Modifying School Attendance of Special Education High School Students

Abstract

This study evaluated a program to modify the school attendance of special education (SE) high school students. Twenty 1st and 2nd-year SE high school students from a semirural area in the Southeast were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Treatment students received social and tangible rewards for good attendance, and their parents were notified whenever they were absent. All tangible rewards were donated by local businesses, and all procedures were implemented by university undergraduates working for course credit. Thus, treatment involved no cost to the high school. We predicted that treatment would lessen the degree to which students would show the decline in attendance that usually occurs over the course of the semester. As expected, students in the control group showed a significant linear decline in their attendance to SE and regular classes, p < .05. In contrast, students in the treatment group showed no significant decline in attendance over the course of the semester. The findings show that programs like the one evaluated here can reduce the absenteeism of SE high school students without any cost to the schools.