It’s been 3 years since the pandemic reduced attendance, children still don’t go to school

When this school year started, Isaac Moreno just couldn’t bring himself to go. During the pandemic, he has become accustomed to studying at his family’s home in Los Angeles. Then, last fall, he went to high school, five days a week, in person.

“It was a lot,” he says.

The last fully normal school year that Isaac remembers is third grade. Now he’s in seventh grade, he has several classes a day, a busy schedule and new classmates.

Isaac’s mother, Jessica Moreno, says she had a hard time getting Isaac back into the school routine. Her eyes fill with tears as she describes it: “Three days a week, or four days a week, he tells me, ‘I’m sick. I feel bad. Can you just pick me up? want to be here. “

She says that Isaac has already missed 10 days of school this year, which means he is at risk of becoming a chronic truant.

And Isaac is not alone. Prior to the pandemic, about 8 million students in the US were considered chronically absent, according to research group Attendance Works. This is when a student misses 10% or more of the school year. By spring 2022, that number had doubled to around 16 million.

Federal attendance data is only released annually, so it’s hard to get a full picture of where things are at this point in the school year, but Hedy Chang, chief executive of Attendance Works, says she hasn’t seen the recovery she was hoping for.

“I think people had a slightly false impression that when COVID becomes more endemic, there will be a significant improvement in attendance. And I don’t see it.”

In a survey of 21 rural, suburban, and urban school districts, NPR found that most districts, from New York to Austin, Texas, to Lawrence, Kansas, continue to experience elevated levels of chronic truancy.

Students who are consistently absent are at higher risk of falling behind, performing lower on standardized tests, and even dropping out. And, as is often the case in education, students who have trouble attending are also more likely to live in poverty, be children of color, or have a disability.

Chang worries that the kids who miss school are the ones who need it the most.

“Going to school ensures you have access to resources,” she says, “whether it’s food and nutrition, after-school activities and fun learning, or access to health care.”

Why students don’t come to class

At Ann Arundel County Public Schools outside of Baltimore, chronic truancy has worsened over the past three years.

“Transportation was our number one problem,” says Ryan Voegtlin, director of student affairs for the greater Maryland area. He says the lack of bus drivers makes it difficult to cover all bus routes and guarantee transport for every student.

“This affects many of our higher poverty areas where some of our parents don’t have the kind of flexible jobs where they might not have their own transportation.”

Increased mental health concerns and increased caution about sending children to school when they are not feeling well have also taken their toll, Vogtlin said.

In rural San Juan County, New Mexico, superintendent Steve Carlson says attendance figures have improved this year but have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. He echoes the challenges Vogtlin described with one exception: his school district, Central Consolidated, is partially owned by the Navajo Nation, and his schools serve Native American communities that have been disproportionately hit by COVID, with higher rates of infection and hospitalization compared to other groups. . Families in his area are still recovering emotionally and schools are still required to wear masks. There is also still a fear of large crowds that are difficult to avoid in schools. What’s more, given the history of boarding schools, Carlson says that indigenous families in his area generally don’t see the school as a safe place.

“It’s very difficult to get these families to say, ‘Yes, of course, we would like to send our children back to school.’ ”

In Isaac Moreno County, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), attendance has improved from last school year, but Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says it has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“Apart from the attendance problem, a lot needs to be fixed because there are root causes that prevent children from going to school,” he says.

Carvalho describes the same attendance issues that NPR has heard from several counties around the country: a youth mental health crisis, heightened fear of health problems, transportation difficulties, poverty and homelessness that can make it difficult for students to keep up with daily routines. At school.

Several school leaders also told NPR that they are concerned that their students have lost their sense of class after so many years away. Hedy Chang of Attendance Works shares these concerns:

“[Students have] have lost contact with peers, they have lost contact with adults, and this is certainly exacerbated by very difficult staffing problems in schools. But this means that we need to be even more deliberate in building relationships, in communicating with children.

What Schools Can Do to Increase Attendance

Carvalho says: “Money is not a problem… The whole country is currently flooded with federal [COVID] aid money.

