Nov 04

Multi-Tiered System of Support to Address Childhood Trauma: Evidence and Implications

“When California’s students return to school this fall, schools can play a pivotal role in preventing, assessing, and addressing trauma in order to support students’ well-being. We summarize the existing evidence base on multi-tiered trauma-informed practices that offer increasingly intensive tiers of support. Although many multi-tiered models of trauma-informed approaches have been implemented in schools, the evidence base demonstrating their wholescale effectiveness is limited. The most
compelling evidence comes from approaches within the more intensive tiers. Moreover, most of the recent guidance on addressing trauma comes from expert and practitioner experiences and recommendations, including the novel adaptations that some schools made amid the shift to distance
learning. Finally, districts and schools seeking to become trauma informed should consider establishing a coherent systemwide trauma-informed approach, including care for educators themselves.” Read article

Nov 03

The Covid Pivot: Addressing Chronic Absence Made a Difference for Hickman Mills

“Hickman Mills’ readiness and ability to adapt to distance learning when schools closed for Covid-19 reflects the mindset, capacity and skills emphasized and reinforced by our year-long initiative to reduce chronic absence. This work promoted taking a positive, problem-solving approach to working with families rather than assuming absences are an indication that families don’t care about their children’s education,” says Dr. Carl Skinner, Deputy Superintendent of Hickman Mills C-1 School District. This story describes the key elements of this initiative which took place over the 2019-2020 school year and shares the results of an internal evaluation.” Read article from Attendance Works

Nov 02

In Chicago, a firmer hand — and some confusion — on student attendance

“At Chavez Elementary on Chicago’s South Side, third-grade teacher Ashley McCall and her colleagues fill out a spreadsheet after each live video class: which students logged on, which showed up late and what might have kept students from attending. Then come the phone calls and text messages to families. Chicago is taking a harder line on tracking student attendance this fall and stepping up efforts to boost student participation in live virtual classes. Students must attend those classes to count — and they must log on to each one to be marked as present for the full day. Like districts across the country, Chicago Public Schools has grappled with how to reimagine its attendance policy for the virtual age — a new conundrum for schools trying to strike a delicate balance between restoring a sense of structure and accountability amid the coronavirus pandemic and giving families grace to account for ongoing challenges.” Read article

Oct 31

5 Things You Need to Know About Student Absences During COVID-19

  • 1. Student absences have doubled during the pandemic.
  • 2. Absences are up for students in full-time in-person instruction too.
  • 3. Schools should tread carefully on holding students accountable for unexcused absences.
  • 4. Approaches to absenteeism differ depending on a school’s location and socioeconomic makeup. 
  • 5. Very few students face suspension, expulsion, or legal consequences for unexcused absences. Read Education Week article

Oct 22

The Effects of Absenteeism on Academic and Social-Emotional Outcomes: Lessons for COVID-19

“This study, using data from six large CORE school districts in California, shows that average absenteeism is low during the regular school year: about 7 days on average, although this is higher in secondary school and for certain subgroups such as HL/FST and SWDs. There is reason to believe that a significant number of students were absent from virtual schooling opportunities for extended and longer-than-normal periods during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results suggest that if students missed more than a few weeks of cumulative instruction during the pandemic—which is likely, particularly among low-income and other disadvantaged students—their test scores and SEL outcomes are likely to be badly affected. Moreover, school closures and remote-only instruction continue through fall 2020 in most districts, and it is not yet clear whether adaptations to online learning as a result of the experience of this past spring will yield significantly greater engagement with instruction. These negative impacts are likely to hit students particularly hard in middle school and in mathematics. For SEL, the negative impact on elementary and middle schoolers of extended absences is significant. Moreover, students in certain subgroups, such as low-income students and SWDs, are likely to be the most affected. This study adds to the growing evidence on the potentially negative impact of COVID-19 on student development and the pandemic’s possible differential impacts by student subgroups and grade-level. Although COVID-19 presents unique circumstances, the evidence based on past experience suggests that many students will need intense academic and social-emotional support to make up for lost time.” Read article

Oct 21

Teachers can build strong relationships with and between students to help them get through this very challenging time.

“educators need to be attuned to indicators that a student is struggling. They also need to embrace new strategies to support the social and emotional well-being of students during distance learning. Here are a few ways that your students’ mental health struggles might reveal themselves, as well as ideas for communication and activities that can help them get through this challenging time. LONELINESS. HOPELESSNESS. PANIC. ” Read article

Oct 20

Remote Learning Is Tough for Many Students. How ‘Early-Warning’ Data Can Help Schools Support Them

“Understanding how and why students disengage or are starting to slide academically is especially important, given emerging findings from last spring’s national experiment with remote learning. In surveys, educators reported falling levels of engagement last spring the longer remote learning went on.  Unlike the other interventions in this series, an early-warning system doesn’t on its own help to re-engage students or fill in learning gaps. Like the lights on a dashboard telling you something’s wrong, an early-warning system uses indicators—missed days, falling grades, or a sudden rash of disciplinary actions—to identify which students need more help. And it provides a consistent framework district and school leaders can use to respond. ” Read article

Oct 18

Preventing absences in a remote learning environment – LA Unified School District

“Over the summer of 2020 EveryDay Labs partnered with the Los Angeles Unified School District to evaluate the impact of Evident on attendance in a remote learning environment. Evident is a proven, restorative approach to absence prevention. The program leverages communication strategies informed by behavioral science to effectively reach families through personalized print reports and two-way texts that are designed to help them:Key Outcomes 1. Overall the program effectively prevented 12 percent of absences in a given week in a remote learning environment.
2. 97 percent of respondents reported being interested in receiving
text communications during the 2020–2021 school year.” Read article

Oct 16

US Study Finds that Text Messages to Parents Can Reduce Chronic School Absences in Elementary School

“A new federally funded report from the American Institutes for Research (AIR) suggests that texting parents may be an effective way to reduce chronic absence in elementary school. The study tested a messaging strategy that started with basic messages, and then “adapted” to provide additional intensified messaging for families whose children had more absences. The evaluation found that the adaptive messaging strategy improved attendance for all students, with the largest reductions in chronic absence for students who had a prior history of high absences.” Read article

Oct 15

Attendance matters! Make every day count in distance learning or at school!

Many factors influence reading proficiency, and chronic absence is one. COVID-19 has changed the way we view attendance. School is now defined as wherever the student is, and learning happens in many places, including brick-and-mortar classrooms and home computers with online teachers.