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giving you your democracy unfiltered. >> next, a discussion about the chronic absenteeism in u.s. schools. and the role of families and communities in preventing true ancy. from the brookings institution, this is just over an hour. >> those of you with us in here in person, those on the live stream, i think we have about 700 people watching on the live stream, those who may be watching on c-span, too. i am jon valiant, we are delighted at the brown senttory co-host this event with our friends in the certainty for universe isal education, has here at brookings. and we are here today to talk about two kind of big vexing topics in education. one being student disengagement. and other being krontic

absenteeism. those are two problems that are related in a lot of ways and overlapping in a lot of ways but not perfectly overlapping. student disengagement leads to a whole lot of problems beyond just kids missing school. kids miss school for a loft reasons other than being disengaged. what we are trying to do today is talk about what that relationship is and what it isn't and how do we think about chronic absenteeism and get students more engaged in the school. when we are talking about student engagement we'll be anchored by a new report from my colleague rebecca winthrop and her collaborators where they have identified some interesting differences among other things between what 10th graders say about how engaged they are in education and what the parents of those 10th graders think their 10th graders believe about how engaged they are in education. and we are going to draw that into a conversation with a panel that's going to join me in just a second here. i'll do quick introductions so they can jump right in. we'll have jenny anderson,

moderating the discussion. she's going to be on the far side. jenny is a journalist and co-author of a new book, "the disengaged teen, helping kids learn bert, feel bert, and live better." jenny's co-author, rebecca winthrop will be next to her. rebecca is a senior fellow here at brookings and the director of universal education. next to rebecca we'll have sonia brookins santelises, who has been the c.e.o. of baltimore city public schools for almost a take now at this point. and we have jenee henrywood, a author herself of a recent book how communities can design thriving learning environments. we'll have nat mall cuss, senior fellow -- nat malkus at the american enterprise institute down the street. he's been doing yeoman's work in creating data on student absences and analyzing that data. we'll see some of that data in a

few minutes. a couple of quick housekeeping notes before i hand off to jenny. first, after we hear from the panelists we'll have a good 15 to 20 minutes of audience "q&a." if you are here we'll have microphones around. if you are not but watching us live, please feel free to either email your questions to events @brookings.edu. we'll be checking that email account. or on x using hash tag -- tagovailoa dishe engagement app. if you can here you can tweet us. forethose of you here in person right after the panel we'll have a reception and copies of jenny and rebecca's book available. i think you have a couple of authors happy to sign that for you. thank you for coming. i'll hand it off to jenny.

jenny: thank you so much for being here. i am really looking forward to this conversation. the way we are going to architect this we'll get into four issues. we are going to frame the problem, the issue, challenge, scope of the problem, what are we rebounding from. we'll look at what's causing it. spoiler alert, it was not just covid. we are going to look at strategies working and not working. to borrow some jenee's language. we'll leave those in the heap pile of history. what can we leave in the heap pile of history. and blue sky thinking. thinking outside the box and dream big about if we could rearchitect the system -- architect the system. what would it look like. nat, kick us off and scope this problem for us. what are we looking at, where are we coming from, where are we now?

nat: absolutely. glad to be here at the american enterprise interinns teut. i have been tracking the pandemic fallout since it began. this is sort of the tail end of that. i will admit that i was hoping to track chronic absenteeism as sort of an antidote, at cocktail parties where i was always this thinker with the bad news. i was looking to have this -- we were going to turn this chronic absentee problem back around quickly. i'm still the stinker at the cocktail party. we have some time to go. on the chronic absenteeism first. on the basics, chronic absenteeism is the percentage of k-12 students who miss 10% of the school year for any reason. all those things are important. the reason that -- it's different from truancy. it's just how much have you missed school at all. and the reason it's important to gather that is because school is good. school benefits students. when they miss a lot of it, they miss out on some of those benefits. we know that chronic absenteeism

is important indicator because the students that meet it are missing about 18 days a year, that's about at least one day every couple of weeks. it can be bunched up or spread out. we know that on average it's associated with some bad effects. if you are chronically absent in the younger years you are much less likely to read on time at grade three. in middle school you are more like to struggle academically. in high school it's one of the greatest predictors of whether you are going to graduate on time. it is some of the soft skills that take you through either college or the workforce. if you heard of people that -- people say, half of life is showing up, that really is part of this deal. i'll add consistently to it. the return on tracker we have data on there, it was updated yesterday. again, every time a state drops a new data file with district

level chronic absenteeism data, we fold it in. we've got some here. it's not showing up beautifully because i didn't put enough contrast here. just to give you a sense of the scope of the problem, pre-pandemic the most reliable data that we have is in 2018 and 2019. that's data for 50 states was around 15%. it's important to understand it was incredibly stable across those two years. in 2020 we lost the last several months of that school year. you can doubt it. 21 we had closures. 2022 we had astoundingly high chronic absenteeism. it jumped about 90%. it jumped across the board. i think it's an important thing to just tag on here, i spent a lot of time, got into this business tracking school closures. and those did matter for this. but just on the margin. this isn't school closures that caused chronic absenteeism. it is the pandemic that caused this jump. i'll give awe little bit of

