Abstract

Investigating Chronic Absenteeism in Oakland's Public Schools
Track: GIS for Administration, Planning and Policy
Authors: Steve Spiker

In Partnership with Oakland Unified School District and Attendance Works, Urban Strategies Council analyzed several years of chronic absenteeism data in Oakland's public school system. This partnership and the analysis and visualizations helped to demonstrate a critical problem in our schools and led to a new initiative to ensure students are identified early on each year before they miss significant amounts of school time. Our GIS tools allowed us to demonstrate the extent of this problem and also to communicate a large volume of data clearly and concisely so decision makers were able to understand the scope and depth of the problem. GIS was a critical component in highlighting that issues such as absenteeism are not just school based phenomena but are connected to complex social issues at a community level. In this case GIS helped spark an entirely new focus for a school system and hopefully improved student outcomes!