Great news, folks—it is Attendance Awareness Month and Bellevue has good reason to celebrate!
When the Eastside Pathways attendance collaborative discovered that tardiness was correlated with third grade reading scores in the Bellevue School District, the group set out to support elementary schools in achieving a drastic reduction in tardiness at their campuses. The “Right Place, Right Time, Ready to Learn” campaign used bookmarks and posters to promote good attendance at 11 of the district’s 17 elementary schools.
The number of elementary school tardies district-wide decreased by more than ten thousand after one year of the campaign, from 50,005 in 2012-13 to 39,662 in 2013-14. That’s a decrease of 20 percent after accounting for changes in enrollment. The schools that participated in the campaign saw the greatest reduction in tardies, with a decrease of 24 percent at participating schools compared to 11 percent at non-participating schools. All schools will be participating in the 2014-15 campaign.
These averages mask a few highlights. Three schools cut their rate of tardiness nearly in half, decreasing by 44 to 50 percent. One school had already implemented a successful attendance campaign the previous year and was able not only to maintain that progress but to further reduce tardies by 8 percent in 2013-14.
In the coming months, the attendance collaborative will be refining the awareness campaign, re-analyzing third grade reading scores to see if absence (rather than just tardiness) is related to achievement, and considering an expansion of the group’s focus to include middle and high school attendance.
Thank you to all who were involved in this effort, from school staff to collaborative members to the families and children themselves. This early success is a great example of how much can be accomplished by working together and why collective impact is so important in the first place.
Article written by Kelly Jones, data officer at Eastside Pathways