Nearly half a million NC students are considered 'chronically absent,' according to new study
Nearly half a million North Carolina students have missed so much school lately that they are considered “chronically absent,” new data shows – a distinction that suggests more students are at risk of eventually dropping out.
North Carolina’s chronic absenteeism has more than doubled, from about one in seven students during the 2018-19 school year to about one in three students during the 2021-22 school year. Nationwide, it’s risen from about one in seven students to about one in four students.
The trend raises alarms around schools’ multibillion-dollar efforts to accelerate student learning to pre-pandemic mastery — efforts that could be thwarted by diminished student engagement in school itself.
“There’s not one quick fix for this issue,” said Rhonda Schuhler, president of the North Carolina Association of School Administrators and superintendent of Franklin County Schools. Schools need to reach out to students and families consistently to make sure students are able – and want to – come to school each day, she said.
A student is chronically absent if they have missed at least 10% of all school days in a year. That’s at least 17 or 18 days, depending on the school system, or about one day every other week.
Chronic absenteeism is up among students in every U.S. state for which data are available and the District of Columbia, according to data compiled and analyzed by Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee in partnership with The Associated Press.
The Associated Press interviewed families across the United States and found they struggled with several issues: Illness, housing instability as evictions rise, transportation challenges amid bus driver shortages, student anxiety and a shifting attitude about how important school is among other family needs.
Taken together, the data from 39 states and Washington, D.C., provides the most comprehensive accounting of absenteeism nationwide.
Absent students miss out not only on instruction but all the other things schools provide — meals, counseling, socialization. In the end, students who are chronically absent are at higher risk of not learning to read and eventually dropping out.
“The long-term consequences of disengaging from school are devastating,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit addressing chronic absenteeism. “And the pandemic has absolutely made things worse and for more students.”
The AP’s analysis only goes through the 2021-22 school year, the most recent year for which states have chronic absenteeism data readily available.
Daily attendance data analyzed by WRAL News through the most recent school year show absences continued to be elevated during the 2022-23 school year and only slightly improved from the year before, with about 112,000 students missing from school on any given day. That’s a more than 50% increase from five years ago, when about 73,000 students were missing on any given day.
Most states have yet to release attendance data from 2022-23, the most recent school year. Based on the few that have shared figures, the chronic-absence trend might have long legs. In Connecticut and Massachusetts, chronic absenteeism remained twice its pre-pandemic rate.
The data indicate worsening student attendance is more than a blip during the height of the pandemic and is here to stay until interventions reverse the trend.
An analysis from Stanford University economist Thomas S. Dee found that COVID-19 infections, a drop in school enrollment and state masking policies are unlikely to be the only reasons why this is happening. Especially, he said, because the trend has persisted so long after the pandemic began.
Absences were more prevalent among Latino, Black and low-income students, according to Dee’s analysis.
Typically, absences are higher among students with disabilities, too, because they often struggle in a school environment that doesn’t meet their needs, either through a lack of training or a lack of resources. They are often also sent home early on school days when school gets too stressful to stay, even though they may actually be counted as present on those days.
Children in higher-poverty areas might be missing school more often, struggling more academically, hurt more by COVID-19 related school closures in 2020 and 2021, Schuhler said.
“You’re taking an issue and you’re compounding it when those students aren’t at school,” she said.
Driver shortages, anxiety
Turquoise Parker, a Durham Public Schools teacher, said bus driver shortages are making school tougher to get to for some families that don’t live within walking distance of their school. When the bus doesn’t come, the students sometimes don’t have a way of getting to school.
Schuhler said more students are also working instead of going to school. In those instances, the school system tries to work with the student to balance a schedule that includes both work and school, as well as expose them to careers while they’re in school, so they know what else is out there.
But the bigger issue contributing to absenteeism, according to Schuhler, is student anxiety.
“That is something that I think has become a more pervasive concern over the years,” she said. “I think there is absolutely a need, not just in Franklin County but statewide, for more support for assisting students that have mental health challenges.”
That includes more staff who are trained to work with children who are struggling, such as counselors. Schools across the state have lamented for decades that they don’t have enough counselors or other support professionals.
Dr. Kamala Uzzell, with SOLAY Counseling in Durham, says her clinic has seen more kids with anxiety since the pandemic.
"Your child may be irritable, angry, sleepless. Your child may complain of headaches, stomachs. They may be tired or fatigued and so for all of those reasons they will not feel like going to school."
Uzzell says there are things you can do at home, like deep breathing and grounding techniques. But it's important to get a handle on these issues early. If a child doesn't learn coping mechanisms early in life, struggles to handle anxiety will just continue.
Meanwhile, reports among young people of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts have been rising for more than a decade.
The overall morale of schools is deteriorating, Parker said. Student attendance is worsening at the same time schools are experiencing staffing shortages. Staff, already stressed by high workloads and increasing regulations, feel overworked covering for vacant jobs, Parker said. Teachers lose the joy of teaching.
“That impacts the student experience,” Parker said.
And the effects of online learning linger: School relationships have frayed, and after months at home, many parents and students don't see the point of regular attendance.
“For almost two years, we told families that school can look different and that schoolwork could be accomplished in times outside of the traditional 8-to-3 day. Families got used to that,” said Elmer Roldan, of Communities in Schools of Los Angeles, which helps schools follow up with absent students.
A less welcoming school
When in-person school resumed after pandemic closures, Rousmery Negrón and her 11-year-old son, both of Springfield, Massachusetts, noticed a change: School seemed less welcoming.
Parents were no longer allowed in the building without appointments, she said, and punishments were more severe. Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry. Negrón's son told her he overheard a teacher mocking his learning disabilities.
