|
|
|
The views expressed on this page are
solely
those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views of County
News Online
|
|
fizkes via Getty Images
Deep Dive
'Relationships matter': Remote learning places new hurdles in fight against chronic absenteeism
Schools are employing a variety of tactics to measure attendance in
virtual environments, but defining students' "presence" remains a
challenge.
Natalie Gross
Nov. 12, 2020
When students at El Puente M.S. 50 Community School in Brooklyn, New
York, log into Zoom at 8:30 a.m. each school day, they’re greeted by a
remote school coach who takes attendance, checks in with students and
stays online with them throughout the entire school day, even as
teachers come and go.
“Every time the bell rings, there’s a little transition time where the
coach does some more community building like, ‘Hey, great job in ELA
class. I really liked your participation,’” said Principal Ben Honoroff.
Then, the coach preps students for the next class and introduces the
incoming teacher with a theme song — something akin to the walk-up
songs for baseball players at the New York Yankees stadium. And if any
student is late to school or drops off halfway through the day, the
coaches are texting parents to see what’s up.
These strategies — the addition of coaches and hosting students in one
Zoom session all day, rather than having them switch in between classes
— came after lessons learned in the spring, when student attendance was
inconsistent based on time of day and subject area. School leaders
realized they needed to do more to keep students engaged.
The approach seems to be working for El Puente M.S. 50, which has seen
“significantly higher” online attendance this fall, compared to the
spring, Honoroff said.
And on the day he talked to Education Dive, the school had 100%
attendance — not an easy feat in the remote learning era of COVID-19,
where access to Wi-Fi, technology hiccups, family situations and other
factors exacerbated by the pandemic have seen students drop off from
participating in online learning, worrying education advocates and
administrators alike about increased levels of chronic absenteeism at a
time with little oversight and uniformity in how schools are keeping
track of attendance.
No standard metric
“In the past, everyone kind of knew what it meant for a kid to be in
school or not,” said Hedy Chang, executive director and president of
Attendance Works, an organization that aims to advance student success
and close equity gaps by reducing chronic absenteeism. “You’re in
school because your body is in the classroom and someone saw you.”
Attendance was such a “common sense” metric, she said, that many states
included chronic absenteeism as an accountability measure under the
federal Every Student Succeeds Act and reported data on the number of
students missing 10% of school days or more in an academic year.
Schools received a waiver for this metric from the U.S. Department of
Education in the spring, yet no waiver has been granted this fall.
“Accountability works when everybody is doing the same thing, and
you’re holding them accountable for it. We don’t have standard measures
of attendance anymore, and that makes accountability harder,” Chang
said.
Now, there are huge variations in how states and districts are
determining whether students are present or absent from school on a
given day, she said.
At El Puente M.S. 50, students have to attend classes for the whole day
— 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. — in order to be counted present, just as they
would if they were attending school in-person, Honoroff said.
Yet in many cases, attendance is more complicated.
Low bars with few exceptions
“When the new school year started, there was a real emphasis on making
sure that attendance was being tracked, but there’s a lot of challenges
on how to do that — especially in a remote setting, but also in a
hybrid setting,” said Phyllis Jordan, the editorial director for
FutureEd, a think tank in the McCourt School of Public Policy at
Georgetown University. “Are the students logged in to a computer? Are
they participating in a live, synchronous class, or are they turning in
assignments?”
In their reopening plans for this school year, states took a variety of approaches, Jordan said.
For example, in Connecticut, which has issued statewide guidance for
calculating attendance, students are counted as being “in attendance”
if their total time spent in either synchronous virtual classes,
synchronous virtual meetings, time logged in electronic systems or
assignment submission/completion is equal to at least half of the
school day.
Students in District of Columbia Public Schools in Washington, D.C.,
must do at least one activity in Canvas each school day between 6 a.m.
and 11:59 p.m. — whether that’s logging in, clicking on a link, opening
a course or working on an assignment in the system — to be marked as
present.
Ohio education officials have allowed schools to use assignment
completion as a metric for attendance. So, if a student turns in a
project, such as a diorama, that was expected to take eight hours, that
counts toward eight hours of attendance.
Many state guidelines have stipulations that there be contact between
students and the school, but that’s raised questions about how much
contact equals being present, Jordan said.
“If a teacher calls a student or a student calls a teacher and leaves a
message, is that contact? I think not,” she said. “But if there is an
actual conversation, does it have to be a one-minute conversation, does
it have to be a 10-minute conversation? So, states are trying to figure
that out.”
Other places are not tracking attendance at all for students who are
learning remotely. Chang said, according to her organization’s
analysis, fewer than half of states are mandating daily attendance
right now, compared to pre-COVID days when all states required daily
attendance-taking. And some states are counting students present during
remote learning whether they show up to class or not.
“We have low bars for attendance-taking in most places — there are a
few expectations, I think Connecticut is one of the exceptions — which
means that if you have low bars, you don’t notice that they’re absent,”
Chang said.
This matters, her organization maintains, because absenteeism is a
leading indicator and cause of educational inequity and an early
indicator that positive learning conditions are missing — whether it be
academic, health and safety, or a sense of belonging and support.
'Kids want to be part of something'
“One of the things we know is that relationships matter hugely, said
Natasha Ushomirsky, state director for Massachusetts at Education
Trust, which facilitates the work of the Massachusetts Education Equity
Partnership. “Schools that had stronger relationships with their
students and families saw a lot less of that disconnection kind of
problem than schools that did not.”
If a school’s first call to a parent during a pandemic is to ask why
their child isn’t logging into online classes, that’s not going to go
over well with families, she said, adding, “Relationships matter.”
That’s something Erica Forti, superintendent of East Haven Public
Schools in Connecticut, has prioritized over the last few years, as
she’s overseen a decrease in chronic absenteeism from 15.7% in 2016-17
to 10.7% in 2019-20, according to figures provided by the district.
Forti personally makes phone calls to families and tries to get to know
them and any issues they might be facing that are impacting their kids’
attendance. She also has a dedicated attendance team that makes house
calls, if necessary.
“You don’t know why unless you actually take the time and do the
diligence, reaching out and connecting with these families and getting
to the underlying root cause of why they’re not engaging,” said Forti.
Many of those strategies have carried over into the remote learning
era, as well, and building relationships with families has been
paramount, she said. “Nine times out of 10, you can fix the problem.”
It’s also been the most successful strategy for El Puente M.S. 50 to
combat absenteeism. In addition to livening up class transitions with
music throughout the day, remote coaches are celebrating students’
birthdays, and the school’s dean is hosting a virtual dance party at
lunch.
"We've really put a lot of time and thought into how to build remote
community," Honoroff said. "My hypothesis would be that if we're just
having kids turning in an assignment to get counted for their
attendance, they're going to actually have less attendance. Kids want
to be part of something."
|
|
|
|
