An overwhelming body of research demonstrates the negative short- and long-term consequences of chronic absenteeism on academic achievement. Students who are chronically absent are missing critical instruction time and are at the greatest risk of falling behind and dropping out of school. Chronic absenteeism disproportionately affects low-income students and students with disabilities, as well as students of color and English language learners. Across the country, millions of students are reported chronically absent each school year.

Chronic absenteeism is most commonly defined as missing 10% or more of the school year for any reason, excused or unexcused. As districts and states begin to examine and track chronic absenteeism, comprehensive policy solutions and interventions should be locally determined and characterized by: universal prevention for all students, early intervention strategies for at-risk students, and targeted intensive support for students with the highest need. Punitive interventions should be avoided.

Keywords: education, attendance, absent, chronic absenteeism and academic achievement, high school chronic absenteeism, Delaware chronic absenteeism, ESSA plans and chronic absenteeism

CRESP, Gabriella Mora, Sue Giancola, Danielle Riser

This guide is written for educators. The primary intended audience is state- and district-level educators (e.g., curriculum supervisors, district office personnel, and state-level administrators). Teachers, school administrators, and board members also may find the guide useful. It is intended to help you build evaluation into the programs and projects you use in your classrooms, schools, districts, and state. This guide will also provide a foundation in understanding how to be an informed, active partner with an evaluator to make sure that evaluation provides the information you need to improve the success of your program, as well as to make decisions about whether to continue, expand, or discontinue a program. No previous evaluation knowledge is needed to understand the material presented. However, this guide may also be useful for experienced evaluators who want to learn more about how to incorporate theory-based evaluation methods into their programs and projects.

Keywords: education, evaluation, program planning, educational program design, program evaluation and decision-making, theory-based evaluation methods

Susan P. Giancola, Sue Giancola

Using data from the 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey, the authors studied how various aspects of teacher preparation affect the retention of new teachers–specifically mathematics and science teachers. They found that the preparation of new mathematics and science teachers differs from that of other new teachers in various respects, but factors that had to do with pedagogical training (amount of practice teaching, courses in educational methods and child psychology, and so on) were the only ones that positively affected teacher retention. This finding is a concern for mathematics and science education, write the authors, because mathematics and science teachers tend to receive significantly less pedagogical training than other teachers, and their attrition rates after the first year of teaching are higher.

Keywords: Education, teaching, teachers

Richard Ingersoll, Lisa Merrill, Henry May

Researchers have used many angles and perspectives to investigate how principals enact instructional leadership in schools. Most research has emphasized the practices of school leaders, although investigations of leadership styles and leadership processes are also present in the literature. In this study, the authors take a different approach by examining the scope of principal efforts to improve instruction. Scope of principal effort refers to the extent to which principals target or distribute their instructionally oriented work with teachers. Using data from principal web logs and teacher surveys conducted in 51 schools in an urban southeastern district, the authors develop models to examine not only differences in average instructional change at the school level but also variability in instructional change across teachers within schools. The results indicate that the scope of principals’ instructional leadership activities varies from one school to the next, from very broad approaches that target the entire faculty to very targeted approaches that focus on a few teachers, and that the frequency of a principal’s instructional leadership activities with an individual teacher is directly related to the magnitude of instructional changes reported by that teacher. These findings support the notion that principals who focus on the improvement of particular teachers in conjunction with broader approaches can produce greater changes in instructional practice.

Keywords: instructional leadership, multilevel mixed-effects modeling, principal leadership, student achievement, survey research

Henry May, Jonathan A. Supovitz, Jon Supovitz