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Issac Moreno couldn't get himself to school when the new school year began. He'd grown accustomed to learning from his family's home in Los Angeles during the pandemic. Then, last fall, he began attending junior high school five days a week.
"There was a lot," he admits.
Issac recalls third grade as the last completely normal school year. He's in seventh grade now, with multiple classes per day, a busier schedule, and new classmates.
Issac's mother, Jessica Moreno, says it's been a struggle to get Issac back into the routine of going to school. Her eyes well up as she describes it:
"Three days a week or four days a week, he will say to me, 'I'm sick. I don't feel OK. Can you just pick me up? I don't want to be here.' "She claims that Issac has already missed ten days of school this year, putting him at risk of becoming frequently absent.
And Issac isn't the only one. According to the research group Attendance Works, approximately 8 million US students were considered chronically absent prior to the pandemic. When a student misses 10% or more of the school year, this is considered truancy. By spring 2022, that figure had more than doubled to around 16 million.
Because federal attendance data is only released once a year, it's difficult to get a complete picture of where things stand this far into the school year, but Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, says she hasn't seen the kind of recovery she'd hoped for.
"I believe people were under the mistaken impression that as COVID became more prevalent, attendance would increase significantly. And I don't see that."
NPR found that most districts, from New York City to Austin, Texas, to Lawrence, Kansas, still had high levels of chronic absenteeism in a survey of 21 school districts in rural, suburban, and urban areas.
Students who are chronically absent are more likely to fall behind, perform poorly on standardized tests, and even drop out. And, as is often the case in education, students who struggle with attendance are more likely to be poor, children of color, or disabled.
Chang is concerned that the children who are missing school are the ones who require it the most.
"Coming to school ensures that you have access to resources," she explains, "whether that's food and nutrition, after school and engaging learning experiences, or access to health care."
Why students aren't showing up to class
In Anne Arundel County Public Schools, outside Baltimore, chronic absenteeism has worsened over each of the last three years.
"Transportation has been our number one issue," says Ryan Voegtlin, director of student services for the large Maryland district. He says a bus driver shortage has made it hard to cover all the bus routes and guarantee transportation for every student.
"That impacts a lot of our higher poverty areas where some of our parents don't have as flexible of jobs, where they may not have their own transportation."
According to Voegtlin, increased mental health concerns and heightened caution around sending kids to school when they're not feeling well have also taken a toll on attendance.
In rural San Juan County, New Mexico, Superintendent Steve Carlson says attendance numbers have improved this year, but they haven't returned to pre-pandemic levels. He echoes the challenges Voegtlin described, with one exception: His school district, Central Consolidated, is partially in Navajo Nation, and his schools serve Native American communities that were disproportionately affected by COVID, with higher infection and hospitalization rates compared to other groups. Families in his district are still recovering emotionally, and the schools still have mask mandates. There's also still fear around large gatherings of people, which are hard to avoid in schools. Moreover, given the history of boarding schools, Carlson says his district's Native families don't generally think of school as a safe place.
"It's really difficult to get those families to say, 'Yeah, sure, we'd love to send our kids back to school.'"
In Issac Moreno's district, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), attendance has improved compared to last school year, but Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says it hasn't yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.
"Much needs to be fixed alongside the attendance issue, because there are root causes that are keeping kids from school," he says.
Carvalho describes the same attendance challenges NPR heard from multiple districts around the country: a youth mental health crisis, heightened fear around health concerns, transportation difficulties and poverty and homelessness, which can make it difficult for students to keep a routine around going to school.
Several school leaders also told NPR they worry their students have lost a sense of belonging in the classroom after so much time away. Hedy Chang of Attendance Works shares those concerns:
"[Students have] lost connections to peers, they've lost connections to adults, and it has certainly been exacerbated by very challenging staffing issues in schools. But that means we need to be even more intentional about relationship building, connecting to kids."
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What can schools do to increase attendance?
