Validating Claims Lifewise Academy Improves Attendance

"Looking at publicly available data… the one day out of the week the school hits its target of 90% enrollment is the day it has Lifewise."

Joel Penton, Lifewise Academy CEO

Lifewise Academy has stated many times that attendance improves when Lifewise is implemented in a school. Joel Penton, the founder and CEO of Lifewise, testified before the Ohio House of Representatives that Lifewise improves school attendance. He often states that a third-party study has shown that attendance has improved when Lifewise operates in a school. What Penton does not say is that this study was paid for by Ambassador Enterprises. a private equity firm from Indiana, which has been financially supporting Lifewise Academy since 2021. Ambassador Enterprises paid for the study and created an "aggressive plan" to expand Lifewise Academy. When asked, Ambassador Enterprises refused to share the study data. Lifewise Academy has been using this study to persuade state legislatures, school boards, and the public of the value Lifewise brings to the schools. No one has been allowed to verify the results of the report independently. Creating legislation with data that can not be verified is dishonest, and Lifewise should either stop telling lawmakers this is a third-party study or release the data so others can verify the claims.

Lifewise Academy operates in the Columbus City Schools(CCS). CCS has a data dashboard that allows the public to look at enrollment and attendance info. The attendance info data file can be found here. A public record request to the school district revealed the days of the week students from each school attend Lifewise. Joel Penton and Vincent Coleman have both stated that inner-city school attendance improves on the days Lifewise classes are held. Lifewise has a CityWide initiative to integrate Lifewise into larger inner-city areas.

I checked attendance for the schools during the last school year (2023-2024). Not all schools had Lifewise the whole year, and not all schools had a 100% consistent schedule. I also did an overall attendance total for non-Lifewise and Lifewise days at the same school. The averages are very close, 1.11% difference. Lifewise has stated that even with the missed class time, students attend school more because of Lifewise. Students who attend Lifewise miss about 45 minutes of class time that day. That is approximately 10% of the school day. A 1% increase in attendance on the one day Lifewise is held does not offset missing 10% of that school day. Students miss school.

The claim that schools only meet their 90% attendance goal on days that Lifewise is held is also not verified by the data from the data. I have provided the number of times each school has reached the 90% mark for each day of the week. It does not appear Lifewise days have any correlation on this threshold.

It is crucial that Lifewise substantiates their claims with concrete data. If they are confident in their program's efficacy, they should make their data available for review. This study was an attempt to shed light on the disparity between Lifewise's claims and the actual data.

If you have any questions, concerns, or if you spot any discrepancies in the information, please do not hesitate to reach out. Your feedback is valuable.

This study focused on the attendance data of elementary and middle schools, as Lifewise is only implemented in two high schools in Columbus City. This limited data may not provide a comprehensive assessment of Lifewise's impact.

* "LW" indicates the students attend Lifewise that day.

Average Attendance Percentage By Day of the Week

Number of days over 90% attendance

Lifewise claims inner-city schools only meet their 90% attendance goal on days Lifewise operates. This is clearly not true. The numbers indicate the total number of times that day of the week had 90% or higher attendance throughout the 2023-2024 school year.