Chronic Absenteeism Plagues Bay Area Schools

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last year, nearly a quarter of public school students in California were considered “chronically absent” – more than double what it was before the pandemic. Factors such as parent work schedules, poverty, and lack of interest have led millions of students to miss more than 10 percent of the school year. In response, many schools are trying everything from hiring social workers to offering Uber rides and tastier food to bring more kids to the classroom. We’ll talk with experts and school administrators about chronic absenteeism and what they are doing about it. Guests: Carolyn Jones, K-12 education reporter, Calmatters Gloria Corral, president and CEO, Parent Institute for Quality Education Hedy Chang, executive director and founder, Attendance Works - a national initiative that works to curb chronic absenteeism in schools. Chien Wu-Fernandez, associate superintendent, Hayward Unified School District Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:00.9	From KQD in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:16.3	Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing more than 10% of the school days in a year,
1:21.0	and as you might imagine, it's not associated with good educational outcomes.
1:25.7	Before the pandemic, maybe 10% of California kids would be chronically absent,
1:29.4	now close to a quarter of children are missing that much school. And in some districts,
1:34.1	and among some demographics, the numbers are even higher. The structural factors that are tied to
1:39.1	chronic absenteeism, poverty, difficult parental work schedules, lack of educational interest, they've long existed.
1:46.1	So what exactly did the pandemic break? And can it be mended or do we need a new model for some kids?
1:52.6	That's all coming up next after this news.
2:18.7	Welcome. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Today we're talking about the remarkable rise in kids missing large chunks of the school year. Some educational trends hold for lower income, lower resource students, but not for wealthier households.
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