Linda Jacobson has a story in this week’s Education Week highlighting new research on a problem that rarely gets mentioned: chronic absenteeism in early elementary school. The study by the National Center for Children in Poverty here at Columbia University shows a correlation between missing school starting in kindergarten 
and poor academic achievement throughout elementary school and into middle school. The study, “Present, Engaged, and Accounted For,” is not yet up at the NCCP Web site. But here’s a page on that site that collects the center’s earlier work on absenteeism.
This study tees up a number of good September stories for journalists. I recall seeing a newspaper story or a research study a few years ago that reported on a phenomenon I’d never thought about before: elementary school children who drift into school days or even weeks late. (I tried to locate it on the Web but couldn’t. If I recall right, it was datelined CHICAGO) Parents stressed by poverty, drugs, alcohol, their own youth, language differences, or frequently changing residences may not see getting kids off to a good start on the first day of school as such a high priority. This would be a perfect time to get out to some elementary schools in urban or poor rural communities and ask to see how the enrollment numbers changed during the first month. Then ask to see the attendance numbers. Follow up some interviews of teachers, the principal, parents and ask the district superintendent what is being done to reduce the problem. The new study provides the perfect hook.
Hechinger blogs
Tough love (but it’s really frustration)
A summer ‘bridge’ to collegeSiobhan Curious, who teaches at Quebec’s version of community college, was having a lousy day even before a failing student walked in to make it worse. Kalia had failed the same class in the autumn because she didn’t come to class. After skipping the first two weeks of her second try, she came to the office [...]
Chicago will subsidize jobs for City Colleges gradsFor students with weak academic skills, a summer “bridge” to college-level classes can improve the odds of success, reports Education Week. “Summer bridge programs can provide an important head start on college,” said Elisabeth Barnett, a senior research associate at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the Community College Research Center in New York. “They can increase [...]
After college, what will you earn?Chicago will give $2 million to companies that hire City Colleges graduates, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. “You hire one of our community college kids, we’ll pay their stipend for the first four weeks of work,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a commencement speech for the system’s graduates. “I want the rest of the country and [...]
What value-added models can—and can’t—tell us about teaching and learningIf college is an investment, students should have some idea what they’ll earn with a degree in nursing or marketing or whatever from College X vs. College Y, writes Daniel de Vise in College, Inc. Soon more information will be available about post-college employment. Especially as college continues to get more expensive, students rightfully want to [...]
The worst eighth-grade math teacher in New York CityGetting your middle-schooler in front of a high-quality teacher for even one year will improve his or her chances of going to college and earning a good salary later in life, according to a recent study. The study’s authors used value-added modeling—predicting how well a given student will do on a standardized test, controlling for [...]
For 10 months, Carolyn Abbott waited for the other shoe to drop. In April 2011, Abbott, who teaches mathematics to seventh- and eighth-graders at the Anderson School, a citywide gifted-and-talented school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, received some startling news. Her score on the Teacher Data Report, the New York City Department of [...]