PBS News Hour

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: At the height of the pandemic, school closures and the shift to virtual learning disrupted so many students' lives.

While almost all districts have resumed in person school, not all students have returned to the classroom.

According to a Stanford University analysis, more than a quarter of students did not attend 10 percent of the 2021 to 2022 school year.

And last year, nearly 16 million students across the U.S. are chronically absent.

That is double the pre pandemic truancy rate.

Earlier today, Ali Rogin spoke with Hedy Chang, the founder and executive director of Attendance Works, an organization that's helping schools face this challenge.

ALI ROGIN: Hedy, over a decade ago, your organization began helping schools track and prevent chronic absenteeism.

When the pandemic hit, what were some of the issues that states ran across?

HEDY CHANG, Executive Director, Attendance Works: The pandemic created all sorts of challenges, you know, when schools first closed, and then we moved to virtual learning, the first challenge was noticing when kids were there, and when they weren't.

We didn't really have a mechanism for noticing and distance learning where their kids were showing up.

And that is problematic because if we don't notice that kids aren't showing up, we're not so good at reaching out in an early and prevention oriented way, so we can bring them back.

The pandemic really exacerbated the challenges that can make it hard for kids to show up to school.

We think about four kind of buckets of big reasons.

One is kids and families face barriers.

So, a key barrier can be chronic acute illness and lack of access to health care, unstable housing, lack of transportation, all of those things got much more challenging during the panic.

And then even with our return back to school.

ALI ROGIN: What are the effects of long term, sustained absenteeism from school?

HEDY CHANG: There's a whole wealth of data now that shows if kids are missing too much, or starting as early as kindergarten and pre K. They're off track for reading by the end of third grade.

They can be off track for achievement in middle school more likely to be suspended and retained, and less likely to graduate from high school.

There's even research that shows that if kids don't show up regularly, they're less likely to continue in post-secondary and be successful in college.

So, there's a whole range of impacts but we also see that it's not just the academic impacts.

You know, showing up to school is also about having that regular routine.

That's so important for recovering from chaotic transitions.

It's also important for engagement, because when you show up to school, you get to connect to kids get to get back to family, and showing up to school is also really important for having access to resources that support your well-being.

ALI ROGI: What are some of the solutions that you've seen states implement to reduce chronic absenteeism?

HEDY CHANG: One of the states that we've seen do such an amazing job has been the state of Connecticut.

Well, before they the pandemic, they started collecting and producing data on chronic absence and making it publicly available.

And during the pandemic they started collecting that data every single month and making it available.

So everyone could see which schools which districts, which races had challenges with chronic absence, so we could take action.

So what they did was they added staff, they created more physicians to do home visits, multiple home visits so that they could find the kids who are chronically absent.

And this is a district which was experiencing the greatest challenges and reach out to kids and families starting well before the beginning of school.

Those home visitors were able to increase attendance by fifth teen percentage points for the kids who got home visits versus the kids who did not.

ALI ROGIN: Can these strategies be replicated around the country?

HEDY CHANG: Absolutely.

You know, what it means is that even just at a district level districts need to be able to look at their data understand, which schools which populations of students know, what it means is that even just at a district level, districts need to be able to look at their data, understand which schools which populations of students are struggling the most.

And then find out how they can partner with those kids and families to both understand the challenges, but engage them in solutions.

So for example, one solution that works to improve attendance is mentoring, whether it's an adult or it can even be another student who connects to a student every single day, and just notices that they're there and then helps them find resources that can help them if they're experiencing challenges.

ALI ROGIN: And Hedy, the U.S. Department of Education encouraged states to use COVID funds to reduce chronic absence now that those funds are running out what's left for states to do?

CHEDY CHANG: Well, first of all, I think we have to look at what are there different issues that are still affecting attendance.

And I will say one huge issue right now is still lots of concerns around health issues.

One of the things that states use their COVID relief dollars for was for school nurses.

But there's still such a need for school nurses because school nurses can help.

Families access supports, help schools adopt practices, like making sure kids are all washing their hands engaging in good hygiene, as well as getting messages about when to keep their kids home and when to send their kids to school.

But school nurses can be funded by multiple sources, right?

So as COVID Relief dollars run out, we should be looking at how do we use Medicaid?

How do we partner with our health organizations, we have to just be much more strategic about the use of our resources and using multiple funding sources just to sustain the kinds of interventions that we know work.

ALI ROGIN: Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of Attendance Works.

Thank you so much for joining us.

HEDY CHANG: Thank you, Ali.