John Merrow, the respected education correspondent for PBS NewsHour, proposed in a  tongue-in-cheek blog item last week that leading educators and policymakers should sit down to a parlor game called “Multiple Measures.” As he sees it, that’s what it will take for Congress to renew the federal law governing K-12 schools (otherwise known as No Child Left Behind or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act).

Merrow notes that most advocates, Republican and Democrat, want a version of the law that relies on more than standardized test scores to assess school progress. But what should the other metrics be?

We’d like to nominate our favorite measure: chronic absence.

via Multiple Measures Should Include Chronic Absence – Attendance Works Attendance Works.