And many counties, including LAUSD, Anne Arundel County, and Central Consolidated, are using the money to fight absenteeism.

Home visiting is one of the proven strategies that schools are investing in. The state of Connecticut has committed about $10.7 million of its federal emergency assistance to a robust home visiting program; six months later, attendance among students in the program improved by about 15 percentage points.

Chang says home visits are effective, “How You make them very important.” She says the most successful home visiting programs involve trained school staff or teachers who visit children repeatedly and maintain an ongoing relationship throughout the year.

LAUSD recently launched its Home Visiting Program for underprivileged children. “The most vulnerable children who are missing the most [in L.A.] it happens that they are homeless children,” Carvalho told NPR after visiting a crisis center where such children sought shelter.

His district has also hired more attendance consultants and “community navigators” to help guardians use district resources, and he provides concierge transportation for students with unstable housing.

In New Mexico, Steve Carlson is investing in additional mental health resources, including additional counselors. And in Maryland, Voegtlin has hired more bus drivers, though he still doesn’t have enough for every bus route. The Vögtlin district also appeals to families before students are chronically absent from school, and he and his team are working to educate caregivers about the long-term consequences of not being in school.

“It’s not a fast process,” he explains, “but it’s a process that [has allowed] so that people begin to understand that attendance belongs to everyone, and not just when it reaches a chronic point.

He says his district is trying to avoid the punitive approaches of yesteryear. For example, they bring charges in truancy court only as a last resort after exhausting other attempts to contact families.

Chang says another way to improve attendance is to regularly collect transparent data. through academic year, and not just once, at the end of the year.

“When you regularly review your data at the individual level, it can allow you to reach out to students before problems become so ingrained that you can’t solve them,” she says.

Grand Rapids Public Schools in Michigan collects and analyzes data several times a month. Mel Atkins, who leads attendance events there, found that wide dissemination of the data could make a difference.

“I know you need data to know where we are going and how big of a problem it really is,” he explains. “So we share data with community partners, parents.”

Prior to the pandemic, he said, his district used 8-foot leaderboards to display monthly attendance data. “It wasn’t always good, but what it did sparked a conversation.”

This data-driven program helped cut the number of chronic absenteeism in his county by more than half. The pandemic has thwarted that progress in many ways, but Atkins says he and his team are focused on resuming those efforts and getting back to the textbook they already know works.

Give students a sense of belonging to the school

Nearly every educator NPR spoke to for this story said they want to create a school environment that gives students a sense of belonging—one that will hopefully get them back into the classroom.

“We want to create an environment that students want to be in, where they feel safe when they walk through the door and say, ‘I’m welcome here and I want to learn,’” says New Mexico’s Carlson.

One way to create an environment where students want to be means to give them a word. At Brooklyn Center Middle and High School, located just outside of Minneapolis, students have been asking for extra classes outside of the traditional curriculum, and the school has responded by offering two classes a week where students can choose from activities such as Create Your Own video game.” “Art in the Garden” and “Dungeons and Dragons”.

Between December 2021 and December 2022, the school more than halved absenteeism. Principal Josh Frazier says his team hasn’t yet collected enough data to prove the new classes directly led to increased attendance, but he says the vast majority of students have found a subject they identify with, and it has been key.

“The value of having students see the power and the voice that they have, and that is actually reflected in the decisions that have a big impact on their daily lives… I think that’s what creates belonging,” he says.

A sense of belonging began to matter for Isaac Moreno in Los Angeles. His high school recently launched a new athletic program that he was eager to join.

“That’s what made school fun again,” Isaac says in his Los Angeles Lakers jersey. He played basketball and says the “fun” moments of the school day motivated him to show up more often.

“I am a very sociable person and I am very glad that [at school] you can talk to people and just be a lot more active,” he says.

His mom says she’s noticed a difference in Isaac ever since the sports program opened. “He’s playing basketball again, now he has friends… and it gives him life back.”

A life that is starting to look much closer to normal.

Edited: Nicole Cohen