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School Program Targets Absences Starting this fall, the Chillicothe R-2 School District will be taking a more aggressive approach in dealing with student absences and, for the first time, will also be focusing on elementary students who frequently miss class. The Chillicothe R-2 School Board set a goal to increase graduation rates within the district back in July 2008. One year later, after much research, the following changes in district policy will be implemented:
“Thirty absences a year is just not realistic,” said Smith. She explained that when researching ways to increase graduation rates, district officials learned they must work on improving attendance rates in the elementary and middle school levels as well as at the high school. While researching the issue, Chillicothe administrators have found that there are several predictors of dropouts that can be found in the elementary level. They include:
In the middle school. research suggests that students earning an "F" in English or math in sixth through eighth grades are more likely to drop out of school. High schoolers, district officials say, who miss 10 percent or more of instructional time, have one or more course failures and have a grade point average of 2.0 or less on a 4-point scale are also more likely to drop out. The R-2 district had a dropout rate of 3.5 percent (23 students) in 2008. That was down over 1 percent from the previous year, when the district had a rate of 4.7 percent (or 31 students). In 2006, 32 students, or 4.9 percent of the R-2 student body dropped out of school. |
