SKIPPING SCHOOL AT AN EARLY AGE
KINDERGARTNERS HAVE HIGHEST TRUANCY RATE AMONG APS’ ELEMENTARY KIDS
APS CHIEF: MISSING CLASS AT AGE 5 CAN MEAN NEVER CATCHING UP
Afew dozen kindergartners sit on the carpet of their classroom at Whittier Elementary, watching their teacher, Graciela Martinez, explain the colors on a stoplight.
“What does red mean?” Martinez asks the attentive group.
“Stop!” they yell in unison.
At the end of the lesson, Martinez passes out colored circles so the kids can make their own stoplights on construction paper.
While the children are clearly
having fun with the project, they are also building critical skills. Research shows that the early grades provide the foundation for later academic success.
But in Albuquerque and across the country, many young students are not making it to class on a regular basis.
Roughly 17 percent of kindergartners attending Albuquerque Public Schools had 10 or more unexcused absences during the 2016-2017 academic year — the highest rate in the elementary school grades. If you count all absences, the number is much higher.
APS Superintendent Raquel Reedy told the Journal that missing kindergarten can have serious consequences. If kids don’t master fundamental concepts, they struggle as they advance through the grades. By third grade — when reading becomes a major part of the curriculum — these students can feel like failures and often never catch up, she said.
A major part of the problem is the misperception that kindergarten is like day care, rather than serious learning time, Reedy said.
As a result, Reedy said some parents will let their kindergartners skip school for a variety of reasons, including extended vacations, family visits and minor illnesses.
“They might say, ‘Well, it’s a really cold day, so you can stay home,’ ” she said.
Sometimes families are dealing with difficult work schedules, homelessness, transportation problems or mental health issues, making it a struggle to get their child to class on time.
And lost hours add up. “When these students miss class, they miss learning,” Reedy said.
Jami Jacobson,
APS senior director of elementary learning and principal support specialist, said critical learning includes social and emotional skills like following directions and collaborating with peers, along with academic basics like the mechanics of reading.
A 2011 California study found that 64 percent of students with good attendance in kindergarten and first grade could read at grade level after third grade, but only 17 percent of students who were chronically absent in both grades reached that benchmark.
Low-income students are four times more likely to be chronically absent, and they have the strongest need for classroom time to boost their math and reading scores, according to a 2014 report from Attendance Works, a national organization based in San Francisco.
But the Attendance Works report also shows that districts can improve these statistics through steps such as talking to parents about the importance of attendance, informing them quickly about attendance problems and identifying barriers that are preventing students from making it to school.
APS has adopted all of these approaches.
This fall, Reedy, a former special education teacher and school principal, made attendance a top priority across the district and launched a yearlong initiative to get “every student in class every day.”
Mission: Graduate, a New Mexico nonprofit organization, recently partnered with APS to offer an attendance conference that taught dozens of school-based teams strategies to target students at risk for chronic absenteeism and work with families to improve attendance.
APS also instituted a new three-tiered attendance program with increasing levels of support, including student attendance plans and parent outreach. The district’s Attendance Promotion and Truancy Prevention Unit is providing technical assistance, coaching and professional development to teachers and administrators.
“Attendance. Attachment. Achievement. That’s what it’s all about,” Reedy said in a recent email to APS employees.
Wake-up texts
At Whittier Elementary, reading interventionist Christine Lawrence has seen the impact of attendance on student achievement firsthand.
Across every grade, low attendance is correlated with academic problems, she said.
Principal Misti Miller stressed that children need to learn good attendance habits early and “carry that forward to high school and graduation.”
“It starts here in pre-K, kindergarten and first grade,” she said.
Miller said parents are hearing the message.
Over the past year, Whittier Elementary’s chronic absenteeism rate fell from 27 percent to just 7 percent — a dramatic turnaround Miller calls a “culture change.”
Assistant principal Miguel Valdez is leading the effort, which is supported by a three-year United Way grant.
Valdez sends some families 6:45 a.m. wakeup texts and passes out hygiene kits filled with soap and shampoo to help reduce illnesses.
Every classroom with 100 percent attendance earns a brightly colored paper lion’s paw, a nod to the school mascot.
“The kids all say, ‘Hip, hip hooray, 100 percent attendance!’ on those days,” Martinez said.
Her door is decorated with eight paws in green, red, yellow and purple.
Malay Nivanh, a Whittier Elementary kindergarten teacher, said a critical step in boosting attendance is making school so much fun that children pester their parents to bring them every day.
“We’re getting the kids to buy into being here for all the good stuff we are doing,” Nivanh said.