During the pandemic, more kids missed more school than they had pretty much ever before. But, for one population in particular, that trend has only gotten worse in the years since.
A new investigation by The Associated Press and Chalkbeat found that Native American students are more likely to be chronically absent from school today — way more likely. This was true to some extent before the pandemic, but now, most states saw absenteeism rates for Native students that were at least 9 percentage points higher than the state average.
In Arizona, they found, chronic absenteeism for Native students rose from 22% before the pandemic, to 45% in the 2022-2023 school year.
Kalyn Belsha, senior national reporter for Chalkbeat, joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
KAYLN BELSHA: So for most states, the definition of chronic absenteeism is a student who's missed 10% or more of the school year, which in most cases, is around 18 days, which adds up to a month of school.
LAUREN GILGER: Wow. OK, and I'm assuming that that has pretty obvious and detrimental, you know, impact on that kid's education?
BELSHA: Yeah, there's a lot of research that has shown when kids miss that kind of school, they fall behind. They're missing the kinds of crucial supports that they can get, either mental health services, health services, if they are getting special education services, you know, anything that you can get in person when you're not at school, you're not getting that.
GILGER: OK, so chronic absenteeism really went up during the pandemic. Previous reasons, I think, but you have found that those rates really haven't gotten a lot better since like this continues to be a big problem for schools across the country, it sounds like?
BELSHA: Yeah, and this is something that confused a lot of schools. I think people thought that when the pandemic went away, that we would see this go back down to pre-pandemic rates, and schools really saw kind of a level of disengagement that they hadn't seen in the past. Students and families that felt like they didn't have to go to school as often, that they could do their work from home. A lot of assignments were still available online, so kids were kind of doing their work remotely, like they had during the pandemic. We also saw families were really concerned about illness in ways that maybe they wouldn't have kept their kid home before, and they had a cold, and so they kept them home.
GILGER: Yeah.
BELSHA: And so kids were staying home for illness more often, too.
GILGER: But in this piece, you and several other reporters here look at the data around the country and found that this is especially true for Native American students, much worse, in fact, for this particular population, tell us what that looks like. What's the data look like on that?
BELSHA: So before the pandemic, Native American students miss school at higher rates, too. But we found that when we looked at kind of how it had changed from before the pandemic to the year after the pandemic, the rates for Native American students stayed much higher in many, many states, it was 9 percentage points higher than the state average, which is quite high, and at least two dozen states, the rate for Native American students went up much quicker than it did for the state. So that means that Native American students were just missing more school more often than other kids.
GILGER: So, why? What are the reasons cited for Native American students being, you know, this disproportionately affected?
BELSHA: Yeah, some of it definitely had to do with the disengagement that we heard about that's affecting students, kind of across the board. Some of it has to do with a historic distrust that many Native American families have for their schools, and maybe not feeling like their school is very welcoming to them.
A lot of Native American students live in more rural or isolated communities that transportation is needed to get to school. And so we heard, you know, if a kid missed the bus, that was kind of it. We heard from a lot of teachers that some kids were sleeping in. Maybe they had stayed up late on social media or playing video games, and then they missed their transportation. And then there's also, we heard some students kind of feeling a sense of disengagement or anxiety after they fell behind at school during the pandemic.
GILGER: So hard to catch up. Yeah, how did these issues of poverty play into this? You mentioned the rural aspect, a lot of this, and also the kind of troubled history. The history of, you know, Native American boarding schools, abuse, etc. But I wonder, like, is it as simple as, like, you know, not having a ride to school, not having clean clothes to wear?
BELSHA: Yeah ,those can both be definitely, definitely. Those can both be issues that we heard about, and I think that there's other issues, too, when a family doesn't maybe have the same resources to offer catch up services for their child, or if a family is struggling with food insecurity, or the family needs to work, and the older student is tapped to watch their younger siblings. These are all kinds of stemming from poverty that can affect a child's attendance rates.
GILGER: Right. OK, so let's zoom in and talk about Arizona. Here we saw chronic absenteeism, you report, go up here, up to 45% in the 2022-2023 school year. The worst example it sounds like was in the San Carlos Unified School District, which is near the San Carlos reservation in eastern Arizona. Tell us what's happening there.
BELSHA: Yeah, so that is a district with a superintendent who knew that this was something they really wanted to focus on, and she's been really conscious of trying to do kind of more culturally relevant instruction. Bringing more activities that are relevant for Native kids and families.
But one thing that they tried was introducing what they called care centers, and so these were places that would offer kind of more primary care and mental health support for students and families. And they said that they felt like this really did help, because we encouraged people to come back into the buildings. It gave them a way to get people in the door if they said that they weren't feeling well. And it also gave staff a chance to form a relationship with students and families. And so it kind of served in lots of different ways that it could help improve attendance.
GILGER: Did they see it work? I mean, like, these are not the approaches I would have assumed you'd take, right? Like, this is much more. It sounds like community-based.
BELSHA: Yeah, they did see their chronic absenteeism rate go down after they installed this. And I think that's not the only thing they think helped. They think it was kind of a constellation of things that they tried, but they do think that these health-care options helped a lot with some attendance.
GILGER: That's really interesting. Tell us a little bit about some of the other ideas that you report on that schools are coming up with around the country to try to fix this particular issue. It sounds like lots of innovative approaches are being tried.
BELSHA: Yeah, I heard a combination of both, like, new things schools were trying, and then also doubling down on old things that they know kind of work. A lot of schools told me that they were adding more events at the school that would encourage families to come in. So either, like, open school nights, festivals, things where it would encourage students and families to stay at the school. I heard that that was something that kind of created a more welcoming environment.
I also heard that schools were trying things around transportation that they hadn't tried in the past. One school district told me that they actually started partnering with the tribal education liaison, and anytime a student on the reservation missed the bus, they had somebody else who would take them to school. So there was kind of a standby, somebody who was volunteering to make sure that they would take the child to school.
In other states, I also have heard about parents volunteering to walk kids to school to make sure that they have someone who is like watching out for them and might knock on their door if they, you know, didn't wake up on time. So there's just kind of, like, it often looks like more adults paying really close attention and really focusing on this.
Yeah, and I've also heard that a lot of school districts are just really paying attention to kind of warning signs in their data. So instead of waiting for the child to be missing a lot of school, like, if they've missed maybe one or two days, they start calling the family, seeing what's going on, is there anything that they can do, and trying to make sure families know it's not a punitive thing. I know for Native American families, that was really important, like, they don't want to hear that protective services or police might get involved, because that is what has happened in the past. So the school has to really kind of emphasize, like, we're here to help, and we're really trying to, like, just get you the support that you need.