More than 30% of Colorado students in grades 8-12 missed more than 10% of school days last year — part of a statewide struggle in which the number of kids counted as chronically absent ticked up while the statewide attendance rate took a slight dip.
The state education department counted about 3,500 more students who regularly did not show up to school, extending a worrisome trend in the years following the pandemic: More than 1 in 4 Colorado students were chronically absent.
A total of 244,622 kids — representing 28.4% of total public school students in the state — were recorded as chronically absent last year, which includes kids with excused and unexcused absences. That’s a jump of 0.7 percentage points from the 2023-24 school year, according to data released Tuesday morning by the Colorado Department of Education.
“I wish we had better news to share, but I do think it’s really important that we use this as a call to action moment,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said during a media conference Tuesday. “We did have many districts that improved their attendance, and we know that we have far too many kids who are not attending school on a daily basis and far too many kids who are chronically absent.”
One glimmer of good news: More than half of Colorado districts and Boards of Cooperative Educational Services saw their attendance rates go up and their rates of chronically absent students go down.
Still, the state’s overall attendance rate dropped slightly to 91.4% from 91.5% the previous school year.
Attendance setbacks were especially high among kids who bring additional challenges to school, worsening from last year. More than 40% of students from low-income households were chronically absent last year while more than 38% of kids learning English, nearly 36% of students with disabilities and more than 57% percent of homeless students were chronically absent.
Student attendance has become an increasingly pressing issue across districts and among state education officials, who recognize that the more students aren’t in school, the more likely they are to fall behind or even drop out.
A child’s attendance pattern sets much of the tone of their education and has major impacts on their ability to stay on track in school and graduate with their peers, Córdova said, doubling down on the importance of regular attendance in every grade.
In early grades, attendance matters because children are learning how to read and how to “do school,” she said, as they get a sense of how to interact with their classmates and teachers.
Strong attendance among young students increases the likelihood that they will be able to read proficiently by third grade, which holds major consequences for the rest of their years in school, when they must rely on reading for learning across subjects, Córdova said.
By middle school, attendance can start to influence whether a student will graduate, with students out of school 10% or more of school days more likely to drop out of high school. The stakes ramp up in ninth grade — freshmen who make it to school at least 95% of days almost all graduate on time within four years, Córdova said.
The state education department has set a goal to cut the percentage of students missing more than 10% of school days in half from the 2021-22 school year during the pandemic, when 35.5% of kids were counted as chronically absent.
Attendance figures from last year push that goal further from reach, knocking the state slightly off course from two years of reductions in absenteeism. Córdova said one possibility is that bigger districts in the state struggled to hold down their absentee rates, contributing to the statewide drop.
“I certainly know that it is not because of a lack of emphasis, focus or energy around the importance of daily attendance,” Córdova said. “Every superintendent that I’ve spoken with has made this a real focus area for themselves.”
What works in drawing kids to school? Close relationships, paying more attention to individual students
Ben Schneider pulled out his phone alongside some of his students at Thornton’s York International School last year and, together, they all set alarms on their devices to help those students wake up on time to make it to their first class of the day.
That’s one of the ways school staff has made extra effort to understand the kinds of things that stand in the way of kids getting to school every day and figuring out how to help them break through those obstacles.
That intensive focus on student attendance is translating into gains, with the K-12 school slashing its rate of chronic absenteeism by more than 7 percentage points over the past three years.
“Attendance is truly embedded in everything that we do here,” School Director Eriksen Van Etten said during the state education department’s media conference. “I think what makes it work is that even though we’re small, with only about 800 kiddos, we are a strong staff of about 80 and what we really, truly work towards is that every single staff member in the building understands their impact on attendance and how it really boils down to positive relationships with students and families.””
School employees analyze weekly attendance reports and hold meetings to devise plans for students who are lagging in their attendance and incentivize kids to keep coming back to school by competitions at all grade levels, Van Etten said.
With concern for high schoolers’ attendance track records, the school two years ago launched a program, Attendance Refocus, to identify the root causes of missed classtime.
The program catches students who have one unexcused absence or four unexcused tardies in a single week, inviting those kids to a lunchtime session when they take a survey to inform school staff on what’s behind their poor attendance. The school divides those students into small groups based on the reasons for their low attendance, then works to help them establish a routine of showing up.
That might mean students need help with transportation, access to more mental health resources, more support in a particular course or even a nudge to set an alarm for every morning.
“It’s a really positive program that provided really targeted support and just I think the right amount of accountability for students to help give them that extra oomph to get to class,” said Schneider, assistant director of the school.
At Lincoln Elementary School in Loveland, relationships have also been a big part of reining more kids back into the classroom, Principal Brandi Stott said during the media conference. Over the past three years, the high-poverty school of 140 students has seen chronic absenteeism plummet by nearly 11 percentage points.
☀️ READ MORE
“It’s definitely been a process,” Stott said, “and it really started with relationships, if I had to define one thing that’s helping to reduce our chronic absenteeism rate. One of the biggest things that we did was made really intentional hiring decisions to ensure that we had the right people in the right positions that believed in the work that we were doing here at Lincoln.”
The school hosts a family engagement center and has a family engagement specialist who works closely with families and equip them with resources that will curb any stressors preventing them from ensuring their child is in school, including transportation, housing assistance and support in stocking up on food and securing a job.
The school has also assembled an attendance team to further encourage families to continue prioritizing regular attendance for their children.
“We really focus on support, not punishment,” Stott said, “and that I think has been one of the biggest levers in terms of improving our attendance.”
But her staff’s work is far from over. Even with dramatic progress in attendance rates at Lincoln Elementary School, more than 20% of kids continued to frequently miss classes last year.
More of her attention this year will swing toward helping her students’ families, no matter their background, see how much support is waiting for them inside their school.
The school will “hopefully help some of our families who may not have had the best academic experience understand the importance and value and support that a school can provide our students,” Stott said. “And we really believe that with that work we will continue to see a decrease in kids missing school.”