New York, NY —

Poor school districts fare far worse than more affluent ones. The Center for New York City Affairs authored the report and held a panel discussion on the issue.

Principal Luis Torres from PS 55 in the Bronx participated on the panel. He says students miss school for a lot of reasons, from serious health problems, to trivial matters.

TORRES: You laugh at that but you'd be surprised. Rainy days were our poorest attendance days. I started giving umbrellas out to people and saying you know what bring your kids to school. That simple.

REPORTER: The report recommends giving absenteeism more attention by including it as one of the measures used to rate schools.

It also recommends assigning attendance monitors to smaller geographic areas so they get to know social service providers better.