The recent report of declining test scores among middle school students has alarmed parents and educators about the loss of in-class instructional time during the pandemic years. The details of that NAEP score decline are reported in the June 21 edition of the New York Times, among other media outlets.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/us/naep-test-results-education.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20230621&instance_id=0&nl=breakingnews&ref=cta&regi_id=58015410&segment_id=136280&user_id=c0905f751b354fe438caeb62c91726b3]

More concerning, the overall trend of testing by the National Assessment of Educational Progress over the years prior to the pandemic shows a regular decline, as noted in the Times article:

Performance has fallen significantly since the 2019-2020 school year, when the coronavirus pandemic wrought havoc on the nation’s education system. But the downward trends reported today began years before the health crisis, raising questions about a decade of disappointing results for American students.

The decline of Math and Verbal scores could be influenced by many factors. One cause echoes the seclusion of the corona-virus: chronic absenteeism, which also deprives students of the physical community and the facilities of the school. Chronic absence from the building where crucial learning takes place might be a reason for declining test scores both during the pandemic and before.  Without the peer and teacher reinforcement, the responsive approach to learning, the technology used to reinforce learning– all that is offered by attending school–students who are chronically absent miss the assets of in-person learning.

In the statistics provided below, chronic absence is defined as missing 10% of school days or more in a school year. Here are the most recent data for chronic absence:

	Percent of Students Chronically Absent (Chronic Absence Rate)						Number of Chronically Absent Students
	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21		2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21

US TOTALS

12.8%

16.0%

16.2%

11.9%

20.5%

6,479,434

8,095,132

8,171,271

6,043,980

10,100,372

Compiled by “Attendance Works,” an attendance-compiling study that highlights the effects of absenteeism on test results.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OEyUeswKs0lAMrWZaRbTX1rNEvWab-jI/edit#gid=1510369153

These figures indicate that as many as 8 million students (16.2%) have been chronically absent in an ordinary year, with 10 million chronically absent during the throes of the corona-virus. Those numbers of chronically absent students could easily drive down average test scores. The compiler of these statistics, “Attendance Works,” also highlights the public to research showing the academic impact of chronic absenteeism. (see https://awareness.attendanceworks.org/wp-content/uploads/Research2016.pdf).

Poor attendance is sometimes the elephant in the room when teachers and administrators discuss academic performance, because they assume that the responsibility for attendance is outside their control, more a function of family and student attitudes toward education. Sadly, some parents may send their children to school only to qualify for entitlement benefits,  which require a periodic “present” at school during the academic year. Such attendance has no benefit to education.

Schools are not helpless to improve attendance, even though students are motivated by their upbringing and home support to attend schools. “Attendance Works” identifies five strategies to address faltering school attendance, including “Programatic Responses” that the school can implement once the causes have been identified:

Identifying the barriers to attendance can indicate the appropriate solutions, whether that involves, for example, establishing uniform closets, improving access to health care, launching walking school buses, providing tutoring, offering mentoring, developing morning or after school care and other approaches. https://www.attendanceworks.org/chronic-absence/addressing-chronic-absence/strategies-for-school-sites/

Without getting into the weeds of school-specific solutions, the programs recommended by “Attendance Works” are practical to implement, if a school can devote or acquire resources to address the chronic absence problem, but it is a uniquely community-based problem.

Chronic absenteeism can be a consequence of poverty and broken families, along with the individual motivation of children to attend school. It is a community problem, best solved by the collaboration of social agencies within a community. Everything from transportation to public recognition can affect school attendance.

With the ability to offer virtual attendance, schools may have provided students and parents the motivation to miss in-person schooling to accommodate family needs, such as baby-sitting younger siblings, working full time to support family income, or avoiding problematic interactions at school.  Parents might consider virtual schooling a convenience that fits their life-style.

But the evidence of testing at the middle school level over the past decade confirms that learning outside of school is not a good option for adolescent students.  Motivation to learn is seldom enhanced outside of the school building, even if some students have been shown to thrive there. Participation in the school community increases motivation to learn and provides the individual reinforcement most students require in the middle years.

Virtual learning is mostly effective for students already motivated to learn. Consistent in-person attendance is the first step along the learning curve for most middle school students. School leaders and parents should resolve to keep students attending in person to preserve the valuable physical community of schools.