Date of Award
2003
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Department
EdD Program for Educational Leaders
Advisor
Gloria Wolfson
Committee Member
John Evans
Committee Member
Barbara Packer
Committee Member
Claudia Santin
Keywords
achievement, accountability, attendance, Arizona, correlation, dropout rates, family involvement, graduation rates, individualized plans, interventions, Mesa, parents, school staff, student accountability, student attendance, student achievement, students, teacher and staff interventions, testing
Abstract
Student achievement is clearly the purpose of schools, and in today's world of high stakes testing, accountability has certainly been an educational buzzword. However, there are many factors that impact student achievement levels with many of these factors being out of the control of teachers and administrators. One factor on which school officials can have an impact is student attendance.
In the past at Dobson High School in Mesa, Arizona, student attendance was addressed in two ways: first, absences, were documented and recorded; second, punishments were applied after students accumulated too many absences. This was a cold and reactive process that did not help students and families solve the problems that kept them from attending.
This study identified students because of patterns of absence. School staff communicated attendance patterns to parents and met with the students to have them identify the reasons for absence and to explore how the student perceived the relationship between attendance and achievement. Also, at this time, students were asked to identify grade concerns. Individualized plans were then completed to address the identified attendance issues as well as any noted achievement issues. After the implementation of this intervention, when compared to the same data from last school year, overall attendance improved as did overall achievement.
However, data for specific students who had had attendance problems the previous year indicated that the interventions did not resolve the issues for these students. Different interventions need to be utilized to improve the graduation rates and to decrease the dropout rates of these students.
The results of this study contributed to the literature related to student attendance and achievement: first, it explored the effectiveness of interventions related to attendance; second, it provided discussion related to the correlation between attendance and achievement.