In a growing campus, there are many reasons to why attendance matters. These implications connect to better test scores, higher graduation rates, funding, and over school safety for starters. These are issues that school districts strive to improve on a daily basis. When the concept of attending school is a high priority, the students will have better achievements in school, they will develop better life habits, avoid unsafe activities, and increase their chances of graduating.
School districts are rated on a multitude of things, such as graduation rates. This is a direct correlation to attendance in schools. Students who have high absenteeism track records are often not graduating, and/or struggle to graduate. The students then also have low test scores and are missing key instruction during their absences. The foundation of attending school starts from a young age. If a student is not driven in school, they are more than likely to miss school, not just because of school climate.
Attendance matters drastically to school districts and it’s their job in making sure each student is in school on a daily basis. When school’s focus on increasing attendance, they are also increasing their campus perception and safety. A school’s perception to parents and other school officials plays a large role with their students, funding, and the overall safety.
When attendance increases, test scores are improved. When test scores are improved, graduation rates improve. This domino effect impacts the overall school and student safety. Basically, the bottom line is that school attendance matters, and that’s the matrix that controls one aspect of school funding.
The Government now hold schools accountable for student attendance and safety, by allocating funding. Federal and state funding is allocated based on a student’s attendance rates. When attendance is low, funding is low. When schools can not fund the student’s education, they have low test scores and this will also result in lower graduation rates.
Kindergarten students have the highest absenteeism in elementary school. This will likely affect their reading and math performance in 3rd grade. Attendance gets worse each year from middle school on into high school. When a student has had poor attendance throughout their school career, they are most likely going to drop out of school. This can result in poor economic outcomes and safety.
When school boards embrace the idea of encouraging school attendance, they will see an increase in funding, naturally. This also includes ensuring that attendance is accurately documented. A Smart ID Card for schools and students could be a viable option for school boards to consider that will help make sure that attendance is reported accurately.
Although a school attendance tracker may seem pricey at first thought, the outcomes of this system will greatly outweigh the cost of the system. The accuracy of attendance and the increase in school security, provides an increase of test scores and graduation rates that will help the school board understand the importance utilizing Smart Card technology.
This system will not only assist with accurate attendance records, but it will also help with making sure schools are safe from unwanted visitors inside a specific building, providing building access to only students with the correct access. Another advantage to utilizing a Smart ID Card is that administrators are able to track attendance with a modern approach, with real-time reporting, rather than the traditional approach, such as pen and paper.
If your campus is practicing traditional attendance tracking, the cost of this new system to be in place will obviously include more money, but having the ability to reconcile the records more accurately will increase federal and state funding as well. The system will also allow the district to have quick response to events that may occur in a school building, providing an overall proactive school safety approach.
The investment of a school attendance tracking system will be an investment almost every school will need to assist in ensuring students are attending school regularly. Students are the most important aspect of a running school campus, if there are no students, there are no schools. Make the difference in your school today and make sure you apply a Smart ID Card to students and staff, and stay on top of attendance today.
ScholarChip is an all-in-one, platform solution to help reduce school threats and address the important issues surrounding school safety and attendance. Data from students, faculty, and stakeholder are leveraged to manage school access, attendance, and behavior management through the platform tools to increase safety and promote the campus climate schools are looking for.
To learn more about why attendance matters and how you can improve your overall school safety, reach out to ScholarChip today for a 1-on-1 demo today!