caution for the last two school years. we still don't have all the data from all the states, including for 2023. i'm looking at you, texas. i want to say that these are provisional numbers. but the arc is not going in the direction that we need it to. it's not coming down fast enough. and there are two other things i want to say before i pinch it back. there are two ideas we need to hold in our hands at the same time to understand what happened. you can look at these things at the return tracker. if you look at high achievement districts and low poverty districts, which are two separate things, but they overlap, before the pandemic and after the pandemic, they had lower chronic absenteeism than their low achieving and/or high poverty counterparts. that is true. disadvantaged districts have more chronic absenteeism. over the pandemic the percentage

increase, how much they increased, was right at 90% for both. so the amount of change is incredibly widespread. it's sort of one thing that happened in a way we rarely see in education data that affects across the board. and i think it's important, i think you can sort of see it through here that we had some stable behaviors as far as attendance. during the pandemic we had a lot of things change during the pandemic, this is one of them. the stable behaviors. they unfroze. and i think they are still moving around. i think the question that we have to -- that keeps me up at night is, where are we going to refreeze? where are these habits going to settle into a new normal? where it's looking like it's set manying with these provisional numbers, should have us all worried. jenny: sonja, can you take us through your own district.

what was your normal. where are you now, and maybe dip into nat's question. are you fearful that this is a new normal? sonja: i think there are a couple things. first so i don't get in trouble, back in my home district, it's baltimore city, not baltimore county. in maryland those of you of maryland know that's a big deal. jenny: apologies for that. my fault. sonja: i think to nat's point baltimore city, like a number of urban school districts, or districts that serve large numbers of young people coming from high poverty neighborhoods, had always had a challenge and focus on chronic absenteeism. similar to the pattern that nat outlined, we went from hovering around 30%, which isn't great. we started around a third of students not coming. and we got up close to 70%. i have other urban colleagues who got actually over 70%, closer to 3/4 of young people

coming out of the pandemic being chronically absent. in baltimore city what that means is we know that young people who are not chronically absent are twice as likely to be proficient in their reading and language skills. we know that young people that are not chronically absent are three times as likely to be proficient in mathematics. and so when we use the term as nat did that showing up actually counts, it does count. even controlling for everything else, just being at school and coming regularly means you are more likely to be on grade level. at the earlier end what that looks like in baltimore city is that even at our youngest grade levels a lot of times folks think of chronic absenteeism or young people missing schools as a high school issue. actually in baltimore city our

pre-k and k students have some of the highest chronic absentee rates in our entire school district. with what that means when we look at our data is that a pre-k student who is not chronically absent, who attends at least say 90% of the time, is probably, i think it's close to 15 times more likely to not only score higher on the kindergarten readiness assessment we have, but more like to be on grade level at grade three. it's not as if this is a one-time impact. it actually has impact over the tra jector -- trajectory over a young person's career. as we went through the pandemic in baltimore city, we had been watching that number go down. this year, special for today, i made sure and looked at some of where our data points are, we

now just in the midst of this school year, again, to the point made earlier, just now this year on track to be back where we were in terms of chronic absenteeism before the pandemic. that is still close to or just over a third of young people. so this question of what do we need to be adjusting, what needs to happen in order to get more young people going to school regularly is a long-term issue. it's not a one-year thing, come back from the pandemic. we fix it. and then move on. it really does have real on-the-ground implications for teaching and learning and live outcomes. jenny: what aim hearing if you have pre-k and k a big strike that, and a big strike in teens. we have different strategies to tack this. nat, did you want to add anything? nat: great point. oftentimes we'll talk about the

grade distribution. like the nike symbol. in pre-k and k it's high. then it dips down, especially by second and third grade. then starts to rise up through high school. the other thing to note about the change during the pandemic was imagine the nickee swoosh and imagine someone jumps. that's how it happened. it wasn't like it went up in high school but not in kindergarten. the entire thing distribution lifted. we did see it spread out. it's certainly higher both at the very low end and up through high school. jenny: thank you for ruining the nike swoosh for me. now it's going to forever -- get into what's driving it. jenee, dive into this report. you guys had incredible findings in the report. talk us through what you found out about students. what a students saying about their experience in school? how do you think that relates to this issue of chronic

absenteeism? jenee: you are underselling yourself. with the nicki swoosh and everything, great congress tail, ruining brands. one story at a time. kidding. one of the things that is oven the second, third, fourth, or fifth thing on the agenda is oven to ask young people how is school? when we see this big headline, chronic absenteeism, we often aren't thinking, well, what's actually going on with the kids? we'll go to lots of different solutions. when you ask kids, which we have done partnership with brookings, when you ask kids what's going on, my goodness will they tell you a give you a breadth of information. in partnership with brookings and at transcend we have the leap student survey where we ask students along -- don't know if you can hear me. we asked students along a range of dimensions. do you feel that you can make your own decisions in school?

