Each year in the United States, approximately 5 to 7.5 million students in the nation’s K-12 schools miss a month or more of school. That means 150 to 225 million instructional days are lost every school year. The problem is more pronounced in low-income urban communities throughout the country. In elementary school, for example, students who live in poverty were found to be as much as five times more likely to be chronically absent than their advantaged peers.

Thomas Kehle, professor of school psychology in the Neag School, passed away on Feb. 7, 2018.

Joshua Hyman, an assistant professor at University of Connecticut, studied the effects of this new policy (required ACT testing) while he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Hyman analyzed the test scores and college attendance of all public, high school students in Michigan, before and after the ACT was made universal.

This is why — as researchers who have focused on absenteeism and better ways to keep students engaged — we found the recent report about students graduating from Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., despite missing large amounts of school so concerning.

Each year, more than half a million students drop out of high school in the United States. But what if schools could predict which individuals were most at risk for dropping out — and perhaps even take action to prevent such an outcome? As it turns out, such a scenario is closer than ever to becoming a reality.

To help pass legal muster, parochial schools should adopt a secular curriculum, change their names, and keep a separate accounting system, said Preston Green, a professor at the University of Connecticut who explored the legal questions of churches operating charter schools in a 2001 law review article.

“We find consistent evidence that both implementing high-stakes evaluation reforms and repealing tenure reduced teacher labor supply,” concludes the paper, which controlled for a number of factors that might have affected the pool of teachers.

“The teacher (or some human) still has to find a time to sit down and listen to all the recordings — usually during time set aside for lunch, planning or beyond school hours since they certainly can’t score them when they are teaching,” says Rachael Gabriel, an assistant professor of literacy education at the University of Connecticut.

Some worry that career and technical education (CTE) will steer students away from college. But a recent study by Shaun M. Dougherty at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute concluded that CTE courses had no effect on a student’s chances of going to a four-year college. In fact, the study found that students on a CTE track were marginally more likely to attend a two-year college and 21 percent more likely to graduate high school.

Our alumni, faculty, and students reflect on their experience in the Neag School in this special video segment. Video produced by Nathan Oldham.