This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/many-mps-students-are-chronically-absent/

Many — if not most — kids counted as enrolled in the Milwaukee Public Schools miss at least three weeks of class throughout the year. In some schools, nearly all kids are chronically absent — that is, absent on more than 10% of possible attendance days.

During the 2021-22 school year, the last year for which the Department of Public Instruction provides publicly available data for schools in the state and a year that most MPS classes were back in-person, the chronic absenteeism rate in the MPS district was 58%, according to the district’s DPI Report Card.

Those numbers are higher than in earlier years. But chronic absenteeism is a perennial issue in the district and far worse than it is in Wisconsin on the whole.

Chronic absenteeism leads to lower graduation rates from high school, lower college attendance, and lower college graduation rates, according to Matt Ladner, senior adviser for education policy at the Heritage Foundation.

“This is catastrophic,” he said.

Many of the schools with chronically absent students are at the elementary level, which is particularly disturbing.

Ladner points out that in 2019, even before the pandemic, only 14% of Milwaukee fourth-graders were proficient in reading.

As they progress in school, the material becomes more challenging, “but they can’t read,” he said. “The grade level goes up but they can’t go with it. They become frustrated and feel a cruel joke is being played on them. They can’t see themselves going to college. They start skipping school, and a lot drop out by eighth grade.”

It’s a tragic problem for them but also for the country as a whole. Baby boomers are retiring, but younger generations are often ill-equipped to carry on.

“It is not good,” said Ladner. “It is really not good. The country has a baby bust that started in 2008. They are now 16. They have had their educations completely disrupted by Covid.”

Ladner clarified that. They have had their “educations wrecked,” he said, “by the response to Covid.”

Different districts responded differently. MPS, unlike many places, did not offer in-person classes for long stretches of time. The district closed its schools and then moved online in the spring of 2020, remained online for much of the 2020-21 school year, and returned to in-person learning for the most part in April 2021. Some schools returned to virtual learning at times after that because three cases could close an entire school. By the fall of 2021, the bulk of MPS students were back in-person.

Many students, it now appears, did not attend many of the remote classes. Students were also often absent from in-person classes as well.

For Wisconsin as a whole, the chronic absenteeism rate during the 2021-22 school year was 22.8%. Statewide in the years prior to that, 2019-20 and 2020-21, chronic absenteeism was between 13% and 16%.

During the 2021-22 school year, again, the chronic absenteeism rate was 58% in MPS, according to the district’s DPI Report Card. In the two years prior to that in MPS, chronic absenteeism was between 34% and 37%.

A student in Wisconsin is considered chronically absent if he or she missed more than 10% of possible attendance days, according to the state Department of Public Instruction’s Report Card Guide. The chronic absenteeism rate is the number of students who are chronically absent divided by the total number of students enrolled for at least 90 days.

Absenteeism is an issue for yet another reason.

Lots of buildings in the Milwaukee Public School District are only half-full, according to information district leaders submitted to state legislators.

But the problem with underused classrooms on any given day is actually far more dire than that.

Many of the schools that are only partially full in MPS also have very high absenteeism problems — meaning there are likely even fewer kids in many classrooms than the building inventory data might suggest.

There are at least 20 schools in the district that were at less than half capacity in the last school year, according to a Badger Institute analysis.

Absenteeism rates for the last school year are not readily available, but data released by DPI does run through the 2021-22 school year.

Chronic absenteeism rates in those 20 schools that year were between 61% at Bryant Elementary and 97% at Auer Elementary.

The Badger Institute submitted questions to MPS Wednesday afternoon asking why the numbers are so high, whether the pandemic had anything to do with it, and what the district is doing to decrease chronic absenteeism, but we did not get a response by the end of the day.

Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.

/* = 0;if(!is_postback){return;}var form_content = jQuery(this).contents().find(‘#gform_wrapper_21’);var is_confirmation = jQuery(this).contents().find(‘#gform_confirmation_wrapper_21’).length > 0;var is_redirect = contents.indexOf(‘gformRedirect(){‘) >= 0;var is_form = form_content.length > 0 && ! is_redirect && ! is_confirmation;var mt = parseInt(jQuery(‘html’).css(‘margin-top’), 10) + parseInt(jQuery(‘body’).css(‘margin-top’), 10) + 100;if(is_form){jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_21’).html(form_content.html());if(form_content.hasClass(‘gform_validation_error’)){jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_21’).addClass(‘gform_validation_error’);} else {jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_21’).removeClass(‘gform_validation_error’);}setTimeout( function() { /* delay the scroll by 50 milliseconds to fix a bug in chrome */ jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_21’).offset().top – mt); }, 50 );if(window[‘gformInitDatepicker’]) {gformInitDatepicker();}if(window[‘gformInitPriceFields’]) {gformInitPriceFields();}var current_page = jQuery(‘#gform_source_page_number_21’).val();gformInitSpinner( 21, ‘https://e74sq7k37a8.exactdn.com/wp-content/plugins/gravityforms/images/spinner.svg’, true );jQuery(document).trigger(‘gform_page_loaded’, [21, current_page]);window[‘gf_submitting_21’] = false;}else if(!is_redirect){var confirmation_content = jQuery(this).contents().find(‘.GF_AJAX_POSTBACK’).html();if(!confirmation_content){confirmation_content = contents;}setTimeout(function(){jQuery(‘#gform_wrapper_21’).replaceWith(confirmation_content);jQuery(document).scrollTop(jQuery(‘#gf_21’).offset().top – mt);jQuery(document).trigger(‘gform_confirmation_loaded’, [21]);window[‘gf_submitting_21’] = false;wp.a11y.speak(jQuery(‘#gform_confirmation_message_21’).text());}, 50);}else{jQuery(‘#gform_21’).append(contents);if(window[‘gformRedirect’]) {gformRedirect();}} const gformWrapperDiv = document.getElementById( “gform_wrapper_21” ); if ( gformWrapperDiv ) { const visibilitySpan = document.createElement( “span” ); visibilitySpan.id = “gform_visibility_test_21”; gformWrapperDiv.insertAdjacentElement( “afterend”, visibilitySpan ); } const visibilityTestDiv = document.getElementById( “gform_visibility_test_21” ); let postRenderFired = false; function triggerPostRender() { if ( postRenderFired ) { return; } postRenderFired = true; jQuery( document ).trigger( ‘gform_post_render’, [21, current_page] ); gform.utils.trigger( { event: ‘gform/postRender’, native: false, data: { formId: 21, currentPage: current_page } } ); if ( visibilityTestDiv ) { visibilityTestDiv.parentNode.removeChild( visibilityTestDiv ); } } function debounce( func, wait, immediate ) { var timeout; return function() { var context = this, args = arguments; var later = function() { timeout = null; if ( !immediate ) func.apply( context, args ); }; var callNow = immediate && !timeout; clearTimeout( timeout ); timeout = setTimeout( later, wait ); if ( callNow ) func.apply( context, args ); }; } const debouncedTriggerPostRender = debounce( function() { triggerPostRender(); }, 200 ); if ( visibilityTestDiv && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent === null ) { const observer = new MutationObserver( ( mutations ) => { mutations.forEach( ( mutation ) => { if ( mutation.type === ‘attributes’ && visibilityTestDiv.offsetParent !== null ) { debouncedTriggerPostRender(); observer.disconnect(); } }); }); observer.observe( document.body, { attributes: true, childList: false, subtree: true, attributeFilter: [ ‘style’, ‘class’ ], }); } else { triggerPostRender(); } } );} );
/* ]]> */

The post Many MPS students are chronically absent appeared first on Badger Institute.