Chronic absenteeism is not always the fault of students who miss too much school. In fact, kids can play a key role in solving the problem, says A’Dorian Murray-Thomas, founder and CEO of SHE Wins, a New Jersey nonprofit that builds college and career paths for female high school students who’ve experienced inner city violence.
“When you ask young people what the issues are, they’re going to tell you,” Murray-Thomas, who is also a member of the Newark Board of Education, said during a webinar on chronic absenteeism hosted by the Newark-based Brick Education Network. “The question is, do we as adults have the courage to listen?”
Among the main reasons that students are not coming to school are lack of transportation, having to take care of younger siblings, or working to support their families, among others, Murray-Thomas said.
Chronic absenteeism has also increased among students who no longer feel physically or emotionally safe at school or who have lost a sense of belonging or connection, Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works, explained on the same webinar. “My fear is that we have so much chronic absenteeism, people will go back to a punitive, blaming approach to attendance,” Chang said. “That is the absolute opposite of what we need to happen for kids.”
Finding what students love
Building students’ excitement for returning to school and for learning will be even more challenging after the long periods of time many kids spent at home over the last few years, says Steve Coxon, a professor at the School of Education at Maryville University and executive director of the Center for Access and Achievement.
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And that enthusiasm—among both students and teachers—has been eroded over the past several decades by the heavy focus on testing created by the “Nation At Risk” report in the 1980s and policies such as No Child Left Behind. “Look at athletics or any other skill that requires a lot of talent development—the first thing you have to do is fall in love with it,” says Coxon, who researches the development of creativity in young people. “When kids leave elementary school, they don’t have love to love every aspect of learning, but they should they love to write or read, or love science.”
One way to build a love for learning, particularly in younger grades, is through play, with, for example, products like LEGO kits. Another method, which should also work for older students, is called “novel engineering,” which was developed at Tufts University as a way to combine literacy and STEM learning. After a class reads a book, they choose a problem from the story to solve through the engineering process of proposing a solution, building a prototype and then refining their model based on input from their teammates, teachers and others.
Another advantage of novel engineering is that students can use basic craft supplies to develop their prototypes. “Curriculum doesn’t matter as much as the teacher,” Coxon says. “Districts that implement pacing guides that tell teachers what workbook to do on what day deprofessionalizes teaching and drives away teachers.”
Flipping the script on chronic absenteeism
Leaders at the Brick Education Network, an education management nonprofit that operates charter schools in Newark, have reduced the system’s chronic absentee rate from over 50% to 14%—during the pandemic, said one of its founders, Dominique Lee.
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The network focused on four challenges that interfere with attendance: barriers such as lack of transportation, disengagement, aversion and misconceptions. “People are not missing school because they want to miss school,” Lee said during the network’s webinar. “Chronic absenteeism is a comprehensive issue that you need e a comprehensive strategy to address.”
Brick’s solution included hiring mentors to work with students and creating an attendance committee to regularly review attendance data. And the attendance team doesn’t just focus on “tier 3” students who are missing excessive amounts of school. Educators check up on every student who has missed even one day to identify potential problems that could cause further absences.
Newark Public Schools, meanwhile, has expanded its team of attendance counselors to conduct home visits and contact parents and caregivers of students at risk of chronic absenteeism. This relieves overburdened teachers and administrators from having to take on yet another responsibility, Murray-Thomas added.
The district, which boasts a 92% attendance rate—its highest in years—now takes a restorative approach to truancy. Rather than punishing students, the district deploys social workers to find out why students are missing school.
