WHERE’S THE ALARM?
50,000 Arizona students are missing:
Following a 5% attendance drop in our state’s public schools since COVID-19 forced K-12 shut, we must now find and return them to learning in classrooms across the state
Since Arizona schools were ordered to shutter in March 2020, public schools and districts have cobbled together an uneven system of how to best remain connected to students, educating them in the midst of COVID-19.
Lost in this crisis are an estimated 50,000 students who have “ghosted” this school year. That is a 5% drop in attendance in Arizona’s public schools.
And as schools move between virtual learning, hybrid, and in-person, the likelihood of students vanishing from schools increases.
I spoke with Larry McGill, principal of South Pointe High School in south Phoenix. He has personally taken to making home visits – and even walking the streets of the neighborhoods around his school – looking for students who have vanished from his rosters.
“Yes, we make phone calls, send texts and emails,” he assured me. “But in many cases, our students are facing overwhelming issues. Homelessness. Hunger. Multiple family members sick or dying from COVID-19. School is the last thing on their minds right now. They are just trying to survive.”
McGill went on to tell me about two sisters who regularly attended virtual instruction through the Chromebooks and internet hotspot his school provided. Without warning, the two girls stopped attending.
Trusting his instincts, McGill showed up at their home address. He found that their “home” was a carport with tarps hanging around it and an extension cord running from the house in front to the carport behind. The two girls admitted they had accidentally broken the hotspot and were too afraid to tell the school, knowing their single mom couldn’t pay for it.
They simply stopped attending. “We were lucky,” McGill said. “We found them, reassured them they
wouldn’t be charged, got them a new hotspot, and they are back in class. But for those two students who were found, I have so many others I’m still looking for.”
It’s the students who are most vulnerable who are largely missing from Arizona’s classrooms. In July, the American Institutes for Research published a report outlining alarming indicators of disparity between high-poverty and low-poverty districts and the relation to students who are missing from school.
Among 2,500 school districts and 250 public charter school management organizations surveyed, the report highlights 61% of low-poverty schools regularly monitoring remote logins of students, compared to just 45% of highpoverty schools.
And last October, Bellwether published a report indicating absenteeism is especially high in our most disadvantaged students – those in foster care, English language learners, migrants and homeless students.
It should be obvious that students who attend less learn less. The Brookings Institution puts a finer point on this fact by highlighting the long-term effects of absenteeism. Published prepandemic, their reporting indicates the number of absences in eighth grade is eight times more predictive of freshman year course failure than eighth grade test scores.
For younger learners, chronic absenteeism accounts for lower achievement in reading and math, which follows the student into higher grades. And these gaps are difficult to close, especially when coupled with other factors such as poverty.
In their report, the Center for American
Progress points out bleak economic prospects for students who don’t complete high school. Those with a diploma are 14% more likely to obtain a job than their peers without one. High school dropouts earn 28% less than high school graduates – approximately $300,000 less over a lifetime.
The individual and collective impact of these missing 50,000 students compels us to find and return them to school.
An influx of $1.084 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds is a good first step, allowing schools to apply for and receive funding that can be used for outreach to vulnerable students.
But it takes caring school leaders and teachers reaching out – in person, if necessary – to find these missing students.
Or, perhaps, it takes all of us looking for students who have become invisible and caring what happens to their future. And ours.