School is Cool

It’s a fact that students who attend school regularly learn more and are more successful in school than students who do not. That may seem obvious, but what’s less obvious is that the consequences of low attendance are serious for all children and for the community, not just the students who miss school.

Attendance patterns are formed early in life. A 2008 study conducted by the Rodel Community Scholars at Arizona State University that tracked students from kindergarten through high school found that dropout patterns were linked with poor attendance, beginning in kindergarten. Gregory Hickman, director of the Rodel Community Scholars program and former director of the Arizona Dropout Initiative, notes they discovered that as early as kindergarten, behavioral differences are apparent between those who go on to graduate and those who drop out, with dropouts missing an average of 124 days by eighth grade.

Parents who make regular school attendance a priority are also helping their children learn to accept responsibility. And that’s an important lesson for a successful life. Children who develop good attendance habits in the early grades will be more likely to continue them throughout their school career. That’s important, because students who miss school miss out on carefully planned sequences of instruction. They miss out on active learning experiences and class participation. They miss out on the opportunity to ask questions and they are more likely to fall behind. In addition to falling behind in academics, they are more likely to drop out and students who are not in school on a regular basis are more likely to get into trouble with the law and cause problems in their communities.

One of the other main reasons for regular school attendance is their success after graduation. If young people don’t develop the habits of good attendance and prompt
completion of assignments while they’re in school, when will they learn these things? Their success as adults in their chosen occupations is dependent upon these habits.

Teaching children to value education is doing them a lifelong favor. That’s why we have teamed up with LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) to develop creative ways to promote attendance in schools! Our School is Cool program hopes to encourage students to keep coming to school each and everyday by focusing on the students who already attend. Rewarding the kids who continue to come to school on a daily basis with a monthly celebration, helps them to better identify with the feeling of success. Although monthly celebrations are more of a short term solution associated with instant gratification; at the end of each semester, every student gets to drop their name(s) in a hat for a chance to win AWESOME prizes.

All of this in turn, will hopefully encourage the kids who don’t have a regular school attendance to want to attend and the kids who currently have excellent attendance to continue!