"Money is not an issue," Carvalho says. "The entire nation is currently flooded with federal [COVID] assistance money."
Many districts, including LAUSD, Anne Arundel County, and Central Consolidated, are using the funds to combat absenteeism.
Home visits are one proven strategy that schools are implementing. Connecticut spent nearly $10.7 million of its federal relief funds on a robust home-visit program; six months later, attendance among program participants improved by about 15 percentage points.
While home visits are effective, "how you do them matters a lot," according to Chang. She claims that the most successful home-visit programs involve trained school personnel or teachers who make multiple visits and maintain ongoing relationships throughout the school year.
LAUSD recently began using its home-visit program to target children who are homeless. "The most vulnerable kids who are absent the most [in Los Angeles] happen to be homeless children," Carvalho said after touring a crisis center where such children sought refuge.
In addition, his district has hired more attendance counselors and "community navigators" to assist caregivers in accessing district resources, and it is providing concierge transportation for students with unstable housing.
In New Mexico, Steve Carlson is investing in more mental health resources, including extra counselors. And in Maryland, Voegtlin has hired more bus drivers, though he still doesn't have enough for every bus route. Voegtlin's district is also reaching out to families before students become chronically absent, and he and his team are working to educate caregivers about the long-term impacts of kids missing school.
"It's not a quick process," he explains, "but it's a process that [has allowed] people to start understanding that everyone owns attendance, and not just when it gets to the chronic point."
He says his district tries to avoid the punitive approaches of years past. For example, they only file charges in truancy court as a last resort after exhausting other attempts to connect with families.
Chang says another way to improve attendance is to gather regular, transparent data throughout the school-year, rather than only once, at the end of the year.
"When you look at your data regularly on an individual level, it
can allow you to reach out to students before the challenges are so
entrenched that you can't turn them around," She says
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| Mel Atkins grew up in Grand Rapids and worked as a teacher and principal in the western Michigan city. He's now the executive director of community and students for the Grand Rapids Public Schools. (Brittney Lohmiller for NPR) |
Grand Rapids Public Schools in Michigan collects and analyzes data several times per month. Mel Atkins, who leads attendance efforts there, has discovered that widely disseminating attendance data can make a difference.
"I understand you need the data to know where we're going and how big the problem is," he says. "As a result, we share the data with community partners and parents."
He claims that prior to the pandemic, his district used 8-foot leaderboards to display monthly attendance data. "It wasn't always good, but it sparked a conversation."
That data-driven program assisted in cutting chronic absenteeism in his district by more than half. Much of that progress was hampered by the pandemic, but Atkins says he and his team are focused on restarting those efforts and returning to a playbook that they already know works.
Making students feel like they belong at school
Almost every educator NPR spoke with for this story expressed a desire to create a school environment that gives students a sense of belonging and, hopefully, encourages them to return to the classroom.
"We want to create environments where students want to be so that when they walk in the door, they feel safe and say, 'I'm welcome here and I want to learn,'" Carlson of New Mexico says.
Giving students a voice is one way to create environments where they want to be. Students at Brooklyn Center Middle and High School, just outside Minneapolis, asked for more classes outside of the traditional curriculum, and the school responded by offering two class periods per week with classes like "Create Your Own Video Game," "Art in the Garden," and "Dungeons and Dragons."
The school reduced absenteeism by more than half between December 2021 and December 2022. Principal Josh Fraser says his team hasn't gathered enough data to prove that the new classes directly led to higher attendance, but he says the vast majority of students have found a subject with which they identify, which has been critical.
"The importance of students realizing their power and voice and seeing it reflected in decisions that have a significant impact on their daily lives...
I believe it is something that fosters a sense of belonging "he claims.
In Los Angeles, Issac Moreno's sense of belonging has begun to make a difference. His middle school had just started a new sports program, which he was eager to participate in.
"That was something that made school fun again," says.
Edited by: Nicole Cohen
