Testimony Before the Council of the District of Columbia Committee of the Whole at the Public Oversight Hearing on Chronic Absenteeism and Truancy
By Nicole Travers, Senior Director of School Support & Program Data, DC Charter School Alliance
December 12, 2023
Good afternoon, Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee. My name is Nicole Travers, and I am the Senior Director of School Support & Program Data at the DC Charter School Alliance, the local non-profit that advocates on behalf of public charter schools to ensure that every student can choose high-quality public schools that prepare them for lifelong success.
Addressing chronic absenteeism is critically important because it's no secret that school attendance is highly correlated to student outcomes. According to a recent analysis of the Nation’s Report Card scores, 4th graders who missed three or more days in the prior month to the exam scored 17 points lower on the reading test compared to those who missed zero days (1). Research also shows that irregular attendance can be a predictor of high school dropout, which is linked to poor labor market prospects, diminished health, and involvement in the criminal justice system. To most effectively reduce absenteeism, we need to understand the magnitude and the factors driving it.
Nationwide, chronic absenteeism more than doubled during the first year of in-person learning compared to pre-pandemic levels (2). And while significant increases in absenteeism are widespread, we know that disparities increased across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines. That struggle is mirrored in the District.
Chronic absenteeism in DC jumped from 31% in the 2018-19 school year to 48% in the 2021-2022 school year. While we typically think about truancy as a problem driven by students skipping school, we’re seeing something new in data since the start of the pandemic. A surge in excused absences drove that jump – in fact, excused absences nearly tripled during that time (3). We saw a fall in chronic absenteeism citywide from 48% to 43% school-year 2022-23. These declines were driven by decreases in unexcused absences; excused absences remain similar to school-year 2021-22. Charter schools specifically saw a large decline in truancy, used to track 10 or more unexcused absences, from 44.3% to 27%.
In school-year 2022-2023, the average student in DC had 14 excused absences, which can mean as much as 112 hours of lost instructional time. Missing valuable class time takes a toll on learning and impacts a student’s long-term success. This increase in excused absences requires a new way of addressing chronic absenteeism and truancy because the problem is different.
So what is driving these absences? We know that for many students and their families, it’s not as simple as not wanting to attend. One of the factors contributing to high rates of absenteeism is families and students feeling unsafe in their commutes to and from school. Students are less likely to attend when dangerous incidents occur in their neighborhoods. Johns Hopkins researchers found that when violent crime doubles on a student’s commute to and from school, predicted attendance is expected to decrease by approximately 10 percent (4). Chronic absenteeism is therefore intricately linked to public safety in DC.
Second, the impact of the pandemic took a large toll on students’ mental health. Depression and anxiety among young people nearly doubled during the pandemic (5), which has severely impacted school attendance as some students are refusing to attend school.
We also hear from school leaders that students aren’t showing up because they don’t find school fun. The pandemic had a large and lasting impact on how students engage with each other, with adults, and with academics. Learning to read, write and do math in the same way that it was being taught prior to the pandemic just isn’t working for many students. We have to reimagine school to make it a place students want to be for the full school day – especially for high school students.
Lastly, schools face challenges in receiving support from CFSA and CSS after they make referrals for chronically truant students. Schools rely on this support to re-engage these families, and without proper follow-through, chronically truant students rarely get back on track. Many schools report to us that after they make truancy referrals no action is taken by CFSA or CSS unless there is evidence of additional neglect or abuse beyond school absences.
As we consider how to refine efforts to address these factors, we’ve seen several bright spots across schools that have implemented a variety of strategies to increase attendance. In fact, 21 public charter schools saw a decrease in chronic truancy by more than 15% from school-year 2021-22 to school-year 2022-23.
