Badin Spirit Olympics
Adventure Summit
SWBL wrestling championships
E-mail 
E-mail 
E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > August > 17 > Entry
In search of a “data driven” school district
In today’s paper, I did my best to give readers some perspective on how attendance was affected by the lack of busing for high school students during the first week of school.
But the truth is, my math is just guesswork.
As much as school officials like to talk about how “data driven” the city schools are in the classroom, in the central office it seems even the most basic data is hard to come by.
Let’s look at the problem we are trying to analyze: Has the lack of district-paid busing negatively impacted attendance during the first week of school?
There are a couple way to evaluate the question. The most forward is to simply look at the attendance rate. Of the students enrolled in each school, how many came to school each day? Sounds easy, but it isn’t. School officials cautioned that their first day of school enrollment figures are notoriously off the mark. That’s because kids transfer, move, drop out, etc. It usually takes a few weeks, they said, before those numbers are reliable.
Still, how far off are first day enrollment numbers? Maybe 10 percent? Because even if its that much, the attendance rate at some of the high schools last week were still atrocious.
Consider Meadowdale High School. Using the district’s admittedly fuzzy first day enrollment figures, attendance was only 71 percent last week. That’s awful. The state expects 93 percent enrollment for report cards, as a frame of reference. But let’s give the district a break. Since they don’t have better numbers, we’ll guess that Meadowdale’s first day enrollment is off by 10 percent. After making that adjustment, it would mean attendance last week at Meadowdale was more like 79 percent last week. That’s much better than 71 percent, but still pretty awful.
So I had a better idea. What if we just compared the first day attendance numbers for 2008 against the first day enrollment numbers for 2007? They should be roughly comparable, and it would eliminate the variability of “enrollment” figures during the first week.
School officials said they would try to get me that number by the end of the day Monday. Then they said they’d try to get it by the end of the day Tuesday. By Friday, they apologized profusely, but the bottom line was they still were unable to produce last year’s first day enrollment numbers after five days.
Folks, these are very basic numbers, the kind of baseline data any organization should be tracking. And even if the district wasn’t tracking enrollment closely for whatever reason don’t you think it might have occurred to administrators to pull that data for comparison’s sake since everyone has known for weeks that the impact of busing changes was going to be paramount during the first week of school?
It has to make you wonder how academic data is handled.
Meanwhile, Dayton schools have a serious concern. Even by these fuzzy measures, attendance looks to be pretty low. Interim Superintendent Kurt Stanic said he will re-evaluate attendance and busing after Labor Day. Stanic has a point that in Dayton has a long-term problem with attendance before Labor Day. But can the district really wait nearly a month before it starts making judgments about its transportation problems?
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment | Categories: Dayton Public Schools
Comments
By Laura
August 19, 2008 11:06 PM | Link to this
Deb, Everything you have written is true. I have several students still unaccounted for on my class list and in another classroom there is a missing student whose brother still does go to our school but the sister does not. The office staff spoke to the child’s parent about officially withdrawing the child if she wasn’t going to attend our school but he has failed to do so as of yet. My comment was meant to address only is the issue of attendance rate differences before and after Labor Day- and the fact that DPS parents were given NO voice in the decision to change to a modified year-round calendar.
By Basil
August 19, 2008 7:15 AM | Link to this
Scott, while bashing the local schools for not producing their attendance records, you make no comment at all about parental responsibility. School attendance is a parent/grandparent/guardian issue. Just because the state is using this measurement does not mean that the media has to ALWAYS take their cue from a state bureaucracy that doesn’t know what it is doing!
By Davidss2
August 18, 2008 9:25 PM | Link to this
Mary said, Scott, you could probably call the athletic director in any school district and get individual and overall numbers and statistics for any sport in the district… So true. So true.
By retiredteacher
August 18, 2008 7:42 PM | Link to this
Scott, to some degree where a high school is built is as important as how it is built. If a student lives close to the new Kiser and goes there until 8th grade, it is over 5 miles to get to Meadowdale or T. Marshall for high school. A high school should be built on the Julienne site to cover that part of the city that has had 4 high schools close over the years. Also,if the district gets over $5,000 for each student from the state, then DPS needs to find the $225 for each high school student that needs a bus pass. I think some charter schools are buying bus passes for students that enroll in their schools. Isn’t getting kids to school more important than say staff development or one day events that cost the district money?
By Caroline
August 18, 2008 7:22 PM | Link to this
That’s awful, but hardly surprising. The schools track that data all year long, so why can’t the district do it? Laura is right. Teachers have to keep attendance every day and turn in their attendance records at the end of the year. Starting after Labor Day would definitely help.
By Putting you on
August 18, 2008 7:18 PM | Link to this
Scott, they have the numbers. They just don’t want to hand them out to the media. Or maybe, just maybe (and please don’t take offense) they have more important things to do than root around for numbers for you. Afterall, how can any story you do about this be positive? Attendance is a sore spot at DPS, especially at (most of) the high schools, where on any given day only 4 out of 5 students shows up. And that’s a good day. It’s another sad fact that they’ve been trying to change forever, but haven’t come up with the right approach yet. So, don’t get your nose out of joint, the PR people are doing what PR people are supposed to do: spin the story to their advantage or sandbag you until you giveup or no one cares anymore.
By deb
August 18, 2008 5:39 PM | Link to this
I am really struggling w/ the statement that DPS can’t put their hands on last year’s attendance for this same time frame….Just doesn’t make sense. Sorry, Laura, the “client�le” that DPS serves don’t get a voice in when DPS chooses to start school…The numbers are not accurate because the client�le that DPS serves aren’t responsible enough to let the district know “my son/daughter is attending another school”, or “Oh, I moved over the summer, and I’m waiting for transportation to put my son/daughter’s name on the bus route so he/she can get a ride to school”….Teachers can’t get even get a hold of parents because phone numbers aren’t right…again, a parent responsibility to take care of these things…Sorry - I’d hate to see what would happen if Dayton’s “client�le” would get to decide when school starts….
By Laura
August 18, 2008 9:20 AM | Link to this
Well, if attendance is notoriously low until after Labor Day, perhaps the clientele of DPS are making a statement about when they think school should start and perhaps DPS administrators and school board should give some consideration to what they want. Personally, I absolutely do not want to start after Labor Day. But, maybe, if there was some sort of compromise, starting closer to what neighboring districts do, at least there wouldn’t be such a huge hit in the attendance area. As to DPS administrators not being able to come up with the data- it is simply a case of telling the teachers in the classroom to “do as we say, not as we do”. Typical.
By Mary
August 18, 2008 7:14 AM | Link to this
On the other hand, Scott, you could probably call the athletic director in any school district and get individual and overall numbers and statistics for any sport in the district without even having to call back or wait. That is the area of priorities and staffing for providing statistics and data in most school districts.