“The pandemic hit immigrant families very, very hard,” Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, deputy director of Californians Together, a coalition that advocates for English learners in the Golden State, told The 74.

But despite the disruption, the middle schooler was lucky: She had the WiFi and devices that she needed for remote learning, save for a finicky charger. She also speaks English confidently, although her school has not yet re-classified her out of English learner courses.

Many other English learners over the past 18 months, however, have lacked devices, juggled child care duties and struggled to navigate English-only instructions for platforms like Google Classroom or Zoom, according to reports through the pandemic. Still, COVID-19’s full impact on this vulnerable population has remained blurry.

With finalized nationwide counts of chronic absenteeism from last year still not expected for up to three months, these new figures offer a sneak peak into long-awaited data that helps bring the picture into clearer focus.

Students are typically defined as chronically absent when they miss more than 10 percent of school days, a benchmark for the typical 180-day school year that researchers say determines whether students have lost so much instruction that they may be academically at risk. Missed school days predict academic difficulties such as trouble reading in third grade, lower grades in middle school and higher dropout rates in high school.

Read the full article about English learners by Asher Lehrer-Small at Home |The 74