Notes From The Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, May 3. 2011

Typically when analyzing the struggles of schools to achieve No Child Left Behind’s “Adequate Yearly Progress”, the discussion focuses on student achievement scores.  But failing to make sufficient test score gains in a given year isn’t the only way a school can fail to make AYP.  A school whose average daily attendance rate is less than 90% for the year, will be considered a failure under the rules established by the No Child Left Behind Act.  This will be so regardless of the test scores of its students.

On the face of it, this NCLB requirement appears to be reasonable.  Students who attend school on a regular basis should have an increased likelihood of success in school.  Creating an expectation that no more than 10% of the student body can be absent on any one day actually sounds like a fair way to track this important goal.  But this is not necessarily the case.  One or two low attendance days in a month can seriously skew the average daily attendance for a school, thus giving a false impression that students are frequently absent.

At Meade School, student attendance would vary from 92% to 96% on a daily basis.  These figures should have insured that the NCLB attendance requirement would be easily met.  However this frequently didn’t happen.  During every month of the school year, there would be at least two or three days where the number of students absent exceeded 20%.  These statistical outliers would lower both the monthly and yearly averages for the school.  Interestingly, our low attendance days almost always occurred on the days on which we would have noontime dismissals for staff professional development.

For many of our parents, rearranging their work schedule in order to pick up their young children at noon was not possible.  It was easier for them to keep their children at home and arrange for a family member or neighbor to watch them during the morning hours of an early dismissal day.  Many times, the selected baby sitters would be older siblings who too, would be absent from school on those days.

I was quickly reminded of this reality when I first heard that the School District plans to reduce full day Kindergarten programs to half days next year.  The impact on the daily attendance figures of schools will be profound, should this budget reduction plan be implemented.

Many parents in the District who lack the means to either pick up or bring their children to school at noon will more than likely choose to not place their children in a School District Kindergarten.  Instead they will seek to enroll them in private or charter schools.  Unfortunately, in schools such as Meade that serve high percentages of low-income families, these alternative choices will be distant possibilities.  It is more likely that these parents will be forced to rely on inexpensive day care options or baby sitters and therefore will not enroll their Kindergarten age children in school at all. The majority of children from neighborhoods like Meade will then no longer benefit from participating a high quality full day Kindergarten instructional program.   For those children who do attend public school half-day Kindergarten, the impact will be devastating on the amount of school missed by older siblings more frequently called upon to watch younger brothers or sisters.   Both scenarios will eventually result in those schools not making AYP.

The Pennsylvania Partnership for Children reported that school districts in Pennsylvania where children attended full day Kindergarten classes significantly improved third grade reading proficiency between 2005 and 2008.  Districts with part time Kindergarten programs did not do as well.

In Philadelphia, the steady improvement in student achievement has coincided with the time period when the District’s first cohort of full-day Kindergarten students became of age to take the PSSA test.

Simply put, the decision to cut full day Kindergarten classes to half day in Philadelphia is a bad idea.  The effects on student achievement as well as the economic burdens it will place on the families of children will be great.

In this current era of standardized test score accountability, it makes no sense to abandon evidenced-based strategies that increase student achievement. Instead, costly programs with little or no research to support their success should be cut from the upcoming budget.  Consider the superintendent’s stated intention to provide additional funding for the conversion of some District schools into experimental Promise Academies and charter schools at a cost of 30 million dollars. Eliminating these unproven programs would provide more than enough savings to maintain full day Kindergartens at all schools.

Cutting costs by eliminating highly effective evidence-based programs such as full day Kindergarten is wrong.  Additionally placing an unnecessary and severe economic burden on our neediest citizens is unconscionable.