Community Schools Initial Impact on Student Attendance and the Importance of Student Engagement and Whole-child Supports

• In Event: Evaluating the Impact of Community Schooling: Comparing Methodologies and Findings Across States

Abstract

Objectives
This study assesses whether establishing a community school infrastructure, prioritizing whole-child supports and engaging the school community, have an influence on student outcomes of chronic absenteeism, suspension rates, and expulsion rates in the CCSPP.
Theoretical framework
This study builds upon implementation research and the existing evidence on community schools, which shows the importance of implementation in yielding positive student results (Maier et al., 2017, p. 93). The CCSPP seeks to transform schools, by bringing together educators, families, partners and the community to strengthen the conditions for learning and healthy development. As such, understanding its implementation requires a nuanced approach that represents the frameworks and practices that are put in place as part of new and improved relationships between the different members of the school community.
Methods and Data
The study focuses on two years of CCSPP implementation by Cohort 1, which includes 458 schools and 76 Local Educational Agencies. The study utilizes the CCSPP annual progress reports for initiative implementation measures and publicly available data for student outcomes.
The study utilizes regression models to predict aggregated student outcome based on school activity and processes measures. The models control for the previous year values on each of the outcomes as well as the Unduplicated Pupil Count (UPC). As predictors, the study first includes a measure of the number of whole-child supports that each school prioritized as part of their CCSPP work. Second, the study uses a five-point measure of the engagement of six community schools groups. Similarly, the study includes a measure representing the average level of engagement across all historically marginalized student and family groups that schools identified as important for their communities. Finally, the study includes a measure of implementation of five system-level capacity building strategies through a three-point scale.
Results
The study finds that the levels of student chronic absenteeism are related with the schools’ engagement of families. An increase of one level of family engagement predicts a 1.41 percentage point decrease in chronic absenteeism rates (see Appendix D). Given how the level of engagement was measured, a change in this variable can relate to moderate to large increases in the engagement of a group. Relatedly, the study also found that the levels of engagement of marginalized students are related to suspension rates, with an increase of one level of engagement predicting a 0.3 decrease in the suspension rate. In the case of expulsion rates, all coefficients were not statistically significant. Finally, the analysis showed that an increase of one whole-child support between the two years of implementation predicts a decrease in the Year 2 chronic absenteeism rate of 0.25. This means that prioritizing new or additional whole-child supports in Year 2 can lead to better student attendance.
Scholarly significance
The study shows how community schools implementation data can help determine not only how an initiative has been carried out in practice but also allow decision-makers to focus their efforts on certain practices and process as well as better understand their student outcome results.

Author

• Nadia M. Sabat Bass, University of California - Los Angeles