does your opinion matter? how much time do you spend formulating your own opinion? do you get to partner with people that you want to work with in school? do you get to choose some of your projects? a range of different questions that give us an understanding about something that's really important which are the experiences that young people are having. oven when we talk about school we primarily focus on what are the outcomes that kids are achieving, but we are not thinking about what are the experiences that are enabling those outcomes. experiences are the learning activities, the habits, the ways of being of school. when you ask young people how is school going, they will tell you, i'm not actually engaging in things that are going to help me today, tomorrow, or in the future. i am really bored. and i don't really see a purpose for being here. kids will tell you when you ask them what in the world is going

on. the report i found it so helpful to think about student engagement along some sort of modes of engagement. we've got students that are -- rebecca let me know if you you want to talk about this. we have students that are really in that explore mode. that's a small percentage of students who are experiencing school in ways where they are able to ask questions, they are able to make decisions about how they learn, about how they spend their time. then we have a really big chunk of students, you all, who are in the achiever. these are students who remight describe as i might be engaged cognitively in school, i do what i'm told, not a behavior challenge. i might get my homework in. i'm -- those are students generally speaking if they are getting a's the system says they are doing great. we've got on the tail end of that students who might be in a very different mode. where they are getting very

disengaged. they might be passive. they might be cognitively disengaged. emotionally disengaged. and that, while it's not a perfect overlap, is certainly one of those drivers for chronic absenteeism. there is really a relationship between the experiences that young people are having and the kinds of modes of engagement that they can get in. if we could understand those two things as being wed, that gets us to a place where we can think about solutions holistically once we understand what's driving it. jenny: one of the most startling stats in that report is less than 4% of kids in middle and high school get the chance to kind of feel like they are really engaged. it really is not happening at the rates we need. rebecca, tell me about the parents angle on this report. do parents have any idea how engaged their kids are in learning? help me tie this to the

absenteeism. how related do we think this is to not showing up? rebecca: i'm going to give you guys a few steps from the report. you can find more details there. i was really, really surprised when together with my co-author, david, where are you, and my colleagues from transcend. we co-authored this report, how stark the difference was between what students said, what you just talked about, jenee, and what parents thought their kids' experiences were. when parents have a good sense of what's going on with their kids when they are younger. so we track kids third through 12th grade. and third grade 75% of kids say i love school. when you ask them that. by the time it's -- get to 10th grade, it's 25% of kids. which to me is perhaps the saddest statistic of the entire

research enterprise. and i think it's sad for many reasons. one, how can we kill the love of school for something that kids are so naturally born to do, which is to learn? and two, this is not a national priority. people don't really care that kids don't like school. i think that's awful. actually. we should care that kids don't like school because how kids feel about school, all the research bears this out, has a huge bearing on if they show up at school, think about absenteeism, but also how they do at school and learn. parents, they know in third grade they are more or less on par with -- does your kid love school, more or less they know. they do know that kids love school less as they go on, but they don't -- they think it goes down a little bit. by 10th grade, 65% of parents say -- 10th graders say, yeah,

my kids love school, versus only 26%. then you have about 29% of 10th graders saying they are interested in what they learn. and parents of 10th graders say 71%. my kids are interested in what they learn. these are 40% gaps here. 33% of 10th graders say they get to develop their own ideas in school. think about that for a moment. only a third of kids in high school say they get to develop their own ideas. what's the point of school if they don't get to develop their own ideas? you have 69% of parents saying that they do. and to me, this shows that parents are really in the dark and it's not their fault. it's because parents are going off of the feedback loops that schools are giving them. which is grades. grades only tells a piece of the story. you do see absolutely grades

dipping when things are a big problem. you can talk a lot more about this. it doesn't pick up the type of invisible disengagement that you see when -- that jenee was talking about. when kids are in passenger mode, where they are showing up, doing the bear minimum. they are not emotionally engaged. not cognitively engaged. and that can go, we know the research bears this out, that can go on for a long while f it lasts too long kids eemptually start looking for other things -- eventually start looking for other things to entertain themselves. to me chronic absenteeism is a symptom of disengage. ment. jenny: parents can't help a problem that they can't see. one thing are you saying here they are not seeing a big problem. that is a problem. tell us briefly before we move on to strategies, i want to get to that, what happens when parents and schools are on the same page and working together to support student engagement?

what does the research say? rebecca: my colleague, emily, who is here in the audience, we have been leading a global network on family school community engagement and done lots of investigation of this topic. we know when parents and teachers and school leaders have strong relational trust, if they are rogue in the same direction, they are communicating, they are talking about things that they all care about, those schools are 10 times more like to be improving against achievement outcomes, literacy, alongside attendance and mental health outcomes. and teacher retention numbers. we really want to make sure that we are bringing parents into this equation. jenny: this is a really nice segue into the strategies which clearly are going to get into relationships. the relationships that parents have to school, students have to school. teachers have to school.

