This week’s evidence is on a critically important topic: chronic absenteeism. This is a leading cause of failure and, ultimately, dropouts. Chronic absenteeism is twice what it was before the pandemic, and it is greatest among the youngest students – K-1 – and the oldest students, high school juniors and seniors. The evidence comes from Education First’s Kelly James. Her approach is “everything, everywhere, all at once.” In other words, there is not a single program or policy that works, but rather a combination of actions that work, including nutrition, safety, school climate, and the relevance of learning. The out-of-school autonomy that occurred during the pandemic convinced many families that in-person schooling was optional.
James suggests that “tough love” is not working. A better approach is to get to the root of the problem – transportation, safety, health care, nutrition, or other causes of absenteeism. Some ideas our clients have suggested include a deliberate increase in extracurricular activities in order to create positive peer pressure for attendance, wake-up calls to the homes of students who are missing school, creative alternatives, including distance learning, for some classes in which students are particularly disengaged, flexible schedules, especially for secondary students, and starting Career and Technical Education classes starting in earlier grades.