A third of HS students are chronically absent

On Board Online • April 29, 2024

By Sara Foss
Special Correspondent

Besides learning loss, perhaps the most profound and lasting effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on public education is high levels of chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing 10% of enrolled instructional days (three weeks and three days in an 180-day school year).

Before the pandemic, 25% of American students attended schools in which at least one in five students was chronically absent. In 2021, two-thirds attended such a school.

"Chronic absence is now more widespread and more concentrated than ever before," according to Attendance Works, a non-profit that advocates for policies and practices to improve school attendance. It affects all kinds of schools - high poverty and low poverty, rural, urban and suburban.

Students who are chronically absent can fall far behind their peers in their academic progress. And students with good attendance are affected by others' absenteeism; teachers might be forced to repeat lessons and may find it more difficult to set high expectations for behavior and academic performance.

Figures for New York State illustrate how the problem worsened during the pandemic and remains elevated. Before the pandemic, in 2018-19, the chronic absenteeism rate for high school students was significant at 24.5%. It shot up to 37.8% in 2021-22, then eased to 34.1% in 2022-23.

Among elementary and middle school students in New York State, the comparable figures for chronic absenteeism are 15.6% in 2018-19, 29.8% in 2021-22 and 26.4% in 2022-23.

One part of the problem is summarized by the title of a March 2024 report by the Brookings Institution: Parents are not fully aware of, or concerned about, their children's school attendance. A nationally representative sample of parents and other caretakers of K-12 children in about 2,500 American homes found only 8% of caretakers described themselves as concerned about the frequency of their child's absences, and parents' collective estimates of the number of days that their children missed was far below the actual numbers reported by schools, collectively.

Superintendents of schools say they view absenteeism is a major concern. In a November 2023 survey by the New York State Council of Superintendents, 44% of superintendents who responded indicated a high level of concern about school absenteeism, a 19% increase from 2019.

In March, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona issued an advisory on chronic absenteeism. Among other things, the guidance calls on states to access U.S. Department of Education resources and training to promote regular school attendance and encourages local educational agencies to do the same. It notes that the agency's Student Engagement and Attendance Center can help states and schools design and implement evidence-based strategies to improve student attendance and engagement.

How else can school districts address chronic absenteeism? Students attend school regularly when there are "positive conditions" for learning, such as belonging, connection and support, according to Hedy Chang, the executive director of Attendance Works. Also, students must feel physically and emotionally safe, or their attendance is likely to suffer.

Among school districts in New York State that have implemented new programs and strategies to combat chronic absenteeism are the Buffalo City School District (the second-largest school system in the state); the Frankfort-Schuyler Central School District, a rural district in Herkimer County; and the Greater Johnstown School District, a small city school district in Fulton County. All have seen positive results.

Buffalo: A three-tiered approach

In Buffalo, the high school chronic absenteeism rate in 2022-23 was 69.5% or 6,736 students; That's down from 83.4%, or 8,097 students in 2021-22.

The approach taken in Buffalo to improve those numbers is reminiscent of the old adage that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

“If you want somebody to come to school, the way to get them to come to school is not to be like, ‘Hey, where have you been?’ a' and make it uncomfortable for them when they do show up," said Laura Samulski-Peters, assistant superintendent of the Office of Shared Accountability for Buffalo Public Schools. "Celebrate them when they come, and then try to find a way to get them to do that more often. If it feels good to be somewhere, you're more likely to go there."

The district takes a three-tiered approach to absenteeism:

• Tier 1 involves school-wide initiatives, such as classroom and grade-level competitions for good attendance.
• Tier 2 focuses on students who are at risk of chronic absenteeism. "We look at identifying what the barriers are to getting to school," said Aundrea Sanders, director of Crisis Prevention and Intervention Supports for Buffalo Public Schools. "Is it needing a change of bus? Is it needing an alarm clock?" Officials enlist the staff member with the best relationship with an individual student to reach out.
• Tier 3 entails visiting parents of chronically absent students and connecting them to community resources to help meet basic household needs, such as food, childcare or employment. "We try to meet the parent where they are - be it at home, at work, wherever they feel comfortable," Sanders said.

In Buffalo, each school has an attendance teacher who identifies chronically absent students and seeks to identify the barriers to attending school regularly.

