Academics, and Even Attendance:
Charts and Graphs Tell the Story

As a Total Quality Management school, students and teachers are always setting goals and recording progress toward those goals. Frequently, students and teachers alike use tables, graphs, and charts to illustrate that progress. Each student has a notebook in which they keep their goals and charts. And visitors see graphs prominently displayed all around our school.

We chart many things beside academics too. The chart above is one used to help ensure that we meet our school-wide attendance goals. We talk a lot with students about the importance of good attendance because we know the more we have our students in school, the more they are learning. Good attendance and increased student achievement go hand in hand. We also graph out attendance statistics. A graph is updated monthly to let students know -- and see -- the grade-by-grade attendance data. Students are very interested to see if we meet our attendance goals each month. The fact we talk about attendance so much, and so publicly display it too, is a big motivator for kids.

Contributors:
The leadership team at DeQuincy Elementary School, DeQunicy, Louisiana

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