 67% compared to exercise 2024.
The question underlying the possible approval of the congress: this will worsen the results of education for American schoolchildren, who are already struggling with generational results with low tests? Or could reform how the data is studied JUMSstart an effort to improve federal research?
The agency, in its budgetary proposal, has developed changes as an opportunity to “reinvent a more efficient, efficient and useful IES”.
Roberto E. Rosales / AP / File
Last month, the Department of Education hired Amber Northern, of the Conservative Institute of Thomas B. Fordham, to take the overhaul. The agency’s announcement also made the institute’s current iteration to the current iteration, although without details.
“Ies failed to provide a clear and convincing research program that puts students at the center,” said a press release. “His research contracts have often given priority to politically loaded subjects and interests rooted on best practices and tools in class, even if American students experienced historical levels of loss of learning after the COVVI-19 pandemic.”
Requests from the Department of Education requiring more details on the mentioned contracts have remained unanswered.
Not all federal data collections disappear. The national assessment of educational progress, for example, would remain. This test offers an overview of how fourth year students and the country’s eighth students compete for mathematics and reading. In recent years, NAEP results have shown lamentable results, especially in reading, and have fueled the partisan flames on educational policy.
National Center for Education Statistics
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Jacob Turcotte / Staff
Why the solid data is important
The proposed financing reductions, however, addressed skepticism despite the suggestion of the administration that improvement is the final objective.
Sean Reardon, professor of education at the University of Stanford, said that this decision could present the United States’s education system in the 1990s or earlier, when comparable data collection was slim.
“It is impossible to learn if we have no information on what is happening and what works,” explains Dr. Reardon, who is also the developer of Stanford’s education data archives. “We have 13,000 school districts in the relatively autonomous country.”
The latest Askedance Works report urges states to continue training data on chronic absenteeism to search for models that could lead to solutions. Regarding Ms. Chang, this is not a situation neither no.
“We should have federal data collection,” she says. “At the same time, I would say that it will also be even more essential and important that states continue to collect their own data – and ideally, they continue to collect data in a relatively common way.”
The approach of a group consists in modeling the way in which federal research must be carried out. The Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition formed in 2023, shares its vision on Capitol Hill later this month. The plan of the coalition for future federal efforts – designed with contributions from dozens of researchers – promotes investment in research and innovation, the empowerment of state and premises to put proven methods on the scale and to collect high -quality and timely data, explains Sara Schapiro, executive director of the Alliance.
“What works well in Mississippi?” How can we get it through Maryland? ” she said, explaining the desire to reproduce light points across the country. Mississippi students, a historically poorer state, have issued national trends and published stronger NAEP reading scores in recent years.
For the moment, Ms. Schapiro says that she is “somewhat optimistic” that the Department of Education reconstructed the basic research and development functions. But this positivity is laid out of a warning.
“How much money will they really put behind this?” she said. “Will they really realize some of these positions or rethink the positions but hire sufficient capacity to deliver this? I’m not sure.”
How a school uses “data day”
Nearly 700 miles from the national capital, a high school in Piedmont, Alabama, adopted diving in a hyperlocal level. Director Adam Clemons said that the Piedmont high school has created an “ACT culture” which gives students several chances to pass the admission test for standardized colleges every year.
In this ancient city of Cotton Mill located between Birmingham and Atlanta, the school district of 1,100 students is the largest employer, said Dr. Clemons. Winning a higher score on the act could be the student ticket for university scholarships and the biggest employment opportunities.
But Dr. Clemons claims that data from the law results, simulation of college admission tests and other measures such as attendance identifies where students excellent and what students have the most aid. About five weeks, the high school has a “data day” which brings together staff members to analyze the figures and adapt their teaching accordingly.
The data may seem overwhelming for the average person, says Dr. Clemons, and parents do not always understand how much it is necessary at large and small levels.
The head of the school therefore started taking photos for social media to pass the word.
“It is not as if we were sitting here with our feet wedged while reading the newspaper,” he says. “We actually dive deep into the data to make educational changes.”