sonia, i'd love to come to you, strategies. what have you tried, what's not working, what is working? sonja: i think that's the part of the issue. i do want to build off this theme of relationships because what we are seeing just to verify what you're saying is that the schools that have the most cohesive cultures, that have the most fluid school climates, meaning there is not tons of disruption. there is not lots of chaos, are actually the ones that are making the most rapid progress along many continuum. i think that's an important piece. yes it's chronic absenteeism. it's also achievement. so when we look at some of the characteristics of things that are working, for us a lot of the focus that's been most successful is, one, making sure we are differentiating strategy. on our pre-k, k focus a lot of

what we have seen is frankly our community engagement specialists who come around, look at wrap around services, particularly in districts that have large numbers of young people coming from poverty, one of the things that we see is parents in large part aren't just always sitting home because of one thing. you don't not bring your child to school for one reason. the ability to connect on things like employment, on health care, on housing assistance. things that you can't expect a third grade teacher to do, but that this community engagement specialist actually does have time to do. make a difference. it also begins to build relationships with home and families where you can have some honest discussions about actually it is important to be in school every day. and we don't often like to talk about it, but post-pandemic what we have seen is a rise in not

only young people, but in families saying, so, does it really matter if we are in school every day? how do we have those conversations as a larger community around the importance of being in school every day? in order for those conversations to stick, at least in the community that i serve, relationships is what gives you the right to say actually, when it's raining is not a great time to say let's just stay home today. or pre-k is not just a play group. it's actually laying the foundation for some newfangled term called executive functioning. which allows kids to develop processes. i think what we are seeing in the early grades is that kind of partnership. in the upper grades, it is listening to young people. one of the things they told us, particularly in places like baltimore city, is the ability to generate income to know that you can get a job is going to

pull young people away from something that they don't see the connection. so one of my favorite examples of this is in one of our high schools i met a young man who is in one of our career tech programs where through the construction program they are actually renovating an abandoned property, which we have too many of in baltimore city, and it's right across the street from the high school. the young man's eyes lit up as he was showing me through his work in carpentry in this school. he was very frank about kind of the exchange that was occurring. yeah, i'm more likely to come in the morning to get through that math class to get through that history class because i know i get to come across the street and work on this house. that's what gives me joy. i think when we talk about relevancy we forget that for young people being part of a

community is belonging. it does not mean that you have to have a hands-on activity in the middle of calculus. what it really means is that do i have adults working together who are able to channel what i feel like is important with this piece called school. and a community will do it. this young man was basically telling me, no, i actually don't feel that different about algebra, i'm not sure i'm thrilled about t but you know what, getting to algebra allows me to go do what i really love doing and i get credit for t it's not just extra. i get credit for t i think we have to look at what time counts as learning time. if it is only seat time, if it is only occurring at one point in the traditional school day, we have a generation of adolescents who have tasted what it looks like to be freed from the encumbrances and that deal

with both families and young people is -- looks very different now. and i think that's part of -- that's part of what we are seeing. where we can make those connections in tangible ways. yes, relationships. but relationships that make sense in the daily reality of families and young people. nat: i want to jump national park a little bit on that. i'm going to mix some metaphors here. i think we both have a problem with the throw and catch of this. and a chicken and the egg problem at the same time. one of these is that we have a lot of work to do on the engagement fronts. i think particularly in high school. that is the watching part. we want to make sure we can receive children back more regularly so they are welcomed after the sort of pandemic disengagement. it's much harder to do because we have a lot of kids who are already more disengaged as evidenced by the chronic absenteeism. you mentioned we need to be able

to have tough conversations with parents because part of this is, well, we need to make the environment more engaging. that is true. but if we have some kids that are disengaged and we can't talk about what sometimes, taboo, we need families to pitch in and push their kids to engage with school, then i think we are only dealing with half the problem. i don't think we'll fix this problem until we work on both the catch and throw. that's also a chicken anti-egg thing. if they are not already in, we are working backwards. that's pretty tough. it's tough sledding out there. jenny: let me build on that. i didn't want to come to you. you guys do incredible research. i want to frame this for everybody. you do research and development for schools, community-led design. you listen to communities. you listen to students. and a lot of what you hear is about what we are hearing sonia

say. relevance. it's about experience. it is about engaging experiences and it is very much about trust. i want you to jump in here and tell us maybe why this -- telling parents to show up can be tricky. what's the historical context here. and what's the opportunity. jenee: aim going to do that through three other points. jenny: you are telling me you're not going to answer my question. jenee: everybody in the audience raise your hand if i give the answer. what did you say throw, pull, catch? nat: throw and catch. jenee: brilliant, think of throw and catch. think about the field in which throwing and catching happens. because the field is the thing that we are if he cussed -- we are focused on that we don't talk about. we don't talk about the field which the ballgame is happening w my colleagues at transcend, with david here in the audience, what we think a lot about is school design. what is the actual thing that we are asking, that we are pushing,

that we are galvanizing communities to come to. if we want them to come, the thing that we want them to come to has got to be worth coming to. there are a couple of different ways to think about this. anyone who has worked in schools know that we have to often walk and chew gum at the same time. we can't shut the doors and r&d and make new school and make it perfect because we have to teach young people. so we need new strategies. we need to also be telling parents, hey, yeah, rain, not an excuse. you got to bring your kid to school. they need to learn to reevmentd we have to do all that. then also think about the actual design and structure of school. let me talk about what i mean. all of you right now can i see you are looking down at phones, looking at chairs. the thing that the phone that your chair has in common is that it is a designed experience. and oftentimes we take for granted that school itself is a designed experience. we think it drops down by virtue of natural law and now we wake up and kids go to the bus and they get there and they start at 7:30 and end at 4:00 and then

they work together at age groups. they get assessed at the same time. that's just normal. but the truth of the matter is that that structure was very, very helpful for a certain time. it got lots of people in school. lots of basic lit acy. really, really important. and those things really matter. i definitely don't want to denigrate or down play that. but that structure, that design is for a time that doesn't exist anymore. we are not in factories. we are not doing a loft field work. young people are going into jobs and professions that we can't even dream of today. school really does need to be designed in ways that are going to enable them to learn in ways that are relevant. i could have used hands-on calculus. i see your point. they need to be involved in way that is are deeply relevant. what we think about is this concept of, how exactly do you go around, how do you do that?

