KC’s no-shows: Students fall through the cracks as absences surge in suburban district
School officials across the Kansas City metro have warned about thousands of students missing class and falling through the cracks with online learning and other obstacles during the pandemic.
But now for the first time, a local school district has gone public with just how severe the problem may be — providing a glimpse into the hurdles ahead for all districts.
The Shawnee Mission district is reporting a spike in the number of students who have been frequently absent from classrooms and Zoom lessons this school year — many of whom are students of color and the district’s most vulnerable children.
It said 16%, or more than 4,000 students have been chronically absent during the COVID-19 pandemic, up from 12% in previous years. More startling, 29% of Black students have missed a crucial amount of school, compared to 11% of white students.
The impacts are already apparent: For example, in middle schools during the first semester, 15% of all grades were Fs, compared to 5% the year before. In high school, 11% of grades were Fs, up from 5%.
“If students are failing, slipping through the cracks, but showing up each day, we have an opportunity to be successful with them,” Joe Gilhaus, Shawnee Mission director of secondary services, recently told the school board. “But when we can’t get a hold of the students who are chronically absent, when we can’t make contact with the parents, we’re pulling our hair out. And trying to get them in (to school) is our biggest problem.”
Before now, with a lack of reliable attendance data, the real scope of students’ learning loss this past year has been difficult to determine, both nationally and in the Kansas City area.
But educators do have concrete evidence of the ramifications of chronic absenteeism: Students who have missed 10% of school are 11 times more likely to have at least one failing grade, district leaders said. Educators worry it could take years for some to catch up. And some are at risk of not graduating.
Educators across both Kansas and Missouri have warned of students simply not showing up during the pandemic.
Some of the absences are more easily explained: Many families have moved their children to private school, online academies or home school, and those changes aren’t always immediately reported. But educators also say many students are on the books and not frequently, or ever, attending class.
Randy Watson, Kansas education commissioner, said he’s heard from many districts, anecdotally, about how they “can’t find the kids.”
“They didn’t come back. ... we don’t know where they’re at,” he said at a recent state board meeting.
An October study by the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners estimated that about 3 million of the most “marginalized students in the country” may have been missing from school since the pandemic forced school closures more than a year ago.
But just how many students have been missing from classrooms, in both Kansas and Missouri, remains unclear. Attendance data is typically not reported to the state until after the school year ends, and it is often being collected differently during the pandemic, making it more difficult to compare year-over-year data.
And officials in many districts — including Olathe, Blue Valley, Lee’s Summit and Raytown — said they couldn’t provide The Star with their absenteeism rates until after the school year. Some districts, like Kansas City Public Schools and the Kansas City, Kansas district, said they did not expect a huge spike in absenteeism.
When schools were fully online, many students fell off the map due to unreliable internet and the challenges of learning from home. When students returned to classrooms, many were absent while quarantining after a COVID-19 exposure. But many students who were supposed to be learning in hybrid and in-person classes aren’t attending school for a variety of other reasons.
“Families really have to have flexibility to get kids to school. In hybrid situations, it’s much more difficult to have your kid show up for a few hours or a couple of days a week, especially with work schedules and limited transportation,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of the national organization Attendance Works. “Then you hear about high school kids who now have to work, or some who have more sibling care-taking responsibilities. Their younger sibling is on a different schedule, but they’re responsible for them getting to class.”
She worries that the rise in chronic absences is exacerbating learning gaps, especially in districts that are less affluent than Shawnee Mission.
In many cases, teachers and school staff have been calling parents and knocking on doors to locate students.
Districts could use federal COVID-19 relief dollars to help track them down. Many are using the money to ramp up summer school offerings, to help students catch up before moving up a grade level next fall.
And the Shawnee Mission district is hoping to use relief funding to temporarily hire more teachers, social workers and counselors, to help reduce some class sizes over the next few years and have more staff members available to connect with students.
“If we had one or two staff members who have that relationship (with a student), they can get them to the front door. And then if we can give them some sort of success in the building, then they’re going to be a little bit more excited about coming to school. Maybe we can tie them in with an activity or club,” Gilhaus said. “So there are all kinds of different things you can put in play to get them here. But we’ve got to get them here.”
‘Kids who never showed up’
When one-third of her students were missing from Zoom classes, Holly Jukes started making phone calls.
The Kansas City, Kansas, middle school teacher spent hours tracking down students who seemingly fell off the map during the pandemic. Much of her class is made up of English language learners, many of whom struggled to navigate the online version of school. She worried that if she didn’t make a meaningful connection with them, the students would be lost.
“I had kids who never showed up to a class, who had straight zeroes across the board,” she said. “Some of them didn’t have internet. Some don’t have anyone to hold them accountable. Some of them are depressed and struggle to do anything. You’ve got to get them online to teach them.”
