Student attendance plummets after pandemic

District emphasizes priority of in-person learning

After a year of distance learning forced by the pandemic, student attendance in the Forest Lake Area School District has plummeted since schools returned to full-time in-person learning, with the middle school seeing biggest drop, and district leadership is seeing a correlation between lowered attendance and testing scores as they ask parents to keep kids in class.

By the numbers

The number of students not meeting the Minnesota Department of Education standard of a 90% minimum attendance rate have been increasing. In the 2014-2015 school year, 88.3% of middle school students met the state attendance standards of being in school 90% or more of the time. In the 2018-2019 school year, there was virtually no shift in attendance rates with 88.2% of students hitting that rate. However, in the 2021-2022 school year, just 56.7% of middle schoolers hit the standard attendance rate.

A similar precipitous drop was seen at the high school, with 85% of students meeting the attendance standard in 2014-2015, while only 57.8% met that standard in the 2021-2022 school year.

Elementary schools were hit less hard, but still saw a drop. All but one elementary school saw attendance rates above 90% in the 2014-2015 school year, with Forest View and Forest Lake Elementary seeing attendance hover around 86%. In 2021-2022, Wyoming and Lino Lakes were the only two schools to see that rate crack 80%, while other elementary schools are hanging out in the 70%-79% range.

Students who don’t meet MDE attendance standards don’t get held back or dropped from enrollment, with the alternative means of completing coursework for a class. That step to remove a student from enrollment or take further action is reserved for students who have unexcused absences from in-person learning for 15 consecutive school days, which Superintendent Steve Massey said is pretty rare.

Still, he said the district has seen a steady stream of more occasional absences.

“It could be one day a week, and over the course of a 40-week school year, you can see the impact,” Massey explained.

Test scores

Director of Teaching and Learning J.P. Jacobson pointed to post-pandemic standardized test scores that show many students not meeting grade-level standards as evidence that in-person learning remains a benefit to student learning.

“If you look at statewide standardized test scores, or even nationwide, they are slipping, and I would say this (attendance) is a contributing factor there. I think a strong argument can be made for that,” Jacobson said.

Even if a student misses school one day a week and is able to make up for the missed coursework at home, they are missing out on the elements that make school “school” Massey said.

“It’s the periodic absences that compound and add up over time that can be equally challenging,” he said.

During the pandemic, teachers leaned further into online coursework software to post assignments for students to access and complete with a deadline while at home. That same practice is still being used today at Forest Lake Area Schools.

“Some kids look at that and find it easier to miss school and make up their work because it’s readily available,” Massey said.

While coursework software gives students more agency in when they can complete, work ahead or catch-up on school work, it’s not used as comprehensively as it was in 2020 when virtual learning prompted recorded lectures to be available.

“It has created access that people are using [it] not in the way that we would prefer,” Jacobson said.

The pared back use of the online coursework may give the impression that students are up-to-date and learning everything they should in order to meet grade-level standards, but the benefits of in-person learning outweigh alternative options, they say.

“There’s just so much that happens at school that adds depth and deeper connection to what it is that the homework is speaking to, that just the homework alone by itself doesn’t quite get it there,” Jacobson said.

Coursework software is still seen as a benefit to students and families since the district wants to be flexible, but in-person learning should be a routine practice, according to district leadership. After the shift during the pandemic, Massey thinks the students who don’t hit a 90% attendance record are missing out on having a set routine and peer and teacher interactions.

“Yeah, we can give work to do at home, but at the same time, that is not nearly as impactful as engaging with peers and the teacher directly,” Massey said.

The district continues to stress the value of routine student attendance in class, but Massey has observed a shift in family mindset as parent routines have transitioned to work-from-home models.

“Students [and families] have also gotten more loose around attendance. More families are working at home than before and maybe that contributes to more kids not coming to school because parents are at home,” Massey said.

There are summer, fall, winter and spring breaks for students and families to spend time away from school or even home.

“We would encourage families to look at those natural breaks to schedule those kinds of vacations when at all possible, because a student going on an extended vacation during class time can be half of the missed attendance that puts them lower than 90% attendance,” Massey said.

The cost of vacations typically spike during designated school breaks across the country, and administration understands that families who are looking to save money on travel experiences are going at other times of the year.

“We’ve considered the same thing, in my own family,” Jacobson said. “Sometimes it can be a little less expensive to travel on different days or to leave on a Thursday rather than a Friday afternoon. We get that.”

Still, he encourages parents to consider the impact that missing school has on student learning if parents opt-in for a cheaper flight or vacation during school days.

“We’re not taking a hard stance here. Instead … what we want to do is just offer some perspective and a healthy conversation” about the impact of missing in-person classes, Jacobson said.