In Virginia, better attendance correlates with better SOL scores. Unfortunately, Richmond has the third worst attendance of the Virginia school divisions. Richmond also has been flagrantly violating the Virginia law that requires it to respond to truancy. The State officials who are charged with the enforcement of that law have been enabling Richmond's violations and, to further that cause, violating the law themselves.
Better Attendance
Correlates with Better SOL Scores
The Virginia division average SOL scores correlate nicely with the division average attendance. Here, for example, are the English pass rates for 2005-06 as a function of attendance:
Richmond is the gold square on this graph; Norfolk is the red diamond; the green diamonds are, from the left, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover. As you see, Richmond is performing below the average value predicted by its (appalling) attendance rate.
The straight line fit of the data suggests that increasing average attendance by 1% correlates with a 2.9 point increase in the SOL score. The R2 value tells us that attendance explains about 26% of the variance in the scores.
The math SOL scores show a similar pattern.
On the math test, Richmond is performing better than the attendance figure would predict. We might take some comfort from that if we could believe the Richmond SOL scores.
It also turns out that the Richmond schools with better attendance enjoy higher SOL scores than those with worse attendance.
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 (perhaps even compliance with the State law on the subject) will be written into all our Principals' performance objectives.
The independent variable on the graphs above (from the 2005-06 data) is the end of year daily attendance by school division. Here are those attendance rates (percent), ranked from lowest to highest:
Richmond, the yellow bar on the graph, is third from the lowest at 92.0 (down from 92.2 the previous year). Norfolk is the red bar (at 94.2); the green bars are Henrico, Chesterfield, and Hanover (95.6, 95.7, and 96.8). The state average is 95.0. The winner there, with 97.2%, is Charles City.
Here for your inspection are the bottom ten:
| Division | Attendance |
| Petersburg | 91.21 |
| Brunswick | 91.94 |
| Richmond City | 91.97 |
| Warren | 92.15 |
| Sussex | 92.35 |
| Buchanan | 92.43 |
| Colonial Beach | 92.77 |
| Tazewell | 92.84 |
| Nottoway | 93.00 |
| Northampton | 93.30 |
The Richmond Public Schools' Web page has a table of the number and percentage of elementary, middle, and high school students who were absent ten or more days. The table is titled "Truancy Rates" so we'll infer that these are ten or more unexcused absences. As of today (10/8/07) the table runs from 1999-00 through 2005-06. Here is a summary of the data
The 2001-02 data look to be anomalous. Aside from that year, notice the consistent pattern of more than a quarter of the high school students missing school for ten or more days. The slight improvement in 2005-06 cost you and me $675,000.
If we believe these data (The low numbers in 2001-02 and the bogus SAT data on the Richmond Web site surely invite skepticism), there is even more shocking information to be had by comparing them to the truancy data on the State Web site.
But first, some background.
Virginia Code § 22.1-258 requires each school division (through an attendance officer or, where there is none, through the superintendent) to create an attendance plan for any student with five unexcused absences and to schedule a conference with the parents after the sixth absence. The law does not merely permit this conference; it says the school "shall" schedule the conference. The statute continues:
The conference shall be held no later than fifteen school days after the sixth absence. Upon the next absence by such pupil without indication to the attendance officer that the pupil's parent is aware of and supports the pupil's absence, the school principal or his designee shall notify the attendance officer or the division superintendent, as the case may be, who shall enforce the provisions of this article by either or both of the following: (i) filing a complaint with the juvenile and domestic relations court alleging the pupil is a child in need of supervision as defined in § 16.1-228 or (ii) instituting proceedings against the parent pursuant to § 18.2-371 or § 22.1-262. [emphasis and link to the AG's opinion added]
That is, if the student continues to be truant, the school is required to file a CHINS petition and/or to initiate proceedings against the parents. HOWEVER, if you'll follow the links you'll see that the (required) conference is part of the prerequisite notice to the parents: No conference scheduled, no petition or proceedings.
In light of that, let's compare the Richmond data on students truant ten or more days and the State data on number of conferences scheduled after the sixth absence, keeping in mind that 10>6:
The truancy (magenta curve) and conference (green curve) numbers are on the left axis. The number of conferences (six absences) as a percentage of the number of truants (10 absences) is the black curve, with the numbers on the right axis.
