Across the country, students are missing school. Not just a day or two, but weeks on a regular basis. And the problem is getting worse.
Chronic absenteeism, missing more than a month of school, has doubled since the pandemic—up from 15% in 2018 to 2019 and skyrocketing to 28% in 2020 to 2021.
That’s 6.5 million students who became chronically absent during those years, according to data compiled by Thomas Dee, an education professor at Stanford University. According to Phyllis W. Jordan, Associate Director of FutureEd, an independent think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, the rates have not come down since 2021. Dee found that chronic absenteeism reached upwards of 48% in the District of Columbia. In other words, almost half of all students are chronically absent. Furthermore, absences are highest among Black, Latino and low-income populations.
“There’s a general feeling that kids have broken the habit of attending school now,” says Jordan. Hedy Chang, the Executive Director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit addressing school absenteeism, agreeds, in a article published in Fortune: “The pandemic has absolutely made things worse, and for more students.”
There are the usual reasons for non-attendance, as Rashida Young, a partner at Education Forward DC, a non-governmental organization committed to advancing equity in education, points out: Illness, family responsibilities, getting bullied, and violence in their community can keep students from leaving the house. Transportation challenges are especially prevalent in DC, where many students do not attend inboundary schools. But something more seems to be going on.
“With the pandemic, kids lost the connection —the glue of the school. They didn’t know the kids or the teacher,” explains Jordan. “They lost connection to their friends.” Once in-school learning started up again, those relationships remained broken. After months of learning at home, parents and children didn’t see the point of regular attendance. Kids who were used to hanging out online rather than in person had lost the habit and the skill for doing so. Some had become socially withdrawn, anxious, and depressed in new and terrible ways. Many felt unseen, disengaged. Why bother?
“As a teenager you start to question everything,” clarifies Jordan, “That’s kind of good but also there’s not enough being done to make schools relevant to students.” Changing the curriculum can help. When San Francisco started an ethnic studies program, it improved attendance and achievement for kids because they felt connected. “Teaching kids about their ethnic background, their racial background, is history and connects them. Yes, you want a balance, you want to teach the classics, but you also want to make some choices kids connect to.”
Mentorship programs can also be helpful. “Having a connection with someone in the building is important,” describes Young. “It doesn’t have to be a teacher. It can be another student. A custodian. Someone who works in the kitchen. With mentorship there is one more person at school who knows the student, who cares whether they show up and that connection can make a really big difference.”
Finally, schools need to track attendance rigorously and let parents know when their student is not in the building in real time so that the parent can take steps to get them there.
This year, DCPS is really trying. There are a slew of mentorship organizations listed on its website. There are lists of wraparound services for parents, such as parenting classes, grandparent support groups, help with housing, babysitting, and counseling, all geared to help remove barriers to attendance. There’s a “Take the Pledge” page where students can sign up and make a commitment to go to school. Schools are offering kids free haircuts if they come to school, buying them alarm clocks, and arranging carpools to help with transportation. Whether all this will have an impact remains to be seen. That we as a community need to bring absenteeism down, though, is indisputable. The costs are too high.
“If you don’t show up for school you don’t learn,” explains Jordan. “You don’t learn, you don’t graduate. With the pandemic there’s now all this money being spent on all these special programs, but none of those work if you don’t have kids showing up for school.”
