A North Florida High School Attendance Program Evaluation

The purpose of this program evaluation was to evaluate the attendance program at Creekside High School. Creekside High School is a large suburban high school in St. Johns County School District in Northeastern Florida. This program evaluation used longitudinal data over six years, retrieved from the Florida Department of Education’s website, to show the impact of Creekside High School’s attendance program on rates of absenteeism, specifically the percentage of students that were absent 21 or more days. This program evaluation compared Creekside High School with the other high schools in St. Johns County School District. This program evaluation is not generalizable. Creekside High School’s attendance program was successful as it lowered the percentage of students that were absent 21 or more days from 13.42% in the 2013-2014 academic school year to 5.00% in the 2018-2019 academic school year. Potential reasons for this drop in absenteeism are strategies identified in the review of literature that are practiced at Creekside High School. Those strategies were identifying contributors to an individual student’s poor attendance; develop a strong student teacher rapport; creating a caring presence; monitoring attendance on a regular basis; developing accountability systems for students; educate students and parents about the benefits of regular attendance; enlisting the support of mentors in the larger community; and evaluating school policy and practices