Giving Compass' Take:
- Liz Cohen draws attention to the fact that some states have not released new data on learning loss during the pandemic in over a year.
- How can data on chronic absenteeism help policymakers better address learning loss and help students and schools recover from the impacts of the pandemic?
- Read more about learning loss.
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Student testing at the national, state and local levels has given policymakers a clear, up-to-date picture of learning loss during the pandemic. But on another key recovery metric, student absenteeism, reporting has lagged badly in many states, making it difficult to know if the hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of hours states and school districts have spent to get kids back in school are working, and if policymakers should continue to invest resources to bring down absenteeism rates that spiked during the pandemic.
One of the most surprising and least anticipated consequences of pandemic school disruption is that many students didn’t return to school when normal operations resumed. In many districts, chronic absenteeism — the number of students missing 10% or more of school days — increased in the 2021-22 school year from the previous year, even after schools were fully open and vaccines were widely available. Michigan, for example, saw its chronic absenteeism rate almost double, from 20% to 39%, during the pandemic. Virginia’s rate tripled, from 10% to 30%.
Long quarantines and other COVID protocols still enforced in 2021-22 undoubtedly contributed to the increases. But was 2021-22 an outlier, or part of a longer-term trend? In the absence of 2022-23 attendance data in many states, we don’t know. In at least 35 states, the most recent absenteeism information is now 15 months old.
In the relatively few states and school districts that have released more recent information, the results are mixed; absenteeism is improving in some places and worsening in others. In New Mexico, where the state has made detailed 2022-23 chronic absenteeism data publicly available on its Education Department website, the statewide chronic absenteeism rate has declined slightly in the past year, from a staggering 40% to 39%. Absenteeism rates in the Albuquerque school district declined from 46% in 2021-22 to 38% in 2022-23. Just 15 miles north, in Rio Rancho, however, the trend continues to move in the wrong direction, with chronic absenteeism rates rising from 24% in 2021-22 to 36% in 2022-23.
Read the full article about pandemic school recovery by Liz Cohen at The 74.