School Attendance Has to be Compulsory

The Case for Regular School Attendance

By Deborah Williams

It is universally understood that children can’t learn if they are not at school. Regular school attendance is required for all students, but a study of the results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress reinforces this idea.  Sarah Sparks, writer for Education Week’s Inside School Research blog, reports, “Missing even a few days of school seems to make a difference in whether eighth graders perform at the top of their game.”
The findings of the study are compelling.  Because more time is being spent on instruction in reading, math, music, and the visual arts, missing time from school has a greater impact than ever before.  The data showed the following:

• 58% of 8^th graders who performed at the advanced level in NAEP reading in 2011 had perfect attendance in the month before the test, compared with only 39% of students who performed below the basic level.
• Nearly 20% of 8^th graders at the basic level and more than 25% in reading had missed three or more days in the past month.

Alan L. Ginsburg, a research consultant for the NAEP governing board and co-author of the report explains that if a student misses an average of three days each month, he or she is missing five weeks of school for the year.   “You’ve got more than a quarter of the below-basic kids who are going to miss five weeks of school a year or more,” he said, noting that only 8 percent of students at the advanced level had missed that much school. “That, to me, would be something that if you are a chief state school officer or a superintendent, you might worry about.”
This study supports the idea that chronic absenteeism “puts those students at greater risk for poor academic achievement and eventually dropping out of high school.”
Poor school attendance is a concern in other countries as well:  Every Day Counts from Mark Waddington on Vimeo.