As you see, Richmond scheduled fewer than 20% of the required conferences in in 2004 and 2005 but improved sharply in 2006 (after this Web page blew the whistle on Richmond's lawless behavior). I have no data as to absences beyond ten or whether absences beyond six resulted in a trip to court in the cases where the school had scheduled the required conferences; for sure, Richmond could do nothing about the vast numbers for whom they did not schedule a conference.
Richmond's wholesale violations of the attendance law and its penchant for suspending kids for truancy are consistent with its pattern of chasing out poor performers in order to improve its SOL scores.
Official
Enabler
Unfortunately, the State has been enabling this wholesale and destructive lawbreaking by Richmond.
It's not that they don't have the power to solve the problem. Code § 22.1-253.13:8 authorizes the Board of Education to obtain a court order to compel a school division to meet the Standards of Quality or to comply with a plan to accomplish that end.
The 2005 report of the Board of Education discloses that Richmond has failed to meet the Board's (bogus) accreditation standards and has filed a corrective action plan. Indeed the Richmond plan is the recommendations of the evaluation committee from the Council of the Great City Schools. Never lacking for an euphemism, Richmond calls the compliance plan its Balanced Scorecard. Under that "Scorecard," Richmond's sole obligation as to truancy is to
Collaborate with appropriate local entities to implement a plan to increase student attendance and access to health services and to reduce truancy and dropout rates.
Notice: Nothing there about compliance with state law. All Richmond must do is "collaborate" and "implement a plan," while continuing to ignore a state law the Board of Education is required to enforce:
§ 22.1-269. Board to enforce.
The Board of Education shall have the authority and it shall
be its duty to see that the provisions of [the
compulsory school attendance statutes, Code §§ 22.1-254 through 22.1-269.1] are
properly enforced throughout the Commonwealth.
When I raised this issue with the Education Department, they did not tell me they are acting to discharge their duty under § 22.1-269. Instead, they told me that Richmond in 2006 was spending funds appropriated by the General Assembly in 2005 for a pilot truancy program:
The legislature, through the Appropriations Act, directed the Department of Education and Richmond to develop a plan to reduce truancy and absenteeism in the City. . . . Mayor Wilder approved the plan on May 23, 2005. Full implementation of the pilot began last fall.
Mark Emblidge, the President of the State Board of Education, responded to my email in the same vein:
The Board of Education will continue to discharge its responsibilities in this area through the division-level review process. Richmond Public Schools’ corrective action plan, which was accepted by the Board, addresses attendance and its impact on student achievement.
As you know, Richmond’s "Balanced Scorecard" details specific objectives for district improvement. Two of these "outcome measures" (5.2 and 6.1) deal specifically with improving attendance.
Those answers both try to change the question rather than answer it: The plan under the Appropriations Act identifies three target neighborhoods (Hillside, Mosby, and Highland Park) and establishes a service center in each. The plan goes on for eleven pages and proposes to spend the State's $675,000. Nowhere does it mention or require the City's compliance with § 22.1-258. Similarly, the Balanced Scorecard merely sets a 2009 target for the "collaborat[ion] with appropriate local entities" to reduce dropouts from 15% to 5%. The Balanced Scorecard likewise is utterly silent about compliance with § 22.1-258.
Thus we see that the State education establishment now has approved two plans for Richmond's schools. In neither did it require Richmond to comply with the Virginia law the Board of Education is required to enforce. Indeed, the Education Department did not even try to enforce this law in the target neighborhoods where the State is paying for the pilot program. Dr. Emblidge embellishes this nonfeasance with a shameless fabrication that the State Board "will continue" to discharge the responsibilities that, in fact, it is diligently ignoring.
The State's nonfeasance regarding truancy is part of a pattern (see the examples here and here) of the State educational bureaucracy's pusillanimous tolerance for lawlessness in Richmond.
| Note added on July 1, 2006 and Oct.
8, 2007: Dr. Emblidge asked the Department of Education to "update" me on their activity in response to these data. Unfortunately, the "updates" stopped with a vague generalization but the State coverup expanded. |
Summary
Thus we see that among the Virginia school divisions, better attendance correlates with better SOL scores. Unfortunately, Richmond has the third worst attendance of the Virginia school divisions. Richmond also has been flagrantly violating the Virginia law that requires it to respond to truancy. The State officials who are charged with the enforcement of that law have been enabling Richmond's violations and, to further that cause, violating the law themselves.
And we get to pay taxes to support this disgraceful and unlawful behavior.