Baltimore City principals and district leaders are tackling student attendance as a top priority this school year — with a boost from Mayor Brandon Scott.
Scott launched a district-wide attendance challenge this fall, promising a hand-delivered trophy to the city school that increased yearly attendance by the biggest percentage each quarter.
The goal of these school-specific and citywide efforts is to combat chronic absenteeism — a term that refers to students who miss 10% or more of school days in a given year. Last school year, over 54% of Baltimore City students were chronically absent.
At this year’s final attendance challenge ceremony, Scott said the district is already seeing improvement.
“Chronic absenteeism in Baltimore City Public Schools is down 9% this year, and attendance is up 3% this year,” Scott said. “That is something that we are excited to recognize, but know that we still can and will do better in the future.”
Scott visited Success Academy to honor the 12.1% attendance rate increase on April 22.
“We know young people can't learn if they're not here. It's that simple,” he said to students. “Your future life outcomes depend on you being here.”
Scott said he started the mayor’s challenge to “put the weight of [his] office” behind the work school leaders were already doing to combat absenteeism.
Leaders of the four winning schools say they use similar strategies: forming a team to regularly review attendance data, offering rewards for improvement and encouraging staff to form connections with students.
“We know that the work is pretty complex, because we know that there are tons of barriers that stand in the way of a kid entering the school building every day,” said Rashida Ford, principal of Booker T. Washington Middle school — the first mayor’s challenge winner. “We have so many different strategies because kids need different things.”
Most leaders also said they didn’t know the mayor’s challenge existed until they won — or they didn’t pay attention to it.
“I really didn't pay attention to the mayor's challenge, because I feel like we would be overlooked anyway because of who I serve,” said Eugenia Young, principal of Excel Academy — the district’s largest alternative high school. “But I have been telling my staff, ‘If we move one data point, they're going to all start coming over here to see our work.’”
Excel won the second quarter of the mayor’s challenge with a 16% attendance increase — from 34% last year to 50.6% this year.
“It felt really good to win; it felt really good to be seen,” Young said. “And I'm not talking just for me. I'm speaking for my students and I'm speaking for my staff. When you've been looked over so many times, you begin to think that people don't care or want to know the good work that you're doing.”
Sue Fothergill, a senior fellow at the national nonprofit Attendance Works, said elected officials throwing their support behind attendance initiatives — like Scott did — helps boost messaging and motivation. But it can’t be the only strategy.
“If the mayor were just doing an incentive program and not partnering with the district and taking a more comprehensive approach, then I think it would be super problematic just to have that and nothing else,” she said.
The winning attendance strategies
Fothergill said there are three first steps she recommends to school leaders who want to improve attendance.
“Get a team, if you don't already have a team,” she said. “And then look at your quantitative data, and ask the questions, ‘Who's not coming in, and why?”
All four schools who won the mayor’s challenge this year have attendance teams. Their meeting timelines vary — some teams meet weekly to review attendance data, others meet daily. But they’re all made up of a collection of school staff.
“That team is comprised of so many different stakeholders and members of our school community, because the reasons why kids don't come to school are far and large,” said Principal Ford. “So if it’s food insecurity, we have our community school coordinator. If it’s about what's happening at home, we have our social worker.”
Fothergill said it’s important to have the principal leading the attendance team.
“Schools that don't have the school leader fully invested have a harder time moving initiatives that make a difference,” she said. “That attendance team can come up with great ideas, but without the principal backing them up, I think they just struggle a lot more.”
Young said that leadership can often feel overwhelming.
“It is extremely hard to run the school as the principal, and then be really trying to focus on the nuances of attendance,” she said. “One person can't do it all.”
And reviewing the attendance data is only the first step. Next comes the outreach.
The four principals said their attendance teams make phone calls to parents and conduct home visits. They meet one-on-one with students to assess their individual needs.
“That’s the cycle every day,” Young said. “We look at the data every day, we disaggregate who needs a home visit, and we go from there.”
And, they offer rewards and incentives for students who start showing up more.
Ford says grade levels at Booker T. Washington compete each week for a party — and students compete for a spot on the monthly “attendance bus” that takes them on surprise field trips. Young said she raffles off gift cards and tablets for improving students any time attendance feels low.
James Sargent, principal of Success Academy, says he’ll cook on the grill for his students and throw pizza parties.
Success Academy students say they see a physical difference — classes becoming more full, hallways more crowded. Quran Acree said the rewarding culture gave him the motivation he needed to attend school after being disconnected with the system.
“It was really hard for me to think that I could still do it after a while, so I didn't really have too much reason to get up and come to school on time,” Acree said. “But after coming to Success, I saw that it was possible for me to get back on track and do what I need to do. I really just felt the power I needed to get up and be at school everyday on time.”
Fothergill said the best incentive programs focus on group improvement, rather than individual perfect attendance.
“Perfect attendance can often be unattainable for folks, because we're not acknowledging the barriers that individual students, even if they tried their hardest, wouldn't be able to overcome,” she said. “Looking at things like most improved or considering things like awarding — like the mayor has done — a school or a classroom so that it's incentivizing a community of practice, rather than individual students, can be very effective.”
‘Best practices include prevention first’
School leaders recognize that there are multiple systemic factors that hinder students’ ability to show up in class — like burdensome health conditions, or the need to work a job.
“Sometimes our students are parents,” Young said. “They're caregivers for their families; they are the main source of income.”
Fothergill says it’s important to look for patterns in student attendance data to find these systemic barriers — and develop more far-reaching solutions.
“A lot of students of Baltimore City talk about transportation challenges, or students will talk about challenges with having enough clean clothes for the week,” she said. “So there are barriers that we can solve individually, or we can start to think collectively about what are some solutions we can put in place that more globally affect the issues that are keeping kids out of school.”
The four principals said they’ve started stressing the importance of staff relationships with students as a way to better identify these challenges.
“It does not matter if the connection is with the custodian, the secretary or the principal, when [students] realize that someone has missed them for a day, they're more willing to come to school, and even share what that trauma may be that’s keeping them away,” said LaWanda Wilson, principal of Bluford Drew Jemison STEM Academy, the third quarter mayor’s challenge winner.
Fothergill said these relationships should happen with all students — not just those identified as chronically absent.
“Best practices include prevention first,” she said. “So yes, we want to build relationships with students that are chronically absent and disengaging, and their families as well. But what are the structures we can put in place in advance of that happening that help facilitate relationships?”
School leaders said it’s all about making attendance a priority — in staff meetings, in budget allocations and during morning advisory periods with students.
Wilson said the push also needs to start at the elementary level.
“You really have to go back and look at when students are chronically absent in the primary grades, to find out what the barriers are and to explain to them the importance of staying in school all day,” she said. “Coming to school is a habit.”
Mayor Scott said he will continue to offer the attendance challenge next year, to keep the momentum going.
“We're not going anywhere with it,” he said. “The trophy will go around.”
