Webutuck joins study on rural education

WEBUTUCK — Always on the lookout for ways to ensure its schools are running smoothly and its students are ready to advance their education, the North East (Webutuck) Central School District decided last summer to register as a participating rural school district in the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN), an initiative created by the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard University, to test new strategies for reducing absenteeism, increasing college enrollment and building college readiness in rural districts.

The initiative was first introduced to the Webutuck Board of Education (BOE) at its annual reorganization meeting in July 2019. Considering the project a good opportunity for Webutuck, Superintendent of Schools Raymond Castellani said the district applied to participate in the initiative last April and was accepted as one of 30 out of the 300 eligible school districts in New York state. Thirty school districts in Ohio will also participate in the study.

Webutuck was provided resources to participate in the full five-year study, which is currently being funded by a $10 million federal grant from the Institute of Education Sciences at the United States Department of Education.

NCRERN will ultimately produce tools for identifying students who are most at risk for absenteeism and being unprepared for college. NCRERN will also develop change management resources designed to guide rural schools in addressing college readiness, college enrollment and chronic absenteeism. As the initiative progresses over the next five years, CEPR will collaborate on shared challenges in participating districts and learn from its own experiences and strategies in order to guide future work on school improvement.

As far as Webutuck’s role in the initiative, Castellani explained that the district must meet with the other school districts to review data regarding absenteeism, college enrollment and college readiness and to commit to formulating a district-wide plan to improve in those areas.

Webutuck Director of Student Services/Curriculum and Instruction Jen Eraca delivered an update on the school district’s participation in the study at the BOE meeting on Monday, Feb. 24.

After attending the NCRERN regional meeting in mid-February with Castellani, Webutuck Elementary School Principal Jennifer Hengen and Eugene Brooks Intermediate School teacher Amanda Simon, Eraca shared what they earned about chronic absenteeism, which she defined as being absent for 10% or more days based on a 180-day academic school year. This number also includes excused absences, unexcused absences and suspensions.

Comparing the percentage of chronically absent students in northeastern New York from 2016 to 2019, Eraca said the number of chronically absent students varies from 21% in 2016 to 22.6% in 2017 and from 21.5% in 2018 to 22.9% in 2019.

Among the statistics uncovered about chronic absenteeism, she reported that one in 10 kindergarten and first-grade students are identified as chronically absent and that chronic absenteeism in kindergarten is often associated with lower achievement in reading and math in later grades.

Eraca reported that by sixth grade, a student’s chronic absence becomes a leading indicator of his or her decision to drop out of high school.

Working together, Eraca said she, Castellani, Hengen and Simon decided to explore what Harvard University called a “proving ground model,” a method that focuses on understanding the challenges, identifying potential solutions, testing those solutions and examining findings to determine the next step.

Looking at the relationship between missing school and English Language Arts (ELA) achievement, the group determined that the increase of absences leads to a decrease in both ELA and math achievement.

Using these findings, Eraca said the group moved forward with a root cause analysis to determine the barriers (why a student can’t go to school), aversions (why a student won’t go to school) and discouragements (why a student doesn’t go to school). Based on the data analysis, Eraca said that missing 15 days of school is associated with losing half a year of learning in math and a third of a year of learning in English.