i want to tell a story of a high school that is in north dakota. we work all across the country. all different governance models. there is a school district called the northern school district in the prairies of north dakota. and in that community something profoundly special is happening. the school leader there had a group of seniors, and these seniors were under credit because they with were what? disengaged and chronically absent. under credit they weren't going to graduate. february of their senior year. in north dakota they are in a state where they had a little bit of freedom. they had context to make some different decisions about how learning could happen. through work with transcend, through work with knowledge work, borrowing and adapting practices that have been proven and tested elsewhere, they came up with a model of learning called the studio model. the studio model allowed young people and teachers to come up with eight week-long effectively

independent studies that were interdisciplinary. mixing math, social studies, history. there was one young person who was a senior. he said, you know what, english class was a great nap. to me. i don't know who holden is. don't know what a "catcher in the rye" s i got a good nap. he let me know that. he was very clear about that. the thing that kept him in school, that got him through, was the studio model in which he got to black smith and learn to make horse shoes for his family farm and learn to make coat racks and learn to make all of these different types of things that the farmers in his community needs. he thought, that's really cool. i want to do that. you are felg me i can get $150, $200 or more doing black smithing work? that's incredible. are you telling me if i get a trade here that i could be making even more than that? even more than if i were to

leave school tomorrow? this studio, this new structure, eight-week structure where this young person got to ask what aim good at, where do i want to g. what do i want to do, what do i want to try? we often lose the fact that school is a place for practice and trying. we treat it as place where you are on performance. it's not just practicing and trying. these studios allow for young people to practice and try new things. get into black smithing, he then decided, yeah, i'm going to get a trade. very different. this was a 15-year-old saying i could go work anywhere and be -- work for a wage. under the table. don't need to stay in school. this is not helpful. there are so many stories in the northern district that are like that because they decided to say we need to do school differently. we need to do high school differently. instead of our kids getting off the bus and from 8:30 to 3:30 they are doing the standard thing let's switch it up.

design a model that's going to enable deeper customization to your point about distribution that will enable young people to make choices for themselves. what we are seeing is that their attendance is now at 99%. they are a small district. they weren't getting as chronic absentee. they were having students that were severely under credit. this year they have none. they came up with this model with this approach to solve a real tangible problem that was in front of them. which was students who couldn't graduate because they had been absent so much. sometimes we have to think about the design and field which we are throwing and catching. because that i think is one of the real missing pieces. and we have to do that complicatessed for us, we have to do that at the same time that we are doing the strategies that sonja was talking about. jenny: throwing, catching, field. we are moving to the spectators. parents. rebecca, what i want to dig into. you were chomping at the bit to

talk about it. what is the role of parents? because parents oven feel like they don't have is a lot of influence or don't have a lot of control. tell us about the brilliant book you wrote. rebecca: i want to get -- first of all i 100% agree with jenee's intervention which is the catch. we need to rethink the ways in which the system serves young people. because i don't think we are going to get out of the chronic absenteeism problem by shoving kids back into school like we have been trying. if you talked to any district leader, please tell me film' wrong, they are at their wits' end. you have tried a million things. we do need to rethink how the system catches kids and shift the system elements around so that they can better serve kids. nat's put on the table the

question of the throw. what is the -- parents' roles? what is the expectations we have of kids. you said this has become a taboo issue. it's not at that boob issue for what we have done three years of research around, jenee and i, for our new book, "disengaged teen" which looks at parents, looks at kids, particularly in adolescents years around this question of disengagement. i think the issue is that we have to be careful because of history. the u.s. has a long mystery of blaming parents, largely poor parents, parents of color, and it's a bad history. we don't want to repeat that. that doesn't mean we can't have the expectation every kid should go to school. we absolutely need to have that expectation. from all our discussion was parents and this is really parents of adolescents. i don't know -- i would be curious for to you fill in the

gaps of the kids in pre-k who aren't going to school when it rains. but parents of adolescents, it's having high expectations, but it's absolutely about tone. we have talked about this. you can't go around blaming parents. every parent that we have talked to is like i got it. i got it. our teens need to be in school. you do not need to tell me my kid needs to be in school. they are not going. they are not going. they are adolescents, what do you want me to do? we know from years of research that really the only way to get to the solution is to bring the families in as partners. to do that -- it's about tone. think about how you talk to your own kids if you want them to partner with you on something. it's invitational language, sitting and listening. building that relational trust to say what's going on? this is the expectation. kids need to be school. this is why it's good for them. we can talk through it.

i think that is absolutely what parents are waiting for. really. jenny: did you want to add something about the book? even though are you a moderator, co-author. what else would you pitch in on this question of parents? rebecca: i was thinking about my next question. threw me for a loop. i think there are a few things that strike me. i think we were shocked at the number of -- i think really stepping back, we were really shocked at the number of kids who don't feel safe in school. who don't feel they belong in school. who don't feel capable in school. and don't feel that they will find a path to success in school. that is clearly like a school design problem. we were also surprised at between school design and parents how easily it could be turned around. not silver bullet. not in a day. but that this is -- this is a problem we can solve.

