Prevention is the best medicine. That’s the advice for local educators from a group focused on reducing chronic absenteeism rates.
Attendance Works Executive Director Hedy Chang says one of the most effective things teachers can do is not just give a number of missed days in parent-teacher conferences, but put them into context and start a conversation.
"So, we’re building off what we know. It’s asking for huge, huge changes, but it’s a really critical shift to prevention," Chang said.
Impact Tulsa Associate Director of Early Learning Andrea Stacy said one achievable step is adopting that approach to parent-teacher conferences: Talk about absences as a proportion of school being missed and how it affects learning, then ask if parents need help with potential barriers keeping kids out of school, like a lack of transportation.
"If you can just start with a conversation and learning and not just informing, that’s the start, is, like, 'How do we build this relationship and start bringing attendance into the conversations that we have?'" Stacy said.
Chang said looking at patterns in data can help. For example, seeing a cluster of absent kids in one unsafe neighborhood could lead educators to start a walking school bus, where school staff walk kids to school.
"Because sometimes it’s the kids who are closest to school who are having challenges because of the unsafe neighborhoods. It’s actually not the kids who are farthest away," Chang said.
Chang met with Tulsa-area educators and State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister during a visit last week.
About 12 percent of Oklahoma K–12 students miss more than 10 percent of the school year, putting them at risk of falling behind and eventually dropping out. This early in the year, kids missing just three or four days already fall into the chronically absent category.
In the Tulsa area, districts range from 3 to more than 20 percent of students missing more than 10 percent of the school year.
