Chronic absenteeism rates in schools nationwide remain higher than they were before the 2020 covid pandemic — and Pittsburgh-area schools and organizations are trying to reverse that trend.

But it will take a community-based approach to improve attendance rates, educators and experts agree.

“The schools can’t do it alone,” said Monté Robinson, deputy director of Pittsburgh Area Community Schools, an organization that partners with public schools to provide needs and support for students and families. “It’s something we all have to care about and invest in.”

While schools’ efforts to get students to return to school has made some progress, there’s still work to go. In the 2021-22 school year, about 31% students nationwide experienced chronic absenteeism, reports the U.S. Department of Education. The rate at the start of last school year was about 24%.

In Pennsylvania, numbers have stalled: The Return 2 Learn tracker, which documents data of the nation’s public schools, reported a 21% chronic absenteeism rate last year, which is down from its peak 26% in 2022 but still higher than its 2018 rate of 15%.

Many factors — like unreliable transportation, mental health challenges or transient home lives — can contribute to why a child may miss school chronically. But experts now say there’s a new element adding to chronic absenteeism rates: a cultural shift in families’ perception of the importance of attending school may be to blame.

“We see that in the workplace, where workers feel more effective at home,” said Ivory Toldson, a Howard University professor and chief of research at the Baltimore-based Concentric Educational Solutions. “A lot of students and families seem to have that in a similar message, that perfect attendance isn’t the most important thing to strive for.”

Perception shift?

Behaviors stemming from the covid pandemic translate into how people now are learning and working, Toldson said.

“Schools spent a year telling students they did not have to come to school and still get a quality education, as long as they kept up with calls and assignments. Schools need to recognize that,” he said.

“Schools also learned a lot of ways to serve students when they weren’t in school. And students now understand learning comes from learning modules they can access from any computer.”

But the trend can’t solely be placed on the covid-19 lockdown. Kindergartners last year, who are children too young to have experienced the pandemic, have chronic absenteeism rates 48% above 2019 levels, according to the report.

Some parents also allow children to take off school for “mental health days,” Toldson said.

“We have more mental health awareness now than we used to,” Toldson said. “We take it more seriously as a society. Schools need to understand or get a handle on policies in terms of giving days off for mental health challenges.”

Pittsburgh Area Community Schools works with eight districts, including East Allegheny, Clairton, Duquesne, Sto-Rox and Aliqquipa. They have a special focus on attendance with New Kensington-Arnold, Burrell, and Greensburg-Salem.

“It was a pretty steep learning curve to be social again,” Robinson said of students returning to school post-pandemic. “Students went from being isolated to now being engaged. It was a transition for students, and a transition for everybody.

“We’re still working through the aftermath of the pandemic. Things might not be moving as fast as we thought they were, but we have to stay the course.”

Personal and societal factors also play a role in why students are chronically absent. More families became transient due to financial pressures, and reliable transportation to and from school can be difficult.

“When we look nationwide, people who live in impoverished conditions are more likely to miss school,” Toldson said. “Statistics also show children in more vulnerable positions — 64% of students experiencing homelessness — are chronically absent.”

Understanding the story

Schools need to dig deeper to find out the reasons why a student might not attend school, Toldson said.

“School districts that take a more granular approach to understand why students aren’t coming, and give targeted support for students missing school, seems to help,” Toldson said. “A lot of school districts want to change the numbers. They make a commitment to bring it down, but they don’t understand the story behind the numbers.”

Pittsburgh Area Community Schools does try to understand the numbers. Robinson said his staff uses initiatives that are schoolwide, broken into small groups of students, or by individual students.

“It’s received very well,” Robinson said of the initatives. “School is a place where students want to be. When you create these opportunities and engagements, and students enjoy it, they want to show up. It’s more of a cultural change.”

At Burrell and Greensburg-Salem, for example, attendance specialists held weekly truancy intervention lunch meetings with students who were chronically absent or truant. New Kensington-Arnold held schoolwide events that aimed to include parents and improve teachers’ attendance. Those events have contributed to spikes in perfect or near-perfect attendance, Robinson said

“From our lens, we want to put the community back in our schools,” Robinson said. “It’s taking a collaborative approach in how you work with providers, and it’s a collaborative strategy.”

Making connections

The Montour School District has one of the lowest chronic absenteeism rates in the region. The tracker reports Montour’s chronic absenteeism rate as 12% in 2018, dipping to just 8% in 2019 and 2021, and leveling out at 13% last year. Superintendent Christopher Stone said several things contributed to the district’s attendance rates.

“Our district remained open for in-person instruction during the pandemic,” he said. “That continuity helped establish routines and reinforced the importance of students being present and engaged in school.”

Montour staff makes every effort to be proactive before attendance concerns arise, Stone said. They work with families to identify challenges early, and provide support wherever possible.

“I also believe our school culture plays a significant role,” he said. “We work hard to ensure that every student feels welcomed, supported and valued socially, emotionally and academically. Students are more likely to attend school consistently when they feel connected to the people and programs around them.”

The experts agree.

“When you give targeted support — something as basic as coming to listen and find out why a student is not coming, or what’s available to welcome back to school, or clear up confusions of school policy, that’s the first step,” Toldson said.

Schools should engage in “wrap-around services”: including social support, resources, mental health care, and other community services, Toldson said. They also should evaluate how students get to school, and if it’s dangerous, reliable or pedestrian-friendly. Discipline, and overly relying on suspensions, can have a negative impact on attendance overall, he said.

Robinson said students’ mental health — like social, safety or peer pressures — contribute to them not wanting to come to school. Having a positive relationship with school, and making sure students feel represented and safe at school, is paramount to them showing up each day.

After-school programming also helps drive school attendance, Robinson said, because it gives students something to look forward to and participate in by coming to school.

“We’re trying to plant seeds and play the long game,” he said, “and we’ve had some success.”