Attending to Attendance

By Gary Hoachlander, Ann Dykman, and Steven Godowsky

If we graded attendance the same way we do academic tests, the nation's high schools would receive an A. In 1997, the average daily attendance rate for U.S. high schools stood at 92.7 percent. Seems impressive, doesn't it? That's the problem.

With all the attention being paid these days to school accountability for students' performance on academic assessments, it's easy to overlook an indicator like attendance, especially when the data don't set off alarm bells. But consider this: In the typical 180-day school year, an average daily attendance rate of 93 percent means students are missing, on the whole, more than 13 days of school—about 21/2 weeks of class time. If schools operated year round, we'd be talking about an average annual absentee rate of more than 17 days. There isn't an employer anywhere who wouldn't be concerned about such a record.

What's worse, many urban schools don't come close to that national average. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, which alone accounts for nearly 1.5 percent of all public school students in the country, seven senior high schools ranging in size from 1,300 to 4,400 students had attendance rates of 85 percent or less in 1999-2000. Students in those schools missed an average of 24 days or more during the school year. Attendance rates were less than 90 percent (18 days missed) in another 29 of...