The Bold Goals Coalition is 200 organizations solving big community problems by aligning partners, resources and agendas. One of our region’s greatest challenges is elementary reading proficiency. We know how important it is for children to learn to read. Children who read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade are far more likely to stay on track and graduate on time.
Helping children learn to read proficiently takes more than books. A key reason many children in Central Alabama aren’t reading proficiently is chronic absenteeism from school. More than 17% of Alabama’s students are missing 15 or more school days every year. There are many reasons for this, including health issues, family struggles and transportation challenges.
We’re committed to solving chronic absenteeism – and we’re making progress. In fact, more than 90% of the schools participating in our Attendance Action Network have improved their chronic absenteeism rates just since the beginning of this school year.
Looking at the first 60 days of this school year compared to the prior full school year:
- One school reduced chronic absenteeism to 19.6%, down from 38.5%
- Another reduced chronic absenteeism to 17.6%, down from 27.7%
- Most of the other schools reduced their rates by seven percentage points or more
You can read more about how our Attendance Action Network has built a Professional Learning Community to achieve these results by clicking here.
In working to solve absenteeism, we’re proud to partner with the Helping Families Initiative, and look forward to seeing similar results for more children and more schools. For easy access to resources designed to help improve attendance, we recommend you start with our Resources page on the Bold Goals website.