In Virginia, better attendance correlates with better SOL scores. Unfortunately, Richmond is in a twelve-way tie for the worst attendance of the Virginia school divisions. Richmond also has been flagrantly violating the Virginia law that requires it to respond to truancy. The State officials who are charged with the enforcement of that law have been enabling Richmond's violations and, to further that cause, ignoring their duty under the law.
Better Attendance
Correlates with Better SOL Scores
In the past, the Virginia division average SOL scores correlated fairly well with the division average attendance. Here, for example, are the English pass rates for 2009-10 as a function of attendance:
Richmond is the gold square on this graph. As you see, Richmond is performing below the average value predicted by its (appalling) attendance rate.
The straight line fit of the data suggests that increasing average attendance by 1% correlates with a 1.7 point increase in the SOL score. The R2 value tells us that attendance explains only about 18% of the variance in the scores.
The math SOL scores showed a similar pattern but even less correlation.
On both tests, Richmond was performing worse than the attendance figure would predict. This despite Richmond's ardent cheating to improve the Richmond SOL scores.
It also turns out that the Richmond schools with better attendance enjoyed higher SOL scores than those with worse attendance.
BTW: The current data are less useful because the general improvement in attendance has clustered most divisions even more closely around the 95% state average and because VDOE now rounds the data to the nearest whole percentage.
Of course, correlations do not prove that high attendance produces high SOL scores. There could be a third factor that causes kids both to attend and score well. Even so, it makes sense that the kids who have not been in school are likely to score worse on the SOL tests. One might hope that specific attendance improvement (perhaps even compliance with the State law on the subject) will be written into all our Principals' performance objectives.
Here are the twelve lowest-scoring divisions in 2011:
| Division | Attendance | English | Math |
| Bristol | 93 | 86 | 85 |
| Brunswick | 93 | 81 | 80 |
| Covington | 93 | 84 | 81 |
| Greensville | 93 | 84 | 86 |
| Kingx and Queen | 93 | 90 | 81 |
| Lee | 93 | 88 | 87 |
| Petersburg | 93 | 74 | 72 |
| Pulaski | 93 | 87 | 84 |
| Richmond | 93 | 80 | 76 |
| Rockbridge | 93 | 86 | 84 |
| Tazewell | 93 | 90 | 86 |
| Warren | 93 | 88 | 84 |
And here are the bottom feeders from 2010:
| Division Name | Attendance | English | Math |
| Brunswick County | 91.6% | 81 | 82 |
| Petersburg City | 91.8% | 71 | 75 |
| Dickenson County | 92.1% | 88 | 88 |
| Tazewell County | 92.1% | 89 | 86 |
| Buckingham County | 92.4% | 89 | 92 |
| Richmond City | 92.5% | 83 | 82 |
| Warren County | 92.7% | 87 | 88 |
| Rockbridge County | 92.7% | 87 | 87 |
| Radford City | 92.8% | 91 | 89 |
| Greensville County | 92.9% | 84 | 90 |
| Sussex County | 92.9% | 79 | 74 |
| Nottoway County | 93.0% | 86 | 85 |
| Winchester City | 93.0% | 84 | 84 |
Note that the Richmond SOL scores went down in 2011 (because the General Assembly restricted Richmond's ability to abuse the kids with - or said to be with - disabilities).
Some Recent History: Violating Virginia Law
The Richmond Public Schools' Web page has a table of the number and percentage of elementary, middle, and high school students who were absent ten or more days. The table is titled "Truancy Rates" so we'll infer that these are ten or more unexcused absences. As of today (10/5/11) the table runs from 1999-00 through 2008-09 (well, the top table is not dated; the one just under it is 2007-08, so we'll infer the top one is for the '09 school year). Here is a summary of the data
The 2001-02 data look to be anomalous.
Even after the improvement pre '06-07, note that we still have a fifth of the high school students missing school for ten or more days. BTW: The slight improvement in 2005-06 cost you and me $675,000.
