Louisiana is making strides in improving the absenteeism rate of public school students.
Executive director of attendance strategy for the Department of Education, Misty Davis, says last year the state launched a campaign to increase attendance, and it called for schools to take proactive measures to reduce the absenteeism and truancy rate.
“Things like systems in schools putting attendance teams into place, where we have personnel that are focused on identifying students that may have attendance issues,” Davis said.
Davis says it’s not about punishing students who keep missing school, they’ve found it to be more beneficial if you reward students for good attendance.
“How can we incentivize attendance at school? How can we highlight the importance of attendance? How can we recognize and reward good attendance?” Davis asked.
Davis says the “Power of Presence” campaign they launched last year calls for schools to encourage students to participate in extracurricular activities, because that will motivate students to attend school.
According to the state department of Education, nearly 22% of public school students were counted as chronically absent during the last school year. Davis says that’s’ down from 28% in 2021, but it is still four percentage points higher than it was before the COVID pandemic.
“We still have room for growth; that’s why we’re expanding our support efforts this year and working directly with even more systems than we have in the past,” Davis noted.
