Our Attendance Victory!

We have quite the victory to share this week to our community! Starting this fall, we've been tracking our daily attendance at CSE, knowing that it is an area that we need to improve upon. According to www.attendanceworks.com, chronic absenteeism is a powerful indicator of  students becoming at-risk. In fact, "chronic absence is associated with a lack of certain social skills, including a child’s ability to pay attention, work independently, adapt to change and persist in tasks. It also reflects a lack of eagerness to learn new things and a lack of engagement in school. Again, the differences are greater for the students who miss more school." 

At first, we were having classes track days where their entire class was present. The goal was that students would encourage each other and synergize to all be present. Classes set goals each 9 weeks for total number of perfect attendance days and then tracked their progress on a campus attendance data wall. Unfortunately, this system just wasn't quite what we needed. At the semester mark, our attendance was hovering just below 95%, meaning that on average, each CSE student had missed at least 5 days of school and were on track to miss at least 10 days by the end of the year, putting our students greatly at risk. This system was not increasing our overall attendance rate and was sometimes unrealistic, especially in the winter months, to expect classes to have perfect attendance when students were ill.

We know that with a growth mindset, we don't fail and then give up. We see see failures as opportunities for growth! In fact, fail can be see as a "First Attempt in Learning." Our Leader in Me Lighthouse team reflected on what was working and what wasn't working and looked at pictures that we gathered at the symposium in January of attendance tracking systems from other schools. We realized that we needed a more quantitative school-wide goal and for classes to daily track where they were in relation to that goal. We also realized that we needed different incentives to reach this goal. In the end, we decided set our new goal to at least have 96% daily average attendance. We created a large calendar in our hallway and each day we met the goal, a green sticker was placed with our average and on days we did not meet the goal, a red sticker was placed with our average. Classes also received class calendars to do the same with. It was announced that each week, any student who was present all 5 days would get $5 in Cougar Cash and that if we met our goal for the month, we would have a school-wide dance party.

We began tracking with this new system on March 1st and by the end of March, our average daily attendance for the month was SO close to 96%, but not quite there. We pushed forward and continued to remind students about the possible incentive. Yesterday, we were able to celebrate that our average daily attendance for April was 96.5%! Not only did we meet our goal, but we exceeded it. Look at all of the green on that calendar! This shows that when we begin with the end in mind and make a plan to put first things first, we can achieve anything!

As promised, we were able to celebrate as a school community yesterday with our "Synergy Assembly." Our entire school sang the CSE Cougar Song, said our 7 Habits Pledge together, and had a massive line-dancing dance party. Who knew so many of our Cougars have such awesome moves! Check this link out with some highlights from our Synergy Assembly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaX50fpfXWM

We know that if we all continue to encourage each other's attendance, begin with the end in mind, and stay healthy by sharpening the saw, we will continue to meet our goal and raise our overall daily attendance even more!