School Attendance Vs. Grade Point Average
A student's grade point average (GPA) is a numerical average of the grades received during a marking period. Just by being present in class and exposed to new skills, a student's GPA can be higher than if the student is absent and misses out on new skills and practicing what he's learned.
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Significance
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Missing 10 percent of school days in a year equals nearly a month's worth of education and thus many skills that a student will need to catch up on. When a student is absent, the teacher must take valuable time away from helping other students to catch that student up, which could negatively impact the grades of the entire class.
Correlation
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The more lessons a child misses due to absence, the further behind she will fall. This will cause the child to struggle with concepts that she should already have learned, making it more difficult to grasp the more complex concepts built off of them.
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Problems
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If a student misses one or two days of school in a marking period, he can easily catch up on the concepts he may have missed. The more days a student misses in a marking period, the more he misses out on learning essential skills and the development of those skills that will lead to better grades.
Statistics
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According to a study cited on the Coalition for Community Schools' website, nearly 10 percent of American school children miss more than four days in a marking period. The average school GPA in the United States is 3.0, while schools with chronic absenteeism in 10 percent or more of the students have an average GPA of 2.6.
Effects
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When a school district has a high amount of chronic absentees, they will usually have a lower district-wide GPA than a school system with fewer absences.
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