Finding Support & Significance at School- Program Evaluation of a Chronic Absenteeism Reduction Initiative

The impact of chronic absenteeism is devastating nationally as it can lead to poor academic achievement, increased dropout rates, and the school-to-prison pipeline (Balfanz & Cornfeld, 2016). The purpose of this program evaluation is to examine the attendance program at large suburban high school in the southeast United States. This program evaluation uses longitudinal data over six years, retrieved from the Department of Education’s website, to show the impact of the attendance program on rates of absenteeism, specifically the percentage of students that were absent 21 or more days. Findings show that the chronic absenteeism prevention 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