Her son didn’t want to go to school anymore. And she didn’t feel he was safe there.
He would end up missing more than five months of sixth grade.
When classrooms closed in March 2020, Negrón in some ways felt relieved her two sons were home in Springfield. Since the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, Negrón, who grew up in Puerto Rico, had become convinced mainland American schools were dangerous.
A year after in-person instruction resumed, she said, staff placed her son in a class for students with disabilities, citing hyperactive and distracted behavior. He felt unwelcome and unsafe. Now, it seemed to Negrón, there was danger inside school, too.
“He needs to learn,” said Negrón, a single mom who works as a cook at another school. “He’s very intelligent. But I’m not going to waste my time, my money on uniforms, for him to go to a school where he’s just going to fail.”
Building relationships
Getting more children back in school starts with building relationships with those students and their families, educators say.
That’s the goal of attendance teams that exist at schools across North Carolina and the nation, Schuhler said, studying attendance data, identifying students who aren’t coming to school often enough and trying to find out what they need to get there.
Remote learning and the hectic nature of isolation and quarantine rules of early in-person schooling made forging bonds with students and families difficult.
“It was so hard to develop relationships when we were remote,” said Amy Harrison, a special education teacher in Guilford County Schools.
She’s had to talk with parents about the importance of their children being in school everyday.
But she’s also had to talk with students to make sure they know she cares and that she wants them there.
“I’ve always said relationships are key,” Harrison said. “Kids don’t care about how much you know unless they know how much you care.”
She’s seen students with bad school experiences before respond very differently — and do better academically — in her classroom when she took the time to get to know them.
But teachers aren’t the only part of that effort, she said.
Social workers, who often serve on the attendance teams, often end up transporting students to school who couldn’t or didn’t want to come before.
Harrison is worried schools don’t have enough social workers to handle the needs.
A national problem
For people who've long studied chronic absenteeism, the post-COVID era feels different. Some of the things that prevent students from getting to school are consistent — illness, economic distress — but “something has changed,” said Todd Langager, who helps San Diego County schools address absenteeism. He sees students who already felt unseen, or without a caring adult at school, feel further disconnected.
Alaska led in absenteeism, with 48.6% of students missing significant amounts of school. Alaska Native students’ rate was higher, 56.5%.
Those students face poverty and a lack of mental health services, as well as a school calendar that isn’t aligned to traditional hunting and fishing activities, said Heather Powell, a teacher and Alaska Native. Many students are raised by grandparents who remember the government forcing Native children into boarding schools.
“Our families aren’t valuing education because it isn’t something that’s ever valued us,” Powell said.
In New York, Marisa Kosek said son James lost the relationships fostered at his school — and with them, his desire to attend class altogether. James, 12, has autism and struggled first with online learning and then with a hybrid model. During absences, he'd see his teachers in the neighborhood. They encouraged him to return, and he did.
But when he moved to middle school in another neighborhood, he didn’t know anyone. He lost interest and missed more than 100 days of sixth grade. The next year, his mom pushed for him to repeat the grade — and he missed all but five days.
His mother, a high school teacher, enlisted help: relatives, therapists, New York’s crisis unit. But James just wanted to stay home. He's anxious because he knows he's behind, and he's lost his stamina.
“Being around people all day in school and trying to act ‘normal’ is tiring,” said Kosek. She's more hopeful now that James has been accepted to a private residential school that specializes in students with autism.
Some students had chronic absences because of medical and staffing issues. Juan Ballina, 17, has epilepsy; a trained staff member must be nearby to administer medication in case of a seizure. But post-COVID-19, many school nurses retired or sought better pay in hospitals, exacerbating a nationwide shortage.
Last year, Juan's nurse was on medical leave. His school couldn’t find a substitute. He missed more than 90 days at his Chula Vista, California, high school.
“I was lonely,” Ballina said. “I missed my friends.”
Last month, school started again. So far, Juan's been there, with his nurse. But his mom, Carmen Ballina, said the effects of his absence persist: “He used to read a lot more. I don’t think he’s motivated anymore.”
Another lasting effect from the pandemic: Educators and experts say some parents and students have been conditioned to stay home at the slightest sign of sickness.
Renee Slater's daughter rarely missed school before the pandemic. But last school year, the straight-A middle schooler insisted on staying home 20 days, saying she just didn't feel well.
“As they get older, you can’t physically pick them up into the car — you can only take away privileges, and that doesn’t always work,” said Slater, who teaches in the rural California district her daughter attends. “She doesn’t dislike school, it’s just a change in mindset."
In Negrón’s hometown of Springfield, 39% of students were chronically absent last school year, an improvement from 50% the year before. Rates are higher for students with disabilities.
While Negrón's son was out of school, she said, she tried to stay on top of his learning. She picked up a weekly folder of worksheets and homework; he couldn’t finish because he didn’t know the material.
“He was struggling so much, and the situation was putting him in a down mood," Negrón said.
Last year, she filed a complaint asking officials to give her son compensatory services and pay for him to attend a private special education school. The judge sided with the district.
Now, she’s eyeing the new year with dread. Her son doesn’t want to return. Negrón said she'll consider it only if the district grants her request for him to study in a mainstream classroom with a personal aide. The district told AP it can't comment on individual student cases due to privacy considerations.
Negrón wishes she could homeschool her sons, but she has to work and fears they'd suffer from isolation.
“If I had another option, I wouldn’t send them to school,” she said.
AP education writer Sharon Lurye contributed from New Orleans; AP reporter Becky Bohrer contributed from Juneau. This story was reported and published in partnership with EdSource, a nonprofit newsroom that covers education in California. EdSource reporter Betty Márquez Rosales contributed reporting from Bakersfield.
The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
