Chronic Absenteeism (generally defined as students who have missed 10% or more of school), has been in the news a lot lately (Attendance Works). It’s been a thorny problem in education since way before COVID, and it has only worsened in recent years (NPR.org).
The additional funding pathways opened up in response to COVID provided opportunities for schools to design and implement innovative approaches to meet the exacerbated challenges at hand. One such approach is the Compass Care model, co-developed by Valor Collegiate Academies and Seneca, with research and development support from Transcend Education. Compass Care is a short term (~10 week) tier three student- and family-focused intervention to uncover the reasons leading to chronic absenteeism and support students and families in identifying solutions and putting them into practice.
The 2023-24 school year brings our third year of implementation in the two middle schools and one high school that make up the Valor Collegiate Academies network. It’s also the third year of Seneca’s partnership with Rocketship Public Schools California, where a grant from the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) has provided funding for the CareCorps program, a school-based family-focused wraparound team that brings a deep focus to helping families access the basic needs resources that are the foundation to wellbeing. .
Envision Academy in Oakland was also awarded a CCSPP grant to implement Compass Care in their middle school and high school. Launching the new Envision partnership in 2023-24 and bringing our innovative model to another school community has been very exciting. We’re learning a great deal with each year of implementation. The data from our work so far is promising, and we’re currently looking at other opportunities to expand the model and assess its impact in wider sample sizes.
The additional funding pathways opened up in response to COVID provided opportunities for schools to design and implement innovative approaches to meet the exacerbated challenges at hand. One such approach is the Compass Care model, co-developed by Valor Collegiate Academies and Seneca, with research and development support from Transcend Education. Compass Care is a short term (~10 week) tier three student- and family-focused intervention to uncover the reasons leading to chronic absenteeism and support students and families in identifying solutions and putting them into practice.
The 2023-24 school year brings our third year of implementation in the two middle schools and one high school that make up the Valor Collegiate Academies network. It’s also the third year of Seneca’s partnership with Rocketship Public Schools California, where a grant from the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) has provided funding for the CareCorps program, a school-based family-focused wraparound team that brings a deep focus to helping families access the basic needs resources that are the foundation to wellbeing. .
Envision Academy in Oakland was also awarded a CCSPP grant to implement Compass Care in their middle school and high school. Launching the new Envision partnership in 2023-24 and bringing our innovative model to another school community has been very exciting. We’re learning a great deal with each year of implementation. The data from our work so far is promising, and we’re currently looking at other opportunities to expand the model and assess its impact in wider sample sizes.
Blog post written by: Jason Keppe, Director of School Partnerships
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