ERIC Number: EJ1157195
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1710-5668
EISSN: N/A
Nonlinear Processes in Time-Ordered Observations: Self-Organized Criticality in Daily High School Attendance
Koopmans, Matthijs
Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, v14 n2 p78-87 2017
In the United States, high school attendance and drop-out are important policy concerns receiving extensive coverage in the research literature. Traditionally, the focus in this work is on the summary of dropout rates and mean attendance rates in specific schools, regions or socio-economic groups. However, the question how stable those attendance rates are over time has received scant attention. Since instability in attendance may affect how long individual students stay in school, the issue deserves attention. The school districts that have begun to keep record of daily attendance rates in their schools over multi-year periods, such as those in New York City, have created an opportunity to investigate the temporal dimension of daily attendance, and thereby explore its stability. This paper will focus on its long-term characteristics, specifically the following: self-similarity, meta-stability or pink noise, and the impact of sudden departures from the central tendency of the series. Such departures can be used to estimate the impact of exogenous influences on the behavior of the system. The findings illustrate the importance of describing the dynamical patterns underlying attendance that remain concealed in traditional summary measures.
Descriptors: Attendance, Attendance Patterns, Observation, High Schools, High School Students, Dropout Rate, Data Analysis
University of Alberta. 347 Education South, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G5, Canada. e-mail: complicity.journal@gmail.com; Web site: https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/complicity
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New York (New York)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A