parents have this incredible ability to help shape excitement around learning. and an attitude towards learning and a mindset towards learning that can make a difference. we only have five minutes. i actually do want to get to the blue sky thinking. i want everyone in this room to have a few ideas they can take away if we had no obstacles, barriers in our way, funding was no issue what would you like to see happen. i want to start with you, sonia, what would you like to see happen today to get more kids back in the classroom? sonja: first i do want to say we are getting more kids back. jenny: fair point. even more. sonja: that is true. i do think to say it's just this intractable issue and we haven't made progress, our chronic absentee rate went from 68% after the pandemic. and it's declined 20% in two or three years. to say we are not moving. i want us to have our own sense

of agency. one thing i would say from a district leader perspective, if we can think of 250eu78 in --time in schools differently. this idea of what does the units how do we measure, what learning time really looks like, an where learning time occurs. because that's some of the attractiveness of engagement. being able to learn in different ways. we just had a snow day. mom confession, my kid who was so excited not to have any school was on a zoomle call for three hours -- zoom call for three hours prepping for mock trial. she was thrilled she didn't have to go to school is. she let me know as the school c.e.o. was she was thrilled she didn't have to be there. but somehow this kid with five other kids, no adults on the call, is digging deeply into

legislation, cases, case law, the whole 10 yards because there was an activity that made sense and it was occurring not within some confined way. if i had one big push i would say can we think more flexibly about time and place and what constitutes actual learning space. jenny: nat? nat: i mean, i'll tell you. i'm not i'm a skunk at the garden party. i'm not the biggest blue sky. one of the things i'm looking for to bring down the chronic absenteeism rates is our call for state leaders to make sure that this is a number one priority. we have put out this 50% challenge with education trust and attendance works. that's where states are committing to cut their chronic absenteeism rates by 50% over five years. that would be to aspire to do a

little bit better than before the pandemic. and i would call folks to pony up. jenny:enee -- jenee, two minutes. you and rebecca have to go fast. jenee: give parents a guide, questions aligned to. so questions that we found when we asked students about their experience. these questions are for parents. can you ask them at dinner, in the morning. but they are sces that help you have deep conversations. they can't do anything they don't know about to your point. they have to know what to ask to learn. two, every school community across the country would have a school design team that can help them do the deep community driven work to reimagine learning for the young people. rebecca: jenee took mine. i will come up with a new one. jenee: i'm so sorry. rebecca: in our new book we do have an entire parent tool kit. for parents. it's great. i'm glad you took the point. to really help guide them what they can do at home and how they

can talk with their schools about their kids' disengagement. there is a lot they can do. my new one would be anything that actually cuts across all of these, anything that we can do at home as families or in the school building to promote student autonomy and agentcy. all the stories that we are told are because kids haven't given a little bit more autonomy, not keys to the whole kingdom. and are you going to design your whole curriculum. you don't have to learn quad radek equations. just a little more awe conmi and agency to -- autonomy and agency to specifically try and apply their academic learning. anything that does that. i don't think there is one silver bullet. that's what i would say we need to do. jenny: we are reimage imagining time and place, putting state leaders under the gun, 50% challenge.

i love your chronic absenteeism calculator. it's cool. we have a line in our book, i get the last word. discussion to adolescents are cuddles to infants. necessary for brain development. agency and relevance have come screaming through this conversation. students need more agency. need to feel they have a reason to be there. morel vant, tied to the real word. studio example was powerful, construction example was powerful. we'll do "q&a." a round of applause for our panel. [applause] jenny: we have a mic going around the room hovment has a question. back in the sween sweater -- green sweater. >> i work for the c.p.s. i am a high school teacher. i have four of my high school students here. we have been discussing the

topic on and off. i like the fact you talk about lots of stakeholders. what does the field look like. throw and catch. who are the throwers, who are the catchers. are the catchers the students? are we paying attention to them? what do we understand? we have a different generation of history and human development. are these students -- whatever we are throwing to them, are their interest in catching or just letting go, are we pushing them away? there are so many questions and very little answers, but i will say that one thing is go and study these humans we are throwing things to them. they are the catchers. and what are we catching? i don't see any mention of the stakeholder as a teach. what are the teachers doing?

and the curriculum. what are the outcomes? what do we want them to walk away from high school. 28 credits and a c. 28 credits in order to graduate. how do those considered asread its look like -- how do those credits look like? are they part of the outcomes? do they want to work. you mentioned south, north dakota, project based learning is one of the signs out there. there are so many loose points that somebody has to put it together. and include the main catchers. ok. the students. jenny: who else? here? go ahead. >> i'm with empower ed. a d.c. based teacher advocacy and retention organization. a few things we have been working on that some of you have expertise on, including flexible schedules.

