Schools Face Catastrophic Truancy Problems Post Pandemic

While COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures are now thankfully in the rearview mirror, students and families are still dealing with the fallout from the decision to keep kids at home for what was in many cases nearly two years. One of the most glaring issues that lawmakers are becoming increasingly desperate to address is that many students now simply aren’t showing up to class at all.

According to U.S. Department of Education data, chronic absenteeism (defined as missing ten percent or more of the school year) has nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic.

In some cities and states, the numbers are even more stark. In California, for instance, the chronic absenteeism rate has skyrocketed to 30 percent from 12 percent pre-pandemic.

In New Mexico, 40 percent of students are now considered chronically absent, compared to 18 percent before the pandemic.

In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, chronic absenteeism hit 40 percent during the 2021-2022 school year – translating to roughly 375,000 students.

In Detroit, 77 percent of students were chronically absent during the 2021-2022 school year.

According to a recent report from Axios, a shocking 60 percent of high school students in Washington, D.C. were marked chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year. That figure represents a nine percent increase from before the pandemic and a four percent increase from the 2021-2022 school year. This finding also comes after the city changed its policy to allow students to miss up to 40 percent of the school day and still not be considered absent.

Unsurprisingly, students who are chronically absent are significantly more likely to receive poor grades, not graduate, and end up in trouble with the law. A University of Chicago study has found that for each week of school, a ninth-grade student misses, he or she is 20 percent more likely to not earn a high school diploma. Conversely, students who go on to attend college have an average attendance rate of 98 percent.

According to a 2008 report from Columbia University, students who are chronically absent in earlier grades also show lower achievement throughout their academic career, even if they begin attending school more regularly later on. In other words, students who fall behind as early as kindergarten are unlikely to ever catch up.

The rise in chronic absenteeism has also gone hand-in-hand with a nationwide decline in standardized test performance. Student scores plunged nine points in math and four points in reading according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tested seventh graders during the 2022-2023 school year.

Amid this escalating crisis, state legislatures are looking for anything to get kids back in classrooms.

In Wisconsin, the Republican-led general assembly passed a bill in February that would prohibit schools from advancing a student to the next grade if he or she misses more than 30 days in a school year. Another bill before the assembly would require schools to keep the state Department of Education updated about truancy statistics.

In Ohio, where 31 percent of students were chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year, lawmakers are considering a bipartisan bill that would actually pay students to attend school. HB 348 would start a pilot program in one urban school district and one rural school district whereby parents of kindergarten students would receive $50 per month, totaling $500 for the whole year if their child is present for at least 90 percent of all school days.

Ninth-grade students, meanwhile, would receive direct payments of $50 for meeting the attendance requirement. Students from select schools would also receive $250 for graduating, and up to $750 for graduating with a high GPA. If the experiment is successful, it could be expanded to the entire state.

However, not everyone is on board with the pilot program, which has a price tag of $1.5 million. “You already pay taxes to provide a free education to those children,” Republican state Rep. Josh Williams has said of the bill. “But now you’re going to actually pay a parent next door, out of your pocket, to make sure their kids get up and get on a school bus.”

While lawmakers don’t all agree on the best solution, there is a growing consensus that the problem of chronic absenteeism is one that states and schools urgently need to address. With student attendance and performance metrics still moving in the wrong direction more than two years after the end of COVID lockdowns, the country can’t afford to let more students fall behind.

Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.