Virginia schools are looking for ways to combat chronic absenteeism as data shows the state is struggling to get students back in the classroom after the pandemic.
Students who are chronically absent are defined as those who miss 10 percent or more of the school year — typically 18 or more days. The number of chronically absent students in the state nearly doubled after the pandemic, jumping from 10.6 percent during the 2018-2019 school year to 20.1 percent during the 2021- 2022 school year.
And state data suggests that schools continue to struggle with absenteeism: Last school year, 19.3 percent of students across the state were chronically absent.
Across the country, schools are battling chronic absenteeism as they work to reverse learning loss fueled by pandemic school closures. According to a report released last month, two-thirds of the nation’s schools faced severe chronic absenteeism in 2021-2022. Virginia fared better than many other states. Absenteeism in other places climbed as high as 49 percent in the 2021-2022 school year. But the problem persisted in 2022-2023, according to new data from the state.
“This is not just an artifact of the 2021-22 school year,” said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University who wrote a study compiling comprehensive data on chronic absenteeism across the state.
School leaders in Virginia are now looking for ways to lower those numbers and get students back in the classroom. The Virginia Department of Education has identified fighting chronic absenteeism as a critical way to boost test scores and help students recover pandemic learning loss. It’s one of the three pillars of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s All In VA education plan, which allocates more than $400 million to school districts to address learning loss. As part of the plan, the state launched an “attendance matters” campaign and started a chronic absenteeism task force.
“While we’re providing resources in order to aggressively address the learning loss coming out of the pandemic, there’s one truth: If the students aren’t in school, they are not going to be challenged,” Youngkin said at a news conference in September announcing the task force.
The panel launched late last month and has met three times. It’s made up of schools superintendents, principals, school board members and community leaders. They have discussed topics such as ensuring schools offer a means of transportation to get every student to school; engaging parents to communicate the importance of attendance; and considering the mental health crisis that is in part contributing to absenteeism.
The reasons students miss school are complex and varied. Experts say that during the pandemic, parents learned to keep kids home from school when they show any symptoms of colds, mild stomachaches and other maladies. But in many cases, experts suggest, parents still send their children to school.And leaders say parental engagement is critical because chronic absenteeism includes excused and unexcused absences. It’s important for parents to understand, they say, that even with a doctor’s note or parental sign-off, that time away from the classroom is a barrier to learning.
And disadvantaged students, who often struggle most academically, are also the most likely to miss school. In Virginia, 19 percent of students who were identified as homeless were chronically absent, followed by 28 percent of economically disadvantaged students and 25 percent of students with disabilities. About 25 percent of Hispanic students and 22 percent of Black students were chronically absent.
In Fairfax County Public Schools, the state’s largest school system, more than 17 percent of students were chronically absent — lower than the statewide figure but higher than the 15 percent that the district reported for the 2021-2022 school year.
Superintendent Michelle Reid told the school board earlier this month that the district was looking touse a multitiered approach to improve attendance. The school system already had “double-back bus routes” in place to help students who miss an early bus get to school. But the district knows that finding more ways to get students into schools is a priority.
“I don’t think we can overstate to our families how much this needs to be paid attention to,” school board member Ricardy Anderson said in the meeting.
In Loudoun County, the school district reported that about 18 percent of students were chronically absent last school year, up from the 13 percent the district reported the year before. Rae Mitchell, the chief of schools, said the district is working on communicating with families the importance of attending school. Mitchell said that there are often cultural differences and communication gaps in which parents don’t understand that students can’t afford to miss two weeks.
And in nearby Alexandria City Public Schools, which reported a chronic absenteeism rate of about 17 percent for the 2022-2023 school year, the district has launched a campaign about the importance of attendance and uses an app to notify parents when their children aren’t in school.
Hedy Chang, the executive director of the national nonprofit Attendance Works, said Virginia’s figures were not as staggering as others across the country, but that doesn’t mean the state shouldn’t work to address the issue. Chang said high levels of chronic absenteeism can disrupt teachers and affect other students, too.
She praised the state for establishing resources and infrastructure that school districts can use to tackle the issue.
“Virginia is not doing too bad, all things considered,” Chang said.
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