10:06am: Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval

Paine promises plan of action in response to ‘shocking’ school attendance numbers

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State School Superintendent Dr. Steve Paine said he doesn’t yet know what the plan of action will be to address the absentee problem in West Virginia schools but he does know there will be a response.

Steve Paine

“We need to take the lead and take charge at the state level and we need to do something with regard to our 55 school districts, their leadership, their boards, their principals and so forth. We have to place a emphasis on going to school and being there on time and learning,” Paine said Thursday during an appearance on MetroNews “Talkline.”

The state Department of Education’s first-ever Balanced Scorecard released earlier this month points toward a major problem with student attendance in most of the state’s 633 elementary, middle and high schools.

“It means we have a very chronic attendance problem in West Virginia. I was shocked at the numbers on attendance,” Paine said.

MORE Read Hoppy’s commentary here

The scorecard shows that nearly 53 percent of the state’s high schools failed to meet the standard of most of their students being in attendance at least 162 of the 180-day school year. Among the state’s middle schools, 35.5 percent failed to meet the standard while among elementary schools about 20 percent are ranked in the lowest category for attendance.

Dale Lee

“A kid can miss 18 days and they’re counted as meeting the standard and 193 schools didn’t have kids that missed 18 days or less,” West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee said this week on “Talkline.”

Paine said there could be a number of reasons for the problem. He said he wants to find out.

“We’re starting those discussions right now and I don’t have answers at the present time,” Paine said. “It’s easy to say we need to work with our parents and kids to make sure they understand the value of being in school but it’s a little more difficult than just saying that.”

Paine said there’s an abundance of research that shows attendance is tied to achievement. He said that’s probably one factor in the struggles the scorecard showed in testing for math and English/Language Arts for some schools.

MORE Balanced Scorecard

“You can imagine a student that struggles to begin with that misses school–there’s no continuity of instruction, they fall behind, they spiral downward and it’s hard to get out of that spiral. So there’s no doubt that lower student achievement is correlated with attendance rates. We do know that,” Paine said.

Kids have to be there to instruct them, Lee said.

“When you have kids missing 30, 40 days of school, it doesn’t matter what test we use, what curriculum we use or how good the teachers are—if they are not there we can’t teach them.”

Over the years the legislature and individual county school districts have carved out a number of reasons for excused absences. The Balanced Scorecard included all absences whether excused or unexcused and that tells a story in West Virginia, Paine said.

“When it’s simply you’re there or not–the numbers are what they are and they are unacceptable and we must do something,” he said.





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