Philadelphia School District Finding New Ways To Boost Attendance
By Mike DeNardo
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The Philadelphia School District is trying some new strategies to stress the importance of attendance.
If students aren't in school, they're not learning. That's the advice to parents, says the district's deputy chief of the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities, Rachel Holzman:
"We really need to flip the message and try to get parents to understand how closely tied achievement, graduation rates are to being in the classroom."
The district is exploring new ways to communicate that message, including mailings that spell out the attendance rates of other children in their neighborhood, says the district's deputy for research and evaluation, Tonya Wolford:
"Now, the primary information that they get would be through a report card. And that just speaks to an individual student's performance. So this is just putting in perspective other groups of children's' performance as well."
"And we think that that's going to help individuals understand what we mean by 'good attendance'," adds Superintendent William Hite.
Hite says students who attend school at least 95-percent of the time are much more likely to graduate on time and to be proficient at reading.
Parents can also now register to get a text when their child is absent.