Where Have Tens Of Thousands Of U.S. Students Gone Since The Pandemic?

ACROSS AMERICA — The number of public school students who were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year jumped dramatically from the prior school year, when schools abruptly closed in COVID-19 social distancing measures, according to a new report.

The number of schools reporting “high” or “extreme” levels of absenteeism in 2021-22 nearly doubled to an unprecedented 66 percent, up from 25 percent before the pandemic, Johns Hopkins University researchers said of their analysis of federal Education Department data released Thursday.

The national data show that nearly 14.7 million students (29.7 percent) were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year. The jump in absences means that roughly 6.5 million more students were missing 10 percent or more of the 180-day school year, compared to attendance before the pandemic.

Absenteeism varies by state. States with absenteeism rates above 40 percent in 2021-22 were in Arizona (46.3 percent), Arkansas (45.8 percent), Washington, D.C. (43.9 percent), Oregon (41.7 percent), New Mexico (41.1 percent), Montana (41 percent) and Michigan (40.1 percent).

Six states had absenteeism rates below 20 percent: Idaho (3.5 percent), New Jersey (17.2 percent), Washington (18.2 percent), Louisiana (18.4 percent) and Virginia (19.5 percent).

There’s no single reason why absenteeism has soared. Robert Balfanz, a co-author of the analysis and professor of education at Johns Hopkins, told The Washington Post that some students skip classes to juggle jobs, or they could be wrestling with a mental health issue.

In a 2021 youth survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 40 percent of students reported feeling so sad or hopeless that they gave up their daily activities. One reason, according to researchers’ estimates, is that hundreds or thousands of students had a parent or grandparent who died of COVID-19.

The authors said not only are teaching and learning more challenging when large numbers of students frequently skip school, elevated levels of chronic absence can easily overwhelm a school’s capacity to respond.

Stemming the problem requires systemic, blame-free efforts at the local, state and national levels to address the disengagement and increased barriers to attendance occurring during the pandemic and in its aftermath, they said.