If we believe these data (The low numbers in 2001-02 and the bogus SAT data on the Richmond Web site surely invite skepticism), there is even more shocking information to be had by comparing them to the truancy data on the State Web site.
But first, some background.
Virginia Code § 22.1-258 requires each school division (through an attendance officer or, where there is none, through the superintendent) to create an attendance plan for any student with five unexcused absences and to schedule a conference with the parents after the sixth absence. The law does not merely permit this conference; it says the school "shall" schedule the conference. The statute continues:
The conference shall be held no later than fifteen school days after the sixth absence. Upon the next absence by such pupil without indication to the attendance officer that the pupil's parent is aware of and supports the pupil's absence, the school principal or his designee shall notify the attendance officer or the division superintendent, as the case may be, who shall enforce the provisions of this article by either or both of the following: (i) filing a complaint with the juvenile and domestic relations court alleging the pupil is a child in need of supervision as defined in § 16.1-228 or (ii) instituting proceedings against the parent pursuant to § 18.2-371 or § 22.1-262. [emphasis and link to the AG's opinion added]
That is, if the student continues to be truant, the school is required to file a CHINS petition and/or to initiate proceedings against the parents. HOWEVER, if you'll follow the links you'll see that the (required) conference is part of the prerequisite notice to the parents: No conference scheduled, no petition or proceedings.
In light of that, let's compare the Richmond data on students truant ten or more days and the State data on number of conferences scheduled after the sixth absence, keeping in mind that 10>6:
The truancy (magenta curve) and conference (green curve) numbers are on the left axis. The number of conferences (six absences) as a percentage of the number of truants (10 absences) is the black curve, with the numbers on the right axis.
As you see, Richmond scheduled fewer than 20% of the required conferences in 2003, '04, and '05 but improved sharply in 2006 (after this Web page blew the whistle on their lawless behavior). I have no data as to absences beyond ten and no direct data (but see below) whether absences beyond six resulted in a trip to court in the cases where the school had scheduled the required conferences; for sure, Richmond could do nothing about the vast numbers for whom they did not schedule a conference.
Starting in 2007, Richmond held over 2.5 conferences per student who was truant 10 or more times. The first implication of that, of course, is that Richmond was fully capable of obeying the law it ignored until 2006. The second implication is that, as we would expect, the students who make it to ten days truant are less numerous (about 40%, it seems) than the number who make it just to six days. The third implication is that the 33%+ drop in 10-day truancies that immediately followed the huge increase in 6-day conferences may reflect a causal relationship.
The final implication is that the statute requires Richmond to be filing CHINS petitions or prosecuting parents over 1800 times per year. Yet the 2010 caseload report from the Supreme Court shows that the Richmond J&DR court was handling fewer than 600 TOTAL domestic and juvenile cases per year in the 2008-10 period. Data reproduced here. The court averaged five abuse & neglect and child at risk cases per year during that period. The statistics are not clear whether the prosecution under § 18.2-371 is a domestic misdemeanor or a juvenile delinquency misdemeanor. In any case, the court handled an average of 60 of the first and 35.3 of the second per year in 2008-10. In short, Richmond may now be in compliance with the conference requirement of § 22.1-258 but it surely is continuing to ignore the enforcement requirements of that law.
Of course, Richmond's wholesale violations of the attendance law and its penchant for suspending kids for truancy are consistent with its pattern of chasing out poor performers in order to improve its SOL scores.
Official
Enabler
Unfortunately, the State has been (and still is) enabling this wholesale and destructive lawbreaking by Richmond.
It's not that they don't have the power to solve the problem. Code § 22.1-253.13:8 authorizes the Board of Education to obtain a court order to compel a school division to meet the Standards of Quality or to comply with a plan to accomplish that end. Code § 22.1-65 authorizes that Board to fine, suspend, or remove from office a division superintendent for "sufficient cause."
