States, districts and schools are now being offered unprecedented opportunities to develop programs that will improve student performance and turn around underperforming schools. An understanding of how reducing chronic early absence helps those efforts will go a long way to assure that innovative school improvement policies and practices will be…

A multiage first, second, and third grade classroom includes brothers, sisters, cousins. Two teachers use a developmentally appropriate approach while juggling teaching responsibilities and administering the many tests required by No Child Left Behind. Carter explains their four priorities for children: attendance, responsibility, honesty, and…

This report paints a collective portrait of the Baltimore City Schools dropouts of 2008-09 to summarize some of the commonalities that join their individual stories together. After examining the surface level demographic characteristics of these dropouts, researchers probed more deeply into their behavioral characteristics in the years preceding…

This study assessed the effects of a modified version of Check & Connect, a comprehensive student engagement intervention, on the attendance, behavior, and academic performance of secondary African American females with violent and aggressive behavior problems. In addition, the Student Engagement Instrument (SEI) was used to assess cognitive…

The Student Mobility Index is designed to be a highly sensitive statistic of classroom disruption. The idea behind the statistic is that any student entries or exits to and from a classroom during the year, over however many days, contribute to a disruption of instructional continuity and obstacle to institutional organization. This kind of…

Researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and parents have assumed a positive relationship between school attendance and academic success. And yet, among the vast body of empirical research examining how input factors relate to academic outcomes, few investigations have honed in on the precision of the relationship between individual attendance…

Researchers target 9th grade as the make or break year for completing high school. During the 9th-grade year, many students for the first time have to earn passing grades in core courses, and these core courses are typically some of the toughest and most rigorous academic classes a student must take in high school. Furthermore, the rising use of…

This booklet is addressed to parents and guardians of incoming high school students, discussing what many researchers consider the most important year of high school, perhaps the most important year of school so far. Freshman year will set the stage for whether a student graduates and whether he or she will be ready for college. Citing years of…

Dropping out of school--and the concomitant failure to graduate with a high school diploma--form a "silent epidemic" in the United States today. "Nationally, research puts the graduation rate between 68 and 71 percent, which means that almost one-third of all public high school students in America fail to graduate" or drop out…

This booklet is addressed to high school teachers, discussing what many researchers consider the most important year of high school, perhaps the most important year of school so far. Freshman year will set the stage for whether a student graduates and whether he or she will be ready for college. Citing years of study, the Consortium on Chicago…

The high school dropout problem has been called a national crisis. Educators, researchers, and policymakers continue to work to identify effective dropout prevention approaches. One important element of such prevention efforts is the identification of students at highest risk for dropping out and then the targeting of resources to keep them in…

This booklet is addressed to beginning high school students, discussing what many researchers consider the most important year of high school, perhaps the most important year of school so far. Freshman year will set the stage for whether a student graduates and whether he or she will be ready for college. Citing years of study, the Consortium on…

Education Resource Strategies (ERS) works with school and district leaders to help them more strategically use resources--people, time, and money--to improve student performance. They have found that many school districts begin creating small high schools without a clear sense of how much they will spend or how to ensure that small schools…

Charter schools are publicly funded but operate outside the regulatory framework and collective bargaining agreements characteristic of traditional public schools. In return for this freedom, charter schools are subject to heightened accountability. This paper estimates the impact of charter school attendance on student achievement using data from…

With the current emphasis on accountability in kindergarten through twelfth-grade education, greater demands have been placed on school social workers. In fact, many federal, state, and school officials are demanding the use of evaluative outcome research that demonstrates the potential impact of supportive services. The present study examined the…