“CLERICAL FLUBS”. Apparently the importance of attendance is recognized in education circles. This New York Post article by Selim Algar concludes by saying: “[Schools Chancellor] Fariña has stated that the most basic metric of stability at struggling campuses is attendance.” The statistics that the New York City Department of Education provided for a set of troubled schools show a reduction in chronic absenteeism (defined as missing more than 10% of school days). The statistics showed that chronic absenteeism declined from 47.2% in 2013-2014 to 43.4% in 2014-2015—a good result.
The apparent importance that is given to attendance is unfortunately made questionable because the original statistics issued by the Board of Education were very wrong—they showed chronic absenteeism in 2014-1015 of 23.9% rather than 43.4% !!!!
I could not have imagined any bureaucracy making mistakes of this magnitude. Apparently errors of similar magnitude were made over the last several years. Selim Algar calls the statistics “egregiously inaccurate”. The Department of Education attributes the errors to “clerical flubs”.