Keeping Kids Healthy and in School in Memphis, Tennessee

Impact Highlight  

After working with the GPL, Shelby County School District (now Memphis-Shelby County Schools) were able to offer chronic absenteeism services to nearly three times as many students. Additionally, chronic absenteeism dropped from 30% to 20% for students receiving services compared to similarly situated students in five neighboring schools.  There was also a 540% increase in the number of students receiving preventative health screenings over two years (from 30 screenings to 193).   

Challenge 

• In 2018, nearly 13% of students in the Shelby County School District (SCS) (now Memphis-Shelby County Schools) were chronically absent, missing more than 10% of school days in the academic year due to excused absences, unexcused absences, or school suspensions. 
• Only 19.6% of SCS students met standards for math proficiency and only 20.4% met standards for English language arts proficiency. 
• Additionally, more than one-third of the district’s 100,000 students were experiencing child poverty. 
  • Leaders had already directed $20 million of community resources and contracted services to support children with needs that extended beyond the classroom.  
• These efforts included health screenings, literacy tutoring, social and emotional learning programs, after-school care programs to support working parents, and programs to reduce chronic absenteeism.  
• However, leaders weren’t sure if these programs were being used to their fullest, or if they were effectively reaching the children most in need of support. 

Innovation 

• The GPL helped the Shelby County School District launch the Community Partnership Pilot in three schools. The goal was to test strategies for matching students with the greatest need to providers of the following supportive services:  
  • Case management services to address chronic absenteeism 
  • Healthcare services for Medicaid-eligible students 
• The GPL conducted data analysis that revealed services were largely not being provided to the right students. 
  • Only 13% of students enrolled in one pilot school’s absenteeism program were actually chronically absent. Their enrollment was the result of ad-hoc referrals, no established protocol, and self-referrals from a provider’s community event. 
  • Out of 600 students in another pilot school, only 108 had returned consent forms for a preventative health screening. Response was so low because no one in the school or provider organization was asked to keep track of forms or follow up with students to get forms back. 
• The GPL supported SCS to develop new processes to help ensure the right students were being referred to programs. 
  • For the chronic absenteeism program, school staff pulled absenteeism data from the previous school year and then gave that list to providers who could reach out to students directly. 
  • For preventative screenings, school administrators distributed consent forms strategically and incentivized students to bring them back signed by offering things like free tickets to the middle-school dance. The provider was to keep detailed track of which consent forms had already been submitted and who was eligible for services. 

Results 

• More chronically absent students received supportive services, from 10% to 27% of students. Additionally, the pilot schools in SCS saw a drop in chronic absenteeism (30% to 20%). Based on these results, project partners replicated the caseload rebalancing process in an additional school and were able to increase the proportion of chronically absent students receiving services from 6% to 28%. 
• The number of students returning consent forms jumped from 108 to 491, which led to a more than 350% increase in screenings in the first year of the initiative (from 30 screenings to 136 screenings). In the second year, there was a further 40% increase in the number of students receiving preventative health screenings (193 screenings).   
• The project introduced a new model for collaborative and data-driven relationships between the school district and community service providers.