An example of a barrier would be transportation problems. The school system relies on the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority's Metro system to get most students to school. Recently a high school student who is part of a leadership council said full buses sometimes pass by students, requiring them to wait for the next bus.

"If it's five degrees out and the bus passes you, you get some students who are like, 'I'm going home,'" Sanders said. "I know of one instance where an extra bus was added because it was an issue."

School officials acknowledged that more work needs to be done to address chronic absenteeism.

"We're not above where we were pre-pandemic," Samulski-Peters said. "But we're inching back to that level. We're on the right track. This positive approach - I think we're going to see in the long run that will work out better for us."

Franklin-Schuyler: A committee approach

Every five weeks, the Frankfort-Schuyler Central School District releases its attendance data to the school community, and a committee comprising counselors, social workers, teachers and administrators meets to discuss how to help students struggling with higher rates of absenteeism.

"We often invite students and parents to join in those meetings with us", said Superintendent Joe Palmer. "Sometimes it's better just to ask them - 'What do you need? ' Each student requires a different approach, and the committee is dedicated to finding the approach that works best for the individual student and family."

The district also has a weekend backpack that provides students from food-insecure households with meals to take home from school on Friday. Palmer said families are more likely to send their kids to school if they know they'll bring home food for the household.

Frankfort-Schuyler's mentoring program, which taps middle and high school students to mentor elementary school students, is also part of the district's chronic absenteeism strategy. Called Hi-5 Friends, the program enlists students who struggle with attendance to be mentors to give them a reason to come to school.

The approach has been successful: Among mentors, the absenteeism rate is 3% better than the district average, Palmer said.

Palmer said the district's K-12 chronic absenteeism rate was about 20% when he arrived four years ago and has since dropped to about 12%.

He sees absenteeism as undermining everything the community has done to provide a high-quality public school system. "No matter how great your teachers are, if the kids are not sitting in front of them, they're not learning," he said. "Our goal is zero chronically absent students."

Johnstown: Mentoring

A form letter Greater Johnstown School District used to send to parents threatened that school officials would call Child Protective Services if attendance did not improve.

"Now at our elementary schools, we send out a letter that's like 'An average fourth grader misses five days of school, and your fourth grader has missed 10 days,'" said Nicole Panton, director of curriculum and instruction for Johnstown. "We put in some facts about chronic absenteeism. Rather than saying, 'You stink at being a parent, we're going to call CPS on you,' it's more, 'Here's what this means for you.' A lot of families didn't realize how many days students were actually missing."

Johnstown began working on chronic absenteeism before the pandemic, embarking on what officials described as a "year of learning" to better understand the root causes of the issue in their district.

Currently, a mentoring program for K-12 students is the cornerstone of the district's effort to lower its chronic absenteeism rate, which was 35.8% in 2021-22 and 29.5% in 2022-23.

The district has added staff - counselors, psychologists - to address spiking mental health needs.

The district's absenteeism reduction efforts were developed with guidance from Attendance Works. Efforts started small in the winter of 2021. The focus was solely on sixth-grade girls from single-parent families with a high rate of chronic absenteeism.

Every day, adult mentors checked in with their mentees and learned what was going on in their lives. If a mentee missed school, their mentor called home to find out whether there was anything they could do.

These relationships with trusted adults were impactful, with mentees seeing improvement in both attendance and grades.

"One of the students ended up winning artist of the year," recalled Robert Kraemer, principal at Knox Middle School in Johnstown, a small city in the Mohawk Valley. "Before the mentor, this student would have had no shot at it."

Scott Hale, principal at Johnstown High School, said many of his students' parents attended school in the district. In some cases, "they might not have had that great relationship with the district as a whole," he said.

That's why the district is prioritizing its relationship with parents. "It's effective," he said.

"We're far from perfect," Hale added. "I don't think we'll ever be perfect. However, we have a nice toolbox that we never had before that is helping us significantly . Now we're creating that relationship, creating that bond with the families, creating that bond with students so it shows someone cares."

For more information on chronic absenteeism, see www.attendanceworks.org .

Editor's note: Officials from Greater Johnstown will be presenting on their attendance improvement efforts at NYSSBA's Leadership in Education Event.