In 2003, the Ohio House budget called for a shift in the way students are counted because it believed that Average Daily Membership (ADM) counts "phantom students" and it preferred to count Average Daily Attendance (ADA) (Testimony, 2003). Tom Mooney, President of the Ohio Federation of Teachers testified before the Ohio Senate Education Committee that because a student is absent on a given day, the cost of the educating that student is not reduced at all. Students who have erratic attendance records actually cost more to educate, he said, because they need additional teacher time to catch up and to assign and monitor make up work. Students with chronic attendance problems require more intensive intervention, which involves school social workers as well. The school and the school district are likely to be working with the juvenile courts to address truancy problems. He said he bould not understand why the House believed that costs were reduced when students do not attend school regularly.
He added that schools do no need additional incentives to work hard at keeping students in the classroom (Testimony,2003). Apart from their intrinsic professional motivation, state report cards and the public attention to them provide more than enough incentive, Mooney stated. Attendance is not only one of the report card indicators, but students who do not attend regularly do not do well on proficiency tests, and those who do not even show up to take these tests are counted as failing.
By switching to ADA measures, said Mooney, the districts are being punished for their demographics (Testimony, 2003). Students from economically disadvantaged families are more likely to have attendance problems, and a switch from ADM to ADA penalizes districts that face the most difficult challenges to begin with. He urged the House to continue using Average Daily Membership to ensure school districts have the capacity to meet the needs of their stud...