Partway through her slideshow, Dr. Heidi Schumacher displayed a bar chart of eight high schools in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system. It showed the percentages of students who have missed so much school that they are considered chronically absent. The numbers ranged from 60.2% to 81.9%.
“That effectively means the norm of everyday attendance has collapsed,†said Schumacher, an expert in student absenteeism.
In Louisiana, a student is counted as chronically absent if they miss 10% of school. For most schools that is roughly 18 days a year, or two days a month. Nearly half the students in East Baton Rouge high schools, 47.4%, earn that label.
“When they attend regularly, they are seven times more likely to graduate from high school,†said Schumacher, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont.
By contrast, some schools have high attendance. For instance, at Baton Rouge Magnet High, which was not on Schumacher’s slide, less than 10% of the students are missing that much school.
“I was in Washington, D.C., for a very long time,†Schumacher said. “We had exactly the same thing. This is not unique.â€
Schumacher then asked the room, filled with members of the , how alarmed they are by this educational divide: “Is this something we will tolerate or will we say we must do something about this as a community?â€
Schumacher’s recent trip to Louisiana was organized by the nonprofit group, , and was capped by a talk at Rotary this week.Â
Schumacher serves on the advisory board for a similarly named national organization, Attendance Works. She previously served as chief health officer and assistant superintendent for Washington, D.C., Public Schools and the district's education agency.
The ranks of chronically absent students doubled nationwide in the wake of COVID.
“We have seen an explosion in chronic absence,†Schumacher said.
In Louisiana, missed that much school, or about 143,000. Those numbers have improved over the past two years. but they are still well above pre-COVID levels.
Louisiana for being one of the only states to recover academically from COVID in English and math, but not everyone is reaping the benefits.
“You in Louisiana have seen tremendous growth. You should be celebrated for that,†Schumacher said. “And those kids can’t access those things if they are not in school. Every day.â€
Absent children not only fall behind in school, but their health suffers because they lose daily access to healthy meals as well as school nurses, she said. Their absence also stresses teachers and classmates.
“When a child is coming and going, the teacher is reteaching, relationships get disrupted,†she said. “The whole milieu of a school environment is altered.â€
Contrary to popular thinking, poor student attendance starts as early as prekindergarten and gets worse over time, she said.
“Children who are chronically absent in prekindergarten or in kindergarten are much less likely to be reading on grade level by third grade, which sets up their entire educational trajectory,†Schumacher said.
Poor school attendance is so problematic that the medical community has been steadily elevating its importance in child health diagnoses.
“There is a growing movement to consider school attendance as a vital sign,†she said.
Chronic absenteeism is a relatively new way to measure whether kids are in school. Schumacher considers it a superior measure.
Public schools have long tracked daily student attendance as well as truancy. Both attendance and truancy grew worse after COVID, have improved since, but have yet to return to pre-COVID levels.
A child in Louisiana is counted as truant if they have five or more unexcused absences — or tardies — during a semester. Excused absences, however, can add up — as many as five days of school with a note from a parent and more days if the child has a doctor’s note.
In contrast to truancy, chronic absenteeism counts all absences, whether they are excused or not.
“Really any absence, excused or unexcused, results in the child not being in school and has a similar impact in the long run,†Schumacher said.
Community effort is key to turning the problem around, she said.
Schumacher ended with a success story, a 13-year-old boy named Paul in rural Vermont whom she has been working with for the past two years. The year they met he had missed 75 days of school. He was isolated in a house that had no running water or heat, and food wasn’t always available. His parents and grandparents had bad experiences in school themselves. He suffered from anxiety.
After he entered therapy, the boy ended up transferring to a smaller, alternative learning program. A local health center helped with his mental health issues. He had mentors who visited with him. He began developing trusting relationships.
The biggest help was a local horse farm that set up a therapeutic horseback riding program for students at the school, and Paul loved it. His school attendance steadily improved to the point where this school year he hasn’t missed a single day.
“This school didn’t do it alone,†she said. “They had community partners.â€