How can high rates of absenteeism coexist with high daily attendance?

The complacency about absenteeism could must do with the attendance information that college leaders see on a regular basis, which is usually an inventory of absent college students. Each day, this can look like an affordable quantity – maybe 30 college students in a faculty of 300. And but alarmingly high absenteeism rates can lurk beneath attendance rates that appear high quality. 

“Ninety percent sounds like good attendance, but it is not,” mentioned Nat Malkus, a senior fellow on the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative suppose tank, who has been learning the post-pandemic surge in absenteeism.

Malkus confirmed me spreadsheets of 2022-23 attendance information from three states: Illinois, Ohio and Florida. In the districts the place 90% of the scholars confirmed up every single day, the persistent absenteeism fee ranged from 28% to 46%. Think about this. There are many colleges the place an awesome majority of college students are present on any given day, however greater than two out of 5 college students are nonetheless lacking huge chunks of the college yr.

Here’s a extra present instance from a center college in Nashville, Tennessee. Its principal advised me that his common daily attendance fee is presently 93.5%, an enchancment from final yr. But as of February 2024, persistent absenteeism is already 22.9% – multiple in 5 college students. 

How can this be? At first look it appears the mixture of high attendance and high absenteeism is a paradox.

Dave Moyer, an schooling information analyst in Portland, Oregon, who has been learning absenteeism for greater than a decade, helped me remedy the puzzle. 

Consider a faculty with 90% attendance and 100 college students. Imagine that in September, 90 youngsters have excellent attendance and the identical 10 youngsters are absent for your entire month. Already 10% of the scholars have missed greater than 18 college days, crossing the brink of persistent absenteeism. 

Say their dad and mom lure them again to the classroom and a distinct group of 10 college students is absent for all of October. The persistent absenteeism fee doubles to 20%. In November, the October absentees return to high school and a contemporary group of 10 youngsters play hooky: persistent absenteeism jumps to 30%. 

If this excessive sample continues, the place a contemporary group of 10 youngsters stops attending every month, you’ll attain 40% persistent absenteeism midway via the yr. In principle, the persistent absenteeism fee might develop to 90% throughout a nine-month college yr, equaling the 90% daily attendance fee. 

Of course, most chronically absent youngsters aren’t lacking for an entire month without delay, and those that are out for weeks at a time have a tendency to not have excellent attendance after they return. But this stylized instance of a rotating solid of absent college students helps clarify why persistent absenteeism isn’t merely the alternative of attendance. Chronic absenteeism isn’t simply 10% when attendance rates are 90%. It’s quite a bit increased.

Chronic absenteeism manifests itself in numerous patterns, Moyer mentioned. Some youngsters might be out for per week or two in a row, and college leaders know who these youngsters are. Others miss three or 4 days each month. Those absences add up, finally crossing the chronically absent threshold after a number of months, however they’re not as apparent.

It’s unclear what number of principals are capable of monitor their persistent absenteeism information regularly. The state of Rhode Island just lately constructed a public data dashboard to track chronic absenteeism at each college, and it’s up to date daily. Connecticut updates its absenteeism dashboard month-to-month.

For faculties, it’s trickier to maintain observe of persistent absenteeism than it’s to take attendance. It’s like remembering what number of days every of your kids has forgotten to do the dishes throughout the yr. 

Schools typically don’t calculate persistent absenteeism in home. Typically, faculties add their attendance rolls to the district, and a pc in a again workplace does it. Sometimes persistent absenteeism calculations are performed solely as soon as on the finish of the yr, for required state reporting to the Department of Education, which started accumulating information on persistent absenteeism in 2015. By the time this information filters again down to high school leaders, if it does filter down, it’s previous data and it’s too late for varsity leaders to do a lot about it.

Kevin Armstrong, the principal of the Nashville center college talked about above, learn aloud his high persistent absenteeism figures from a pc dashboard bought by his college district. He counts himself among the many minority of principals who’re extraordinarily involved about these numbers. His eighth graders, he mentioned, have the very best rates: already 29% of them are chronically absent. But not all principals throughout the nation have entry to present attendance information like Armstrong does.

Armstrong mentioned he’s put a staff of lecturers and employees on the issue. They are calling dad and mom to seek out out why college students aren’t coming. Chronic absenteeism has improved since final yr, however it’s nonetheless a lot increased than earlier than the pandemic. And it’s laborious, as a faculty chief, to be judged by a metric that faculties can’t management. “I’m not the alarm clock,” he mentioned. “We need to have parents at the table to figure out why they’re allowing their kids to miss 30, 40, 50 days of school.”

 “I’m frustrated,” he mentioned. “We just want our kids to be here.”