Action Research Project Update

Update: After initiating the AIM Center student attendance tracking report forms, our campus has been able to document and review student attendance more efficiently. Prior to the creation of these office forms, our campus had to run three separate computer reports per student in order to identify attendance trends. Since the adoption of this hand written form the staff has been able to review recorded responses of why students have missed classroom seat time or left school early. After identifying trends and common student clusters our administrators were able to review and present supporting data to the students. Presenting students with their data trends and providing specific data to parents/guardians has help reduce attendance issues with many students. The principal is satisfied with the form booklet and wants to produce a new report booklet for each school year. The support staff, who were hesitant at first, have welcomed the use of a secondary attendance tool. The benefits far outweigh the costs when dealing with student attendance issues. I have not had to make any major changes to the form and have offered to share the idea with the standard high school campus, but they felt it would be too difficult to maintain with a far larger campus population. I have to disagree with their opinion and feel that if each grade level attendance staff person were to keep their own tracking form booklet, it may help reveal trends in student attendance. Our campus has found that identifying tardies and developing a lunch time detention to recoup lost seat time has reduced several habitual offenders. We also found that communicating concerns to parents/guardians has more merit when we are able to present the student responses for missing classroom seat time. We have even been able to reveal that a student falsified a parent note by cross-referencing what the student’s reason was for missing school and the note they had prewritten. In that case the old adage of it is easier to remember the truth that all your lies came into play. At this point in time the action research project that has tracked our students' attendance has been very successful and will continue to beneficial. Any future changes can be easily adopted and the entire program can continue to grow with the support and input from the campus staff and administrators.