Oklahoma needs increased investment to tackle growing problem of chronic absenteeism

Backpacks fill cubbies at Mayo Demonstration School in Tulsa on April 8, 2024. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

About 25 years ago, the Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) combined the poorest half of John Marshall High School with the poorest half of Hoover Middle School, creating a school with staggeringly intense concentrations of extreme poverty, trauma, and, eventually, chronic absenteeism.

Too many non-educators assumed that families, such as those we served in the North Highland area of Oklahoma City, did not take education seriously enough.

But at that time, I was allowed to take a deep dive into boxes of Hoover student records in order to understand why students fell behind and dropped out. I received permission to do so as long as I didn’t reveal individual student information. For better or worse, now it would be impossible to access such information.

The records showed that most of these students were doing well in class until they fell off the education assembly line and couldn’t find a way to get back on track. Contrary to common assumptions, family health issues primarily led to chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at at least 10% of school.

As the New York Time’s David Wallace-Wells explains, some of the same issues are linked to a frightening increase in chronic absenteeism today. During the pandemic, the nation’s chronic absenteeism rate nearly doubled, affecting at least six million more students.

But Wallace-Wells cites research showing today’s rates have little or no connection to pandemic-related school closures.

He cites research showing that there was only a 2% difference in chronic absenteeism when comparing districts that had the most in-person learning and the most remote.

Chronic absenteeism numbers have been misrepresented by an “ideological crusade” against anti-COVID-19measures, he contends.

Wallace-Wells notes that the same pattern exists in schools across the developed world.

For instance, in Britain, the post-COVID-19 chronic absenteeism rate more than doubled to 23.5%. In Belgium, the rate is now 90% above pre-COVID-19 rates, and in New Zealand, more than 45% of students are chronically absent.

Researchers fear absenteeism is a new normal.

In New York City some of the largest increases have been among the youngest students.

Moreover, National Public Radio’s Sequoia Carrillo reported on research and polling on chronic absenteeism in the U.S., which Stanford’s Thomas Dee found doubled from 15% to 30% since COVID-19. Dee believes that many children and parents value regular attendance less. Carrillo reported that “students and parents fell out of the habit of school.”

To end up chronically absent, a student need only miss two days of school each month, so it often sneaks up on parents, Carrillo noted.

In Oklahoma, 18.6% of students were chronically absent in the two school years prior to COVID-19. The rate jumped to 22.8% during the 2021-22 school year, according to Attendance Works, a group that focuses on student absenteeism.

Nationally, the rate was 29.7%, according to the group.

In my experience, high-challenge schools with high levels of students from generational poverty, who have endured multiple traumas, felt more pressure to increase attendance rates, which had long been an accountability metric, as opposed to tackling the much more complicated and difficult problem of chronic absenteeism.

The first step it requires is outreach.

Today, it would be far more difficult to sit on families’ couches like many of us used to do, and conduct discussions on how to get kids back on track.

Given the overwhelming changes that teachers face, schools would need to fund more staff and more partners to build better relationships with families.

But given the gravity of this crisis, hopefully educators, parents, and politicians will see the need for far more investments in students who are becoming more distant from schools.

Then, perhaps we can counter the erosion of our educational and other social norms.

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