Watson said that he assumes the districts that remained in online classes the longest — like KCK, which was fully virtual longer than any other district in the metro area or the state — would see the greatest learning loss among students. And it still remains to be seen how far students fell behind if they struggled to stay engaged, or didn’t show up at all, to classes.
Before the pandemic, one in six students was considered chronically absent across the nation, according to an analysis of federal data by Attendance Works and Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center. Chang said early data suggests that figure could double this year, meaning one in three students.
She also said early data shows students who aren’t in school are missing more of class than they would in a typical year.
“You have a group of kids who aren’t just missing 10% or 20% of school; they’re missing 50% of school,” she said. “So the level of absenteeism among the kids who are struggling is more severe, and that’s really troubling.”
The highest levels of absenteeism are expected in communities hardest hit by the pandemic.
Chronic absenteeism is a major contributor to inequity in schools. It also serves as a predictor for students being less likely to read by third grade and more likely to drop out of high school, according to data from Attendance Works.
In Shawnee Mission, more students of color — including 24% of Hispanic students — were marked chronically absent than their white classmates. Among students who qualify for free and reduced lunch, 26% have been chronically absent, compared to 18.8% the year before. And more than 27% of English language learners have missed too much school, up from 15%.
Students across Kansas City districts were not penalized for absences during the pandemic as they typically would be.
District leaders said several students have suffered a job loss in their families, and some high schoolers have gotten jobs to help pay the bills.
“If the child doesn’t have a full belly, the child isn’t going to learn,” Shawnee Mission school board president Heather Ousley said at a meeting this month.
Gilhaus suggested that the district needs to think outside of the box to reach these students.
“We’ve got to get them here. Over this past year, we’ve had a lot of students who have gone to work and started making money. And they need that money for their families,” he said. “So trying to get them back, how can we tie in work programs with getting an education, correlating that with our curriculum to get them success and get them a high school diploma?”
“The chronic absenteeism is a huge hurdle.”
Shawnee Mission and other districts are seeing more students struggle to pass classes than in a typical year. Jennifer Kephart, associate superintendent for Lee’s Summit, said that her district also has seen a rise in the number of D and F grades in secondary classes, which is part of the reason it is increasing its offerings for summer school this year.
In KCK, Jukes said teachers had success tracking down many of their students who weren’t showing up to online classes.
Lisa Garcia-Stewart, director of student services, said the district — which typically has a high mobility rate for students — has a robust system for connecting with absent students. Teachers and social workers make home visits and connect with families however they can to keep chronic absenteeism as low as possible.
She doesn’t expect to see a major spike in chronic absences, possibly in the range of 5% to 7% districtwide, although exact data was not provided.
And now that students have been back in classrooms for a few weeks, Jukes said attendance rates in her classroom have improved. But the impact of missing out on more than a year of traditional schooling remains to be seen in her district.
Still, she said fostering connections with students could make all the difference.
“The relationship is everything,” she said.
Trying to fix the problem
As area districts determine how to spend millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funding, it’s clear that a large chunk of the money will go toward addressing this year’s learning loss.
Districts are expanding summer school and offering night classes to students who need extra flexibility. They’re dedicating certain staff members to reach out to students who have stopped showing up to classes. And the Shawnee Mission district is the first to say that more teachers and social workers are needed to help students recover from the pandemic.
Shawnee Mission officials outlined a plan this month to spend millions in federal relief funding on hiring 18 new elementary teachers, which would help reduce class sizes. It is looking to hire 10 math teachers at the secondary level, knowing that math was an especially difficult subject to keep up with with virtual classes.
The district also could hire seven new elementary social workers, counselors for each of the district’s high schools, plus more than 50 substitute teachers, among others.
Officials said that the positions will be temporary, as they are funded through short-term federal relief money, and would have to either be cut or absorbed into the district budget in a few years.
But they hope that having some smaller class sizes and more staff members to connect with students, that children will have a better chance of meeting the academic goals expected before the pandemic began.
“We need to understand who’s on track and who’s struggling,” Superintendent Mike Fulton told the school board. “And then we need to be able to put interventions in place that really make sure that students are in fact mastering those important competencies that are foundational for future learning.”
In the meantime, state leaders expect more work ahead to track down missing students and then encourage them to show up to class.
They worry that it will take years to lessen the inequities made wider during the pandemic.
Janet Waugh, Kansas board of education member who represents Wyandotte County and the Shawnee Mission district, said that the number of students missing classes is “frightening” — as is the academic loss accompanying it. She said other agencies, including the state Department for Children and Families, will likely need to assist.
“This is a real concern of mine because these are probably our most needy children,” Waugh said. “So this is going to take a real effort to locate all of these children. … We’re going to need some help.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
