Nearly 1 in 3 BPS students chronically absent last year
Students with disabilities are of particular concern for Hub
Nearly 1 in 3 Boston Public Schools students was chronically absent last year, with numbers particularly high among students with disabilities, according to state figures that worry advocates.
Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data shows that 29.4% of BPS students missed 10 or more days of school from 2020 to 2021, the most recent academic year for which statistics are available.
“That is disturbing,” said Edith Bazile, founder and executive director of Black Advocates for Educational Excellence. “It’s a concern because the continuity and consistency of students being in the classroom to learn critical skills and concepts is central to being successful.”
BPS would not say if students with COVID or those who were quarantined could be counted as present if they only log in online and have minimal interaction with a teacher.
District officials also would not offer any explanation for the level of absenteeism or say whether student attendance is a requirement to pass.
In addition, the district would not say what the absenteeism rate for students as well as teachers was from 2018 to 2021, and how many of each tested positive for the coronavirus, which could have been one reason for not attending class, either in person or remotely.
In 2019 to 2020, 29.1% of students were chronically absent, and in 2018 to 2019, 25.2% regularly didn’t show up for school, according to DESE.
Caitlin Gaffny, a teacher at the Maurice J. Tobin School in Roxbury and an adjunct professor of education at Northeastern University, attributed last year’s percentage solely to the coronavirus.
“The uptick is nothing more than a circumstance of the pandemic and the reality of what children and their families as well as educators experienced during that time,” Gaffney said. “COVID tore through our district, and the percentage of chronically absent students makes sense, given that youngsters were the last group eligible for a vaccine.”
Another factor in the high rate could be the number of students with disabilities who missed 10 or more days of school, said Bazile, a former BPS special education teacher and administrator.
In the 2020-2021 academic year, for example, 38.9% of students with disabilities were chronically absent. In 2019-2020, 29.1% regularly did not show up for school. And in 2018-2019, 33.1% were chronically absent.
The McKinley School alone, a K-12 special education school, had rates that were more than double the district’s: 65%, 60.4% and 67.5%, respectively.
“This is very, very troubling,” Bazile said. “These are students with high needs that require and by law are entitled to be in school to make sure those needs are met.”
Whether students over the three years the statistics cover are disabled or not, she said, chronic absenteeism is of particular concern because it makes students highly vulnerable to dropping out of school, to not graduating and to not transitioning to college.
Teachers are trying to help youngsters make up for lost learning time, and states are beginning their federally mandated educational accountability systems, one of the many requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act from which the U.S. Department of Education excused them because of the pandemic.