Absenteeism in Transylvania County Schools Goes from Bad to Worse
Fewer kids are regularly missing class than last school year, but the rate of chronic absenteeism has long been higher locally than statewide and remains far higher than before the Covid-19 pandemic.
BREVARD — Chronic student absenteeism — an issue even before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic — has become a major concern at Transylvania County Schools, Board members were told at a Monday night work session.
Jessica Sharp, the district’s drop-out prevention coordinator, displayed a graph showing that, as recently as the 2015-16 school year, fewer than 12 percent of the county’s elementary students were chronically absent.
So far this year, that number is higher than 28 percent.
“This reflects an exponential growth,” said School Board member Chris Wiener.
“It’s getting there,” Sharp acknowledged.
Her presentation came after an update on mid-year testing results that, though not as telling as year-end results, showed an uneven rebound in student performance in the wake of the pandemic.
For example, high schoolers’ scores in math generally showed strong gains compared to last year while results of biology and English tests not only lagged behind pre-pandemic numbers, but behind mid-year scores recorded in 2021-22, when instruction was still disrupted by mask mandates and Covid-19 isolation requirements.
“These numbers are not exciting,” Missy Ellenberger, the district’s director of high school curriculum, student services and safe schools, said in response to questions about the English scores.
“Lots of work to be done.”
The continued high levels of chronic absenteeism no doubt play a part in these results, said Sharp, who presented results of broad-ranging studies that showed the close relationship between attendance and learning.
One example: Students in eighth through 12 grades who are chronically absent — defined as missing 10 percent of class days — are seven times more likely to drop out of high school.
“It doesn’t take a PHD in statistics to understand that there is a positive correlation between attendance and academic learning,” Board member Ron Kiviniemi said after the session.
Sharp did include some good news. Rates of frequently absent students have dropped in all grades compared to last school year and dramatically so in high schools, where her drop-out prevention efforts are concentrated.
But more students were regularly missing class in Transylvania than in the rest of the state before the pandemic. And though the main impacts of Covid-19 have now passed, they instilled habits that are likely contributing to continued high rates of chronic absenteeism, Sharp said.
As the district returned to in-person instruction last school year, many students were forced to miss class because of exposure to Covid, either because they were sick or forced to isolate, Sharp said after the meeting.
Because of these factors, Sharp said, “when a student was absent teachers were pretty willing and flexible to provide online options and make-up work options,” she said.
Fast-forward to this year and “I think a lot of kids got used to the idea that, ‘Well, if I’m absent, I can just email my teacher and ask them what I missed,’ ” she said.
But the trend in increased absenteeism started well before the pandemic, Sharp told the Board, displaying a graph that showed chronic absenteeism of elementary students more than doubled over the six years leading up to the 2018-19 school year, when the rate in Transylvania was 13.7 percent.
For students in all grades that year the rate in Transylvania was higher than in the state as a whole — about 19 percent compared to less than 16 percent.
Attendance rates during the two years before the 2021-22 school year are considered unreliable because of the complexities of tracking online and blended learning, she said. But last year the level of chronic absenteeism in Transylvania skyrocketed to 39 percent compared to 31 percent in all of North Carolina.
And this year, the number of students regularly missing classes remains far above pre-pandemic levels. At TC Henderson Elementary School, for example, nearly half of all students missed 18 or more days last school year while, without successful intervention, 37 percent are on pace to do the same this school year, Sharp said.
She used a different measurement for the county’s middle schoolers, tracking students accumulating 10 or more unexcused absences during the school year, the definition of truancy under state law. That number, 65 in 2013-14, jumped to 297 last school year, while this year is forecast to remain at the still-high level of 236, she said.
More positive trends could be seen at the high school level, said Sharp, whose position is paid for by federal funds designed to help schools recover from the pandemic.
“The middle schools and elementary school are definitely making efforts” to encourage attendance, she said, but because her mandate is to keep children from dropping out, her work is focused on the high schools.
She coordinates with teams of administrators, counselors and social workers to reach out to students, typically, after they accumulate three absences.
These efforts start with telephone calls and emails. Other steps may include face-to-face meetings with parents and students at schools and, when families don’t respond to other forms of outreach, visits to students’ homes.
She and other school staffers emphasize the benefits of attendance — the “carrots,” Sharp said — such as improved learning and access to vocational training. But parents are also warned of potential consequences of missing school, including grade reduction or ineligibility for extracurricular activities, as well as, in rare instances, misdemeanor truancy charges from school resource officers.
Partly because of this work, the number of students who missed nine or more days of school at Brevard High School, for example, dropped from 442 in the fall semester of 2021 to 245 in the fall of 2022.
“The number has gone down significantly,” Sharp told the Board.
Ellenberger’s presentation also included some positive developments in the performance of high school students. Rates of proficiency in Math 1 were generally higher for high school students than after last fall, and at Rosman High School, more than 85 percent of students scored at least a three on the Math 1 test, which is graded on a scale of one to five.
But these results also show the difficulty of capturing conclusive data after one semester, Ellenberger wrote in an email after the work session. That is especially true because of the schedule in which formerly year-long classes are concentrated into semester-long blocks, meaning different groups of students take tests at the completion of these blocks.
“Advanced math students at (Rosman High) take Math 1 in the fall and that is not always the case at (Brevard High),” she wrote. “It would be expected that (Rosman) scores and (Brevard) scores will be more in alignment at the end of the school year when all students registered for Math 1 and Math 3 have been assessed,” she wrote.
The proficiency rates in biology — well below 50 percent at Rosman, for example — can likewise be explained partly by the small number of students who took the class and the test in the fall. Many of these students, Ellenberger also told the Board, are taking an “occupational course of study.”
But she also acknowledged that, while end-of-course exams will show improved proficiency rates in English compared to the first semester of this year, results will likely remain slightly below last year’s levels.
Carrie Norris, director of K-8 curriculum and instruction, provided statistics after the meeting that showed significant learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. For example, 65 percent of eighth graders achieved a score of three or better on reading tests at the end of the 2018-19 school year; that number fell to 50 percent at the end of last year.
The information she presented to the Board showed elementary students making strong gains in reading and math compared to both the beginning of this year and last school year. These diagnostic appraisals showed less improvement among middle school students because, once older students fall behind, she told the Board, “it becomes harder and harder and harder to make those gains.”
Both she and Ellenberger explained strategies for improving performance. Ellenberger emphasized improved tracking of progress throughout the year and earlier invention when it begins to lag.
Norris said the same federal program that pays Sharp’s salary has allowed the district to hire reading specialists and teachers’ assistants.
Considering the close tie between academics and attendance, Kiviniemi had a suggestion if any more such funds become available: hire a staffer dedicated to improving attendance in middle schools.
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