Most States Plan To Use Student Absences To Measure School Success
How do you judge how good a school is? Test scores? Culture? Attendance?
In the new federal education law (the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA) states are asked to use five measures of student success. The first four are related to academics — like annual tests and graduation rates. The fourth measures proficiency of English language learners.
The fifth is the wild card — aimed at measuring "student success or school quality" — and the law leaves it to states to decide.
The final state plans have all been submitted: 36 states and the District of Columbia are using some form of chronic student absenteeism. Many of the state's plans still need to be approved by the U.S. Department of Education. . .