RALSTON Neb. (KMTV) – Ralston Public Schools implemented incentives around the district to get students back in the classroom. Over the last semester the district has continued to see improvement in student engagement.
- The district implemented new incentives to reduce chronic absenteeism
- The district is now at 91% attendance rate
- Karen Western Elementary has seen a large decrease in chronic absenteeism and big improvement to test scores
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Andrew Mather, principal at Karen Western Elementary school said his school has seen growth this last semester after finding new ways to combat chronic absenteeism.
Mather implemented new incentives to get students back in the classroom, like giving students prizes for attendance, random raffles to win prizes and posting classroom attendance scores.
“It took hard conversation and looking at the data that was in front of us to notice that we needed to make a change in how we were doing things,” he said.
Last year, the school saw 32 kids chronically absent. Today, that number is down to 23 students with a daily attendance of 95%, something Mather said shows big improvement.
“We are seeing a lot of growth, we are seeing students who have been chronically absent in the past that are not now, we are seeing their scores grow quite a bit and just as a building we are seeing our scores go up a lot,” Mather said.
Karen western is just one school in the district seeing these changes.
Superintendent Jason Buckingham said getting students back in the classroom was a priority for the district and the only way to improve learning and test scores.
“Two years ago, was rock bottom for us as far as the state assessments we had,” Buckingham said. “Particularity in the area of reading we are starting to see those number come back up. Again, we are not quite where we want to be yet, we have several years of growth left inside our district."
Mather said he must work to continue to keep these number up and he's continuing to bring in new incentives to keep students engaged in his school.
According to Buckingham, although things are improving, his district and others in the state are continuing to combat chronic absenteeism.
