Absent in Richmond

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The Education Department formerly posted school-by-school absence data for 2000-01 and 2001-02.  After the 2001-02 year, however, the State stopped publishing these useful data.  Sigh.

Overall, the Richmond attendance rose to 91.5% (from 91.1% the previous year).  The state average was 95%.  Only twelve of the thirty-one Richmond elementary schools managed to beat the state average:

Remarkably, all of the elementary schools beat the Richmond average.  That provides an ominous preview of the high school and middle school data:

Among the high and middle schools, only Community and Open beat the state average. 

Among the high schools, only Community, Open, and Franklin beat the Richmond average.  Stated otherwise, all of the general population high schools had daily average attendance that was below the Citywide average.

One might think that the kids who are not in school are not likely to perform well.  The data support that notion.

On that graph, the blue diamond is the State average and the yellow square is the Richmond average.

At first glance there look to be two sets of data on that graph.  Indeed, that is the case: They turn out to be the elementary schools and the middle and high schools.  The data toward the upper left from the Richmond average are the elementary schools:

There is no particular reason to expect a linear relationship between SOL scores and attendance.  The fitted line, however, fits very well (stated in statistics-speak, attendance explains about 59% of the variance in the SOL scores -- an excellent fit indeed).  The slope suggests that a 1% increase in attendance correlates with a 10.9% increase in the school's SOL score.

The data below and to the right of the Richmond average are the middle and high schools:

Here the correlation is even better (R² of 77%) but a 1% increase in attendance correlates with less improvement in SOL, 3.3%.

On another page, we see that the school divisions with better attendance also have better SOL scores. 

Of course, these correlations do not prove that high attendance produces high SOL scores.  There could be a third factor that causes kids both to attend and score well.  Even so, it makes sense that the kids who are not in school are likely to score worse on the SOL tests.  One might hope that specific attendance improvement will be written into all our Principals' performance objectives.

Then, again, given the quality of the leadership in the Richmond system, one could expect that any such hope would be unrequited.

Here, for the numerically curious, are the actual data.  The green indicates an attendance at or above the State average.  First the high schools and middle schools:

Then the elementary schools:

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Last updated 03/29/08
Please send questions or comments to John Butcher