Editorial: State needs way to track at-risk pupils
Published: Tuesday, Sep. 21, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 12A
Students can't learn if they don't come to school. That makes attendance the most basic predictor of a child's success in school. Chronic absenteeism, particularly in the primary grades, virtually guarantees that a student is at very high risk of dropping out before graduating from high school. Incredibly, California does not track student attendance in any systematic or centralized way.
Senate Bill 1357, authored by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg for the first time would add data on student attendance to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System. CALPADS already tracks individual student data on such things as race, ethnicity, age, courses
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