More children have been absent from school this academic year than a year earlier, and attendance numbers are declining as the pandemic continues, new research and data show.
Students attending both face-to-face and distance learning students face poor attendance, although worse among the millions of homebound students who still learn primarily through a screen.
According to data from PowerSchool, which tracks grades and attendance for schools, districts showed a 2.3% drop in the average daily attendance at the national level from September to November last year, compared to the same period in 2019. Attendance fell at 75% of districts as the year progressed, with an average decline of 1.5% per month, data shows. The data covers 2,700 districts with more than 2.5 million students learning in person and online.
The pandemic has disrupted the learning process for many students.
Photo:
Christopher Millette / Associated Press
Limited data from some states and districts shows that students who learned remotely – especially students of color, special needs and elementary school students – attended school less often than their classmates at school.
The data raises concerns that prolonged school closures will increase pre-pandemic school performance between poor students and others.
About 56% of school districts were exclusively remote on Dec. 18, according to the Center on Reinventing Public Education, an impartial research group at the University of Washington focused on improving public education in the U.S. Barriers to Students Learning Online , problems with internet connectivity and access to devices persist.
At Providence Public Schools in Rhode Island, where 30% of the district’s 22,600 students chose to keep their distance in the fall, students who learned remotely attended class less often, especially younger students, and got a larger some bad grades for incomplete schoolwork, said district superintendent Harrison Peters. About 85% of the students in the district are eligible for a free or reduced lunch.
Harrison Peters, Providence district superintendent, said he was concerned that students wouldn’t be as engaged if they were learning from a distance.
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Providence public schools
The data supports the initial concerns of Mr. Peters said that students would not be as engaged if they were learning from a distance. The daily attendance of all students, both in-person and remote, is about 81%, 10 percentage points lower than last year.
According to the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, about 600 primary school students from Providence, a mix of face-to-face and remote, missed more than half of the school days in the month before Thanksgiving.
The district has responded by increasing communication with parents. It uses Kinvo, a text messaging service that lets parents know when a student hasn’t signed up for class. It sent 3.1 million text messages between September and December, three times as many sent in the same period in 2019.
School officials in Providence have visited the families of students who did not come to class to provide assistance, often with supplies such as laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots.
“It was our promise not to leave that front door, that living room, until we solved many of those challenges,” said Peters.
In California, where many districts remain largely virtual, an analysis of visitor patterns in 33 districts with 350,000 students this fall showed that the number of children missing 10% or more instruction days increased among students in grades two through six, school years in which Student attendance is typically reliable, according to School Innovations & Achievement, a California-based company that tracks attendance.
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It was our commitment not to leave that front door, that living room, until we solved many of those challenges.
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Chronic absenteeism in the 33 districts analyzed more than doubled for the sixth and seventh graders to 16.1% and 21.7% respectively. Across all classes, absenteeism rose the most in December among black and Latino students, rising to 30% and 21%, up 18.4% and 12.8%, respectively, from the same time a year earlier.
In Massachusetts, 41% of students who are physically back in school buildings full-time fully agree that they learn a lot every day, compared to 16% of students who live exclusively remotely, according to a Gallup survey of 1,000 high school students.
About a third of students who learn completely at a distance or in hybrid arrangements say they are falling behind this year, while 8% of students who learn in person say the same. The study also found that students from low-income households are more likely to learn full-time remotely than students from higher-income groups.
To attend
Policies for participating in a virtual environment vary, making it difficult to estimate how often students are involved. Here’s an example of state guidelines.
- ALASKA: Remote students must log in to the class at least once every two weeks to remain enrolled.
- CALIFORNIA: Attendance tracks daily participation in virtual assignments or live interaction with a teacher or school staff.
- CONNECTICUT: Remote students who are considered present if the time spent on activities such as assignments and virtual lessons is at least half of the school day.
- MISSISSIPPI: Schools may reduce the instruction day to 240 minutes, instead of 330. High school students do not need to log in for a specific number of minutes to be considered present.
- PENNSYLVANIA: Students must log in, be active in the classroom, and submit class work. State does not specify how long students must be logged in.
During a series of virtual town halls in October, in an effort to encourage children to improve their attendance, school administrators at William L. Sayre High School in Philadelphia asked students what they wanted, said Jada Warfield-Henry, the school’s liaison officer. The students, who are all eligible for a free or discounted lunch, responded: food and sneakers.
The school began giving $ 20 gift cards to Wendy’s, Foot Locker, or iTunes to students who were perfectly present in all of their classes for a month. The school has spent about $ 3,000 on incentives so far this year. About 38.1% of Sayre students attended school for 95% of the instruction days in December, compared to 29.7% in December.
Distance learning is a challenge for measuring attendance.
What used to be a fairly uniform process now varies greatly by state, making it difficult to know how many children are academically engaged. In Alaska, distance learning students only need to contact their school once every two weeks to maintain enrollment status. California students must show some sort of daily attendance, while Connecticut students must spend adequate time in class or do homework that is at least half the school day.
Mr. Peters, the Providence Superintendent, believes that bringing students back to personal learning is the only real solution to the declining attendance rates. The district began random testing for Covid-19 in January, the latest effort to make parents more comfortable about sending their children back to school.
As Covid-19 changed their lives, students shared unexpected benefits with WSJ’s Julie Jargon. Photo illustration: Adele Morgan
Write to Yoree Koh at [email protected]
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