Effective Solutions Schools Are Implementing
Many schools are focusing resources on building more joy into academic lessons while offering highly engaging extracurricular and career-focused activities that are appealing. For example, Sojourner Truth’s Montessori model gives students the opportunity to develop their own learning plan that includes real-world projects on topics that interest them. Howard University Middle School for Mathematics and Science installed a CTE lab with e-sports gaming consoles, which is both exciting for students and builds valuable skills. A few elementary schools like Bridges PCS and Center City Congress Heights focus on making Fridays fun to improve attendance. Bridges PCS offers a variety of clubs on Friday afternoons, while Center City Congress Heights developed a class-vs-class game challenge. Several high schools have also partnered with OSSE’s Advanced Technical Center (ATC) to take career-focused classes. We thank Dr. Grant and the OSSE team for creating an accessible way for students to build skills in areas of interest. Students who took classes at the ATC had higher in-seat attendance rates than their peers.
Schools are also invested in building and rebuilding close and caring relationships that were lost during the pandemic but are critically important for keeping students engaged. For example, Goodwill Excel hired additional success coaches to decrease the number of students assigned to each coach, so coaches could build deeper relationships and better identify and address barriers to attendance. Similarly, several schools invested more in family engagement staff to increase the number of home visits and touch points with families.
While these strategies are helping, to tackle this crisis, we need increased investment in citywide initiatives that increase accessibility to safe transportation, ensure schools are properly resourced, and place a renewed emphasis on the importance of strong attendance. Below I share a few recommendations for ways to do this.
Recommendations
First, frequent excused absences are normalizing being away from school. City leaders, elected officials, business leaders, and the faith community need to come together with school leaders and advocates to align on a strategy that reframes the importance of coming to school regularly. A campaign using levers that resonate with students and families, like PSAs on the radio and on bus stops and incentives from businesses, can shift behaviors.
Second, if we’re going to turn the tide on chronic truancy, we need to expand and adequately fund initiatives that provide safe and reliable transportation options. For example, the Council should consider increasing the capacity of the DC School Connect and the Safe Passage programs, both of which help ensure the safety of students traveling to and from school. This would enable the Administration to expand the list of neighborhoods eligible for these programs to encompass all those facing safety concerns.
Third, it’s important that our schools continue to have the resources to engage students and families deeply. That means (1) providing adequate funding for teachers and staff compensation who are already stretched thin. We urge the Council to ensure the teacher pay increases provided to schools last spring are funded through the UPSFF starting in FY25. And (2) continuing to find ways to increase the pipeline of mental health clinicians in DC. We thank the Council for expanding access to social work degree programs and ask you to explore participation in the Social Work Licensure Compact as a next step.
Finally, we need more frequent publicly available data on attendance to understand if efforts in reducing absenteeism are successful. Right now, an attendance report is published annually. We recommend moving to reports released three times per year to allow schools to see how they are progressing against their peers and learn from one another.
Moving Forward
Chronic absenteeism is a multi-faceted and critically urgent issue that requires a multi-pronged approach. Our school leaders care deeply about addressing the factors driving low attendance. Many of them will testify today and share innovative examples of how they are creatively taking on this challenge. To complement this, we hope the city can double down on its investments in mechanisms that drive attendance. The DC Alliance is ready to continue our partnership with you and the Administration to ensure students are safe and in classrooms to consistently engage in school.
Thank you for your time and attention, and I welcome your questions.
Citations
New Study: Kids Who Scored Worst on NAEP Missed the Most School Before the Test. The 74. August 14, 2023. https://www.the74million.org/article/new-study-kids-who-scored-worst-on-naep-missed-the-most-school-before-the-test
Two-thirds of schools struggle with high absenteeism after pandemic. Washington Post. October 12, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/10/12/school-absenteeism-absence-pandemic-learning/
District of Columbia Attendance Report, School Year 2021-22, osse.dc.gov.
Burdick-Will, Julia, Mark L. Stein, and Jeffrey Grigg. 2019. “Danger on the Way to School: Exposure to Violent Crime, Public Transportation, and Absenteeism.” Sociological Science 6: 118-142.
Why America Has a Youth Mental Health Crisis, and How Schools Can Help. EdWeek. October 24, 2023. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/why-america-has-a-youth-mental-health-crisis-and-how-schools-can-help/2023/10