time and place of the day that allows student enraichment giving more time back to teachers. community schools which baltimore is an exemplar in the country. also closing experience gaps which you guys talked about. one thing we advocated for last year that d.c. started to put into place is microgrant program. schools that do not have p.t.o.'s or outside funding can bring the same rich experiences to students that other schools can to get money directly to teachers who want to run really enriching project based learning, field trips, other experiences. i think with all of these things, one thing that gets in the way i mentioned in the hearing your reaction to t. this happened in the pandemic, we look at students who are far behind in reading and math and say you just need more time in reading and math. that further disengages those students. even though it's critical for them to get that. we put in place strategies like hiem pact tutoring. they are missing out some of the things that are a hook for them to come to scoovment to have those real project-based

learning experiences, to do the vocational education. how do we manage the fact we are not putting so much scrutiny on the students who are furthest behind we are actually disengaging those students further and not giving them rich experiences? jenny: i'll give a lot of people an opportunity but i go to rebecca first. this came up in the book. rebecca: it's a great point. it's a recommendation in our report. which is out of care and love, parents, family members, caregivers, as well as schools, take away extra kir rick cue lars and -- kir curriculars. one example, you see this across the board. arts, music, dance, drama. kids who get straight a's, this is a nationally representative survey in the u.s., 60% of them are in any type of enrichment arts program. kids who are bringing home c's and d's, half of that.

30%. are involved in any arts enrichment. that's true for sports, coding, for anything. and we know from all of our qualitative research, and actually tons of research on interests, and student development, that when kids are involved in something they are interested in, they do way better in school. they show up. they get excited. it's energizing. they feel like they have an identity. it's something is they are good at. they feel a positive association. we were talking beforehand we should -- this should be part of the campaign. do not take away extra kir rick lars -- curriculars when kids struggle. jenny: fine, what about kids who are misbehaving? how can we reward them? that feels like the wrong message. sonja: some of it is attaching reward to things that should be essential components of learning. we actually double down because of student recommendation on creating frankly doing what a

lot of independent schools dorks is actually building the club time in the school day. it's not an extra if you win the prize you get to go. but what are other ways of doing that? what young people told us is actually having more flexible time for catch-up during the day. even some of our i would say entrance criteria high schools, they found the same thing that some of our lower achieving schools found, that is if you create days within the school year where young people have the morning or half a day to just go to the teachers that they need the extra help anti-groups of four, then -- and the groups of four, they actually learn more and more time to catch up. that requires administration. i'll put the blame on me. we've got to be able to look more creatively at scheduling. this is what i mean about time and place. we have so many aha moments from

teachers and principals. yeah, we always thought of that as extra time. but just having that one day a quarter where kids could make up work during the school day, still get to their job after, has changed how young people feel about that. and this piece about having club opportunities during the day, i think sends the signal. we actually used our dollars and new maryland dollars to double down on arts. one of the things we knew is that young people coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to have the instrumental music. to have the visual art. so we doubled down with our community advocates. i agree with you, i think there is a minimalist approach that is a deficit approach to young people who are behind that is stripping them of everything. when all of the signs and frankly everything we know about

youth development is that it actually needs to be increased. i agree with you. i think that's a policy decision. i think it's a budget decision. and i think it's a willingness to disrupt, quote, how things have always gone. rebecca: may i add to this? i love these points so much because it's all of those and it's a design question. what aim -- jenee: you also designed how the school day felt. which is very real. now let's apply that in a slightly different space. if we are working on the 100-year-old schedule we have been given, reading, math, this, you got to get on grade level. that's a choice. we could structure school in a slightly different way where you're not going in age-based cohorts so you are off grade level if you didn't get an n on the thing. it could be are you grouped by ability level. and moving through your school day based on your ability and

you are unlocking and getting new opportunities. you might be flying in math, but you might really strug until reading. you are going to experience going -- might be in a small group doing the advanced calculus, etc., in math, you might really need reading help. instead of saying you are behind in reading. it's like this is your ability. this is where you are. can you grow and get bert. i ant to -- better. i want to add to that. in the long term these are absolutely necessary things we are doing here in design in the short run. and in the long run we can be reimagining and rethinking the design of the thing so we are not even operating from the beginning with that deficit-based approach. jenny: this is happening. competency based education to mastery. what we are seeing is the carnegie unit is being dismantled that will free up the opportunity to be more innovative about design. it will require leadership and it will require buy-in from parents who oven resist these innovations because they don't know what's coming and no one takes the time to explain it to

them. sonja: if we are honest because we botched them before. a loft our parents -- jenny: not doing that again. sonja: now my kid can't read. i think we have to be honest when we have messed up. nat: to add one thing. there is a time dimension. in the short run. in the long run. we do have to -- we have to put the redesign blue sky thinking on a track that can go over a long term period. but it takes a long time. doing it quickly, sonia, tell me film -- sonja, tell me film' wrong, but there is a chronic absenteeism crisis. we do have to be clear eyed about what we have to get done on what schedule and what that might mean for success. jenny: i think singapore does five year plans on education. which is an interesting way of thinking. five-year development plans. which is what companies do.