The 2005 report of the Board of Education discloses that Richmond had failed to meet the Board's (bogus) accreditation standards and has filed a corrective action plan. Indeed the Richmond plan is the recommendations of the evaluation committee from the Council of the Great City Schools. Never lacking for an euphemism, Richmond calls the compliance plan its Balanced Scorecard. Under that "Scorecard," Richmond's sole obligation as to truancy is to
Collaborate with appropriate local entities to implement a plan to increase student attendance and access to health services and to reduce truancy and dropout rates.
Notice: Nothing there about compliance with state law. All Richmond must do is "collaborate" and "implement a plan," while continuing to ignore a state law the Board of Education is required to enforce:
§ 22.1-269. Board to enforce.
The Board of Education shall have the authority and it shall
be its duty to see that the provisions of [the
compulsory school attendance statutes, Code §§ 22.1-254 through 22.1-269.1] are
properly enforced throughout the Commonwealth.
When I raised this issue with the Education Department, they did not tell me they were acting to discharge their duty under § 22.1-269. Instead, they told me that Richmond in 2006 was spending funds appropriated by the General Assembly in 2005 for a pilot truancy program:
The legislature, through the Appropriations Act, directed the Department of Education and Richmond to develop a plan to reduce truancy and absenteeism in the City. . . . Mayor Wilder approved the plan on May 23, 2005. Full implementation of the pilot began last fall.
Mark Emblidge, the then President of the State Board of Education, responded to my email in the same vein:
The Board of Education will continue to discharge its responsibilities in this area through the division-level review process. Richmond Public Schools’ corrective action plan, which was accepted by the Board, addresses attendance and its impact on student achievement.
As you know, Richmond’s "Balanced Scorecard" details specific objectives for district improvement. Two of these "outcome measures" (5.2 and 6.1) deal specifically with improving attendance.
Those answers both try to change the question rather than answer it: The plan under the Appropriations Act identified three target neighborhoods (Hillside, Mosby, and Highland Park) and established a service center in each. The plan went on for eleven pages and proposed to spend the State's $675,000. Nowhere did it mention or require the City's compliance with § 22.1-258. Similarly, the Balanced Scorecard merely set a 2009 target for the "collaborat[ion] with appropriate local entities" to reduce dropouts from 15% to 5%. (No telling whether they collaborated; for sure they failed to reduce the dropout rate to 5%: in 2010 the dropout rate was 11.8%.) The Balanced Scorecard likewise is utterly silent about compliance with § 22.1-258.
Thus we see that the State education establishment now has approved two plans for Richmond's schools. In neither did it require Richmond to comply with the Virginia law the Board of Education is required to enforce. Indeed, the Education Department did not even try to enforce this law in the target neighborhoods where the State was paying for the pilot program. Dr. Emblidge embellished this nonfeasance with a shameless fabrication that the State Board "will continue" to discharge the responsibilities that, in fact, it was diligently ignoring.
The State's nonfeasance regarding truancy is part of a pattern (see the examples here and here) of the State educational bureaucracy's pusillanimous tolerance for lawlessness in Richmond.
| Note added on July 1, 2006 and
amended Oct.
8, 2007: Dr. Emblidge asked the Department of Education to "update" me on their activity in response to these data. Unfortunately, the "updates" stopped with a vague generalization but the State coverup expanded. |
| Note added on November 1, 2011:
Early this year, the Board of Education
proposed regulations to implement § 22.1-258. Those
regulations have been in the Governor's office awaiting approval
for 174 days. My petition to the Governor is
here. Note added on January 1, 2010: On Dec. 29, 2011 the Governor approved the proposed regulation. It will be published in the Virginia Register on January 30; the public hearing is March 22, 2012. My comments are here. |
Summary
Thus we see that among the Virginia school divisions, better attendance correlates with better SOL scores. Unfortunately, Richmond has some of the worst attendance of the Virginia school divisions. Richmond also has been flagrantly violating the Virginia law that requires it to respond to truancy. The State officials who are charged with the enforcement of that law have been enabling Richmond's violations and, to further that cause, ignoring their duty under the law.
And we get to pay taxes to support this disgraceful and unlawful behavior.