Nearly a year ago we wrote a Brief on the overall problem of school absenteeism (whether that is chronic absenteeism or habitual truancy) and noted “not much good, and a great deal that is not good, comes from this educational malady”.
So with the most recent list that ranks 105 public school districts in western PA (according to a three year measurement of performance on standardized tests) we thought it would be interesting to obtain average attendance for districts at the top of the ranking and for those at the bottom. We omitted a few either due to average attendance not being reported or for a few districts that don’t have a stand-alone high school that covered grades 9-12 only. We used the state Department of Education’s school performance profile data for attendance.
What did we find? For districts at the top of the list, average high school attendance was 94% or greater. That means missing an average of 9 to 10 days out of a 180 day school year. At the bottom of the list? Average attendance of around 89 to 88%, which implies missing 20 to 21 days of school. In the Wilkinsburg District, average attendance was 82%, which translates into 147 days of school out of 180 days.