yes, there are short-term priorities. got to get kids back to school. there's also that five-year plan. a question in the back. >> i'd like to be provocative challenge the premise that we have a problem with absenteeism. i think usually in the room i hold the highest credentials. i was valedictorian of absenteeism at my school. worst behaved student in its 200-year history so i know what i'm talking about here. just like you said, rebecca, absenteeism is a symptom of disengagement. true. disengagement is a some tomorrow of --cies tomorrow of a broken system. three pillars, the incentives, inputs, and outputs. the incentives are designed over 100 years ago which you alluded to and you mentioned your work with dr. corey stiern. we work with him. i run and r&d in applied cognitive science. my point is if the system does

not create incentives that lead to learning. if educators have never been afforded an opportunity to understand the science how students learn. if students are asked to learn but never taught explicitly how to learn, we have a factory that keeps generating failure and disengagement. if you are asking me to go back without changing the variables of the system, you are asking me to increase my anxiety, depression, and possibly suicide unless you fix the system. it has to be systemwide. i would puts engagement in the symptom category are. make sense? nat: will i tackle that when you look at the nature of the change in chronic absenteeism over the past four years, it's pandemic related. a spike during the pandemic. part of my argument that this is a change in behavior, that's not system based, is that a lot of parents were sent a lot of message, a lot of students were sent messages over the pandemic it's dangerous to come to school. if you do someone may die.

that was the lesson. that will change your behavior. our message is to come back to school have been less powerful. which is probably appropriate. i understand that. the effects there are that i think we have changed behavior. it's also certainly not the case that both things can't be true at the same time. jumped in front of you. rebecca: do i want to say i agree -- that is a really nice reframing. i agree with t one of the reasons that -- agree with it. one of the reasons jenee and i wrote the book, figure out -- to nat's point. what can parents do today? what can parents and teachers do today as system transformation is happening. i have a whole bunch of colleagues at the certainties for universal education, and every single one of us, no matter what our work stream, is

focused on system transformation t will take time. it will take time. this is a long-term prospect. i do think there are particular shifts and behaviors we can do today. there is lots of evidence that teachers can embrace autonomy supportive teaching practices regardless what the school leader does in their classroom without changing curriculum, disciplinary procedures, processes, that does give kids a bit more autonomy and agency and actually boosts their engagement and interest. jenny: when do you that the results will follow as well. rebecca: we would absolutely encourage folks to look at the work of john marshall reed who tested this in the us us and across 13 other countries. randomized control trials comparing classroom to classroom in school is impressive. another is what parents do at home. what caregivers and families do at home. there is a lot they can do in shifting how they talk about

school. less about what are your grades and more what did you learn. sonja: i love this -- jenee: i love this point. one of the things i also learned just in life is that the systems level work also needs on the ground short wins. you can be running at a 100-year-old problem, 150-year-old problem. it's like i'm tired. you all. i need a win in september. i wouldn't want us to cut ourselves off from the idea that we've got to solve those long-term systems issues, but there are real kids right now learning right now who need to learn to read and need to get in school. we need to create those short wins, too. i think we actually can and see we can do both. i phthisis thames change requires some of those short wins. we have to get them. we are not going to get them if the kids around in school. we are not going to redesign anything if they are not in school. i respect that. and would just push to say we hold both.

nat: i want to back sonja's play with a p.s.a., that school is nice. it is great to go to school. i know lots of schools that are great places to go to every day. and i have faith that most american public schools are good places to go. i want to make sure that we just make that nice and plain. we can talk about marge until improvements, but we don't want to come off as saying it's a factory. they are there working. that's not the case. jenee: school is fiefnlt our school wasn't broken. but it was fine. our kids do deserve better than fine. i take that point. and fine is usually what lot of young folks are getting. jenny: do i love this theme of-f elevating the problem. the problem of let's get more people outside of education and outside of the storied halls of

brookings. this needs to really be, we need to not be ok with these numbers. not be ok with the fact that you have studies that kids don't like schools. well, teens, all teens hate school? the consequence is higher and worse than it's ever been. you need them to care. there's something really important about elevating this. i know that in these circles, these are issues you are all grappling with. i'm very struck at the national level how little we are making this a priority and i think it's just another issue. we probably have time for one last question. >> is it safe to presume that banning books is going to decrease people coming to school for not being included and parental rights people have an answer to school absenteeism?

why was all this question. -- >> i love this question. so glad we don't have to answer it. [laughter] >> i will say this, i think there is common ground, yes. i think that regardless of what people think about a particular series of books or anything else, this idea of developing a mobilization around having kids in school, in meaningful ways engaged, is something that will cross ideologies, aisles, everything else, can occur. i don't think this, it's a lovely space to be in, it doesn't have to be polarizing. this piece about getting young

people to school, it's why if you look at the work that matt has been doing and been doing across the ideological spectrum, we have hopefully still a core national consensus, i want to believe, that school is still something we desire in that portion of democracy, however broken and may feel at times. this country was founded on the idea that at some point, having more educated citizens is a good thing. i don't think that this has to be a partisan topic and it's a way to bring people together, regardless of how you feel about teaching toni morrison or william shakespeare. if you come to school, we can read both and be ok. i hear what you are saying, but i actually don't think it's a partisan issue and i have never

experienced it as a partisan issue. people disagree on some of the remedies, but i don't think that this is one issue in education where there needs to be the kind of splintering that there are on the others. >> we are going to wrap up. that was beautiful, it saved me from having to do the wrap up. [laughter] thank you very much to everybody for being here. thank you very much to our panelists. we are going to sign books, afterwards, if anyone wants to come back. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025]

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