Remember when we were at home in sweatpants, fingers on the keyboard and mouse, eyes locked on our screens, instructing a virtual room of students? It would have been ideal if students’ digital hands were raising, smiles and laughter were spreading, breakout rooms were hopping, and learning was happening. The reality, though, for many of us was something much different, for we had to contend with everything from disengagement to, yes, tardies and attendance challenges.
Screens were black voids overlayed with student names.
Calling those student names elicited silence and an interminable wait time before students responded in a not-quite-convincing manner, “Oh, sorry, I was just getting a drink,” or the silence would endure, forcing us to pivot to another screen (and often another and another).
Indeed, it felt that even though school was in session, student attendance was optional.
Fast forward a few years and we are back in school. Well, most of us anyway. Some students never came back.
Student Attendance and the Effects of COVID-19
According to a recent report from the White House, “The percentage of chronically absent public school students nearly doubled from 15% in the 2018-19 school year to around 30% in 2021-22.”
For many of those students, anxiety can get in the way of student attendance as, according to this article, “The time away from physical classrooms gave children and teens experience with which to contrast the regular anxiety of being at school.”
In other words, much like how we as adults and educators reflected on and realized things about our own lives, emotions, and work-life balance during the pandemic, students have done the same. As a result, students aren’t attending, and this carries big consequences.
Mental health experts note poor student attendance can “leave students unprepared for life. It can knock students off the traditional developmental path and leave them without crucial social and emotional skills.”
You might be thinking that if 30% of students are chronically absent, that leaves 70% who are in school and ready to learn–but how many of those students who are present exhibit tardiness? How many have excessive tardiness–and what are the consequences of this chronic tardiness on student achievement?
Tardy Meaning
Here’s a ChatGPT-generated meaning of tardy:
Tardiness to a class refers to the act of arriving late or after the scheduled start time for a class or academic session. It is a measure of punctuality, and being tardy means that a student or individual did not arrive on time for the beginning of the class. Tardiness is typically subject to rules and policies established by educational institutions, and repeated instances may result in consequences such as warnings, deductions in grades, or other disciplinary actions. The definition and consequences of tardiness can vary among different schools and educational settings.
There’s a lot to unpack there, but that definition contains what many schools, educators, students, and parents struggle with: While its meaning is stark, truly black-and-white, (students arriving after a tardy bell has rung at the beginning of class)–what to do about it is unclear as there’s not one best-practice universal tardiness policy used in schools.
However, despite that, we do need to do something about it since excessive tardiness can lead to big issues for students and schools.
Consequences of Excessive Tardiness
According to research, student attendance affected by excessive tardiness carries consequences for students and their learning. The research tells us that “students with greater tardiness perform worse on both standardized reading and math tests.”
That’s, of course, not great for the individual student or the broader school–but get this: there are also consequences for students’ peers as “students whose classmates are tardy more frequently also have lower test scores. Hence, the achievement gap widens for students in classrooms whose peers have higher rates of tardiness.”
So while students who are tardy might be in school, the students are still losing out on the benefits of school while, likely, impacting the learning of those around them.
Think about, too, the burdens this puts on us, the educators.
- Do we have to take time to fill out a tardiness slip?
- Do we have to take time to speak to students about attendance?
- Do we have to take time contacting a dean or administrator?
- Do we have to take time to call or email students’ parents or guardians?
- Do we have to take time to monitor a student in detention?
- Do we have to take time to vent frustrations about student attendance to our peers?
Indeed, the irony of tardiness is that the less time students spend in school the more time we, as educators, have to spend addressing their student attendance.
What can we do about this, then?
See the ideas below for some ideas to help address excessive tardiness in student attendance.
Ideas to Promote Student Attendance and Manage Tardiness
Idea #1: Use positive reinforcement
Implement a reward system to recognize student attendance, promoting good choices and good attendance (rather than punishing poor choices and poor attendance).
This could include weekly or monthly recognition for punctuality, small incentives, or praise. Whatever the system is, it should clearly communicate the expectations for student attendance and celebrate and acknowledge individual student successes.
Idea #2: Begin class with engaging warm-up activities
This will set a positive tone for your lesson, certainly, but it will also encourage students to be in class before the tardy bell so they can participate as knowing they might miss out on something fun or interesting might motivate students to have better student attendance.
Perhaps, for example, try beginning class with a Kahoot! or trivia, bringing fun and competition to class.
Idea #3: Create and manage, with students, a tardiness log
Using either a paper or even a digital form (like a Google Form students can access with a QR Code), have students who are tardy record the time they arrive each day, giving them ownership and responsibility over their attendance.
This can then serve as a visual representation of tardiness patterns that you can discuss with students, parents, administrators as you work to improve student attendance.
Idea #4: Implement progressive consequences
If the goal of school is to learn, perhaps we can help students learn to be more punctual rather than punishing them for poor choices and tardiness. A tardy policy with progressive consequences might include a series of steps to improve and support attendance.
- Step 1, after the first tardy, might be a one-on-one conference between student and teacher.
- Step 2, after the second tardy, might be a conference with the student and a call or email home.
- Step 3, each tardy after the second, might include a referral to the office for student attendance issues.
With these progressive consequences, students have the ability in between each step to correct their student attendance issues, reflecting and learning how to be more punctual as they are supported by a widening-circle of adults.
As educators and professionals, we know how hard it is to roll out of bed on the cold winter mornings deep in the school year. We understand the pull of the comfort of home as we push ourselves to get to school.
Our students feel this same struggle.
Knowing this, with whatever we do with our tardy policies, we should lead with empathy and understanding when it comes to student attendance.
We do not want to give students more reasons to stay home, to create more anxiety in the already anxious lives of our students.
Instead, we want students to feel welcome and safe at school, so hopefully we can create a culture and cultivate experiences that help students arrive at school on time.
Open Ended Questions That Work