Attendance

How do you make kids come to school and then stay there? This is one of the big questions we ask at my school.

One of my biggest challenges with urban high schooler is attendance. Today I had 5 students in my 3rd period class. The class officially has 10 students enrolled (since we work with at-risk kids, our cap is technically 15, though some classes are over-enrolled), and 50% attendance is typical.

The problem has many layers:

Why aren't they coming in?
What are they up to when they are not here?
How do they keep up with classes that they miss?
How do we instruct a group of students that changes from day to day? (This brings a whole new meaning to differentiated instruction!)
How do we deal with students who go over on their absences without throwing them out of school and losing half of our population?

So far, we haven't found a foolproof solution. Right now it's just getting worse and worse.