Absences, grade retention still above pre-pandemic levels in NC schools
North Carolina students are still missing more school than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic, and more students are being held back a year in school, state data shows.
The data signal continued, though somewhat improved, struggles to educate the state’s children since the onset of the pandemic and subsequent months-long closure of school buildings to most students.
On Wednesday, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Education Policy Initiative at Carolina presented data showing disparities among demographic groups in how the pandemic affected attendance and showed early results of some success from summer school.
Additional data analyzed by WRAL News shows worsening student attendance and partial reversals of downward trends in attendance violations and grade retention.
Sarah Crittenden Fuller, an associate professor at UNC, presented the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina’s findings to the State Board of Education.
State Board of Education Member Wendell Hall noted that outcomes continue, as before the pandemic, to be worse for Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students. He said talking about the impact of the pandemic on students is important, but he wants to develop and improve education through the lens of more than just the pandemic and its impact.
“I don’t want us to use COVID-19 as an excuse,” Hall said. “Yes, it’s a point in time, but we need to move on now.”
The state has learned and will learn more about educating students by studying whether pandemic-related interventions worked, said Michael Maher, Deputy Superintendent of Standards, Accountability, and Research at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.
Researchers will further study which summer programs or interventions were most successful through studying the outcomes of students throughout the last school year, Fuller said. Researchers will need to dig more deeply into each student, the intervention they received, the educator they worked with and more, Fuller said.
That some students were successful following the summer programs in 2021 is “exceptional,” Maher said. Schools didn’t have much time to put together the programs or identify the students who needed them most after lawmakers mandated the programs just months ahead of time.
Schools appear to be getting better and providing and targeting interventions for specific students, Maher said.
Differences across demographics
The pandemic correlated with increased absences and chronic absenteeism among students and with more students to failing to advance to their next grade level, according to the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina's report.
Statistics were worse across demographic groups, but largely maintained their pre-pandemic disparities; Black students, Hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, English learners and students with disabilities continued to do worse than white students, students without economic disadvantages, non-English leaders and students without disabilities.
Chronic absenteeism especially spiked among Black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students — more than it increased for other demographic groups.
School attendance may have played a role in academic performance.
Students who ended up enrolled in summer programs — which targeted students “at risk” of academic failure — were more likely to be chronically absent than those who did not enroll.
The 2021 summer programs benefited some students.
Students enrolled in the summer program were less likely during the 2021-22 school year to repeat a course they had failed during the 2020-21 school year. About a quarter of kindergarten through fifth grade students advanced an entire grade level in reading or math. More than 40% of sixth through eighth graders advanced an entire grade level in reading or math.
New data show improvements, declines
Data analyzed by WRAL News shows average daily attendance rates dropped in traditional public schools from nearly 95% before the pandemic to 93% during the 2020-21 school year and 91.2% during the 2021-22 school year. Similar data don’t exist for public charter schools.
Data also shows a rise in “attendance violations,” which means a student missed 10 or more consecutive school days without an excuse, by thousands of students. (These students aren’t counted in average daily attendance reports because they can no longer be counted toward enrollment.)
WRAL News obtained monthly data from the past six school years on the number of students in violation of the state’s attendance laws.
From the start of the fall term in 2016 through early 2020, the average number of students in violation in a given month was 814. From the start of the fall term in 2021 through the end of the spring term in 2022, the average number of students in violation in a given month was 6,766. Violations peaked at 13,747 students in late spring 2021 but had dropped to 5,050 students in late spring 2022.
While both increases in absences and attendance violations represent relatively few of the state’s 1.3 million students in traditional public schools, they coincide with data showing increased academic challenges.
Following the 2021-22 school year, 3% of traditional public school students were retained a grade level, down from 4.3% the prior year but still above the pre-pandemic average of about 2.5%. The bulk of those students are ninth and tenth graders who did not earn enough credits to advance to the next grade level.
Similar data don’t exist for public charter schools.
Scores declined for both state and national standardized tests, WRAL previously reported.
