dee. we wanted to do a follow-up of students that are perhaps in school but are missing many days. my colleague, bianchi vasquez, works to write an article based on data collected by professor thomas dee of stanford that looks state-by-state at what is known as chronic absenteeism. that is when you miss at least 10% of the school year. that is around 18 days since a typical school year is 180 days. that can be missing school for any reason, excused or unexcused . what this article found is we looked at 40 states plus d.c., with collectively account for 92% of the kindergarten through 12th grade public school population. the average chronic absenteeism rate in the schools rose 13.5 percentage points to 23.8% over a quarter of students. when we projected this percentage change nationally, that is equivalent to 6.5 million students falling into chronic absenteeism who otherwise would not before. we are comparing 2018 to 20 year, for the pandemic -- 2018-2019 school year, before the pdemic, to 2021-2022. st: an estimated 6.5 million students are chronically absent according to the definition they worked with. as far as looking at the whys, what did the team find? guest: there is a lot of -- there are many different factors for the increase in absenteeism. part of that is because the norms of school changed. it used to be considered more acceptable to send your kid to school if they had a slight cough. but schools since the pandemic or giving the message of if your kid is sick, keep them home. there is also less of a sense of you have to be in's will in person. a lot of kids were remote for the pandemic, and now here is like, why do they have to go to school in person? and there are affects of the mental health crisis on children . there has been a huge increase in symptoms of anxiety and depression in young people since the pandemic. it is a real crisis end a lot of students are staying home because they don't feel mentally well enough to go to school. there is also an increasing sense among some families of not being welcome in the school buildings. a lot of schools did not allow parents on school campuses during the pandemic for safety reasons, and some have continued to not allow parents to step foot on the campus, so that creates a divide between families and schools. there is an increasing sense of families and schools not cooperating together and not being on the same side. you also have issues related to housing instability. students who experience housing instability, it is much harder for them to go to school. also physical health problems. and sometimes schools don't speak the same language as the parents which creates difficulty in forming relationships between the school and home. host: let's invite viewers into the conversation about absenteeism. if you want to find the associated press report, you can find it online. some students are missing weeks of school. parents, if you want to give a perspective, (202) 748-8000. educators, (202) 748-8001. all others, (202) 748-8002. you can give a comment or question by text if you want at (202) 748-8003. ms. sharon luyre, if they are not going to school, is there a case to be made that they perhaps decided to attend a private school or when to homeschool? how does that factor in? guest: in this case, we were looking at students who are still enrolled in school, but they had usually around at least 18 days of absences out of the school year. these are students who are in school, but when you miss so much, you often fall behind. it is extremely hard to catch up academically and you miss out on other things that happen like social support, meals, often helps support. -- and often health support. the reason schools track chronic absenteeism is because it is a good measure of when students are vulnerable and likely to fall behind. host: if that is the case, what students fall into those categories? guest: it can be any student that falls into those categories. the study did find that the chronic absenteeism rate grew particularly high for latino, black, and low income students. some factors i mentioned before in terms of housing instability would particularly affect low income students. the issues of maybe the school not speaking the same language as the parent issues, or maybe the school does not feel engaging in culturally relevant to the students. there was an interesting part of the article. we found the area with the highest rate of chronic absenteeism was alaska. in particular, almost 50% of all students. a really huge number. a lot of this had to do with the rural area of a lot of schools, difficulty in getting schools. we heard from students who could not get to school because there were wolves and polar bears on the road. one of our reporters in alaska spoke to a teacher there who was native alaskan. the rate is particularly high for native alaskans. she noticed there was a live disconnect in the school system and it was not culturally relevant in a lot of ways because even the school calendar was not well aligned with the traditional activities her students did like hunting, fishing, and gathering season which are will be crucial for cultural reasons and so you have food for the winter. she had a great quote, her name was heather powell, who set our families are not valuing education because it is not something that ever valued us. that was a good quote to show by families from more marginalized backgrounds will feel that if they do not feel valued in schools, it is not a value for them to go. host: maybe you were a student impacted by the covid school closings and were dealing with chronic absenteeism or a parent of one of them. (202) 748-8000. educators, (202) 748-8001. others, (202) 748-8002. i know you looked at the data but as far as your team, what do educators say in general? what is their concern of -- their degree of concern and how are they responding? guest: i believe that a few days ago the biden harris administration announced it was going to focus on chronic absenteeism as an issue in schools. i think people recognize this is an unique issue because at the end of the day, if you are not in school, will not learn. unless you are being homeschooled but this is not that case. they're just missing school. at the same time, it is a very difficult issue to address. it is not an issue that can be addressed with -- addressed in one year. it will take a long-term commitment. but there are some methods that have been shown to be successful in the past. there were studies of helping kids become more engaged in school which includes texting or sending postcards to families to let them know about their child's attendance record. although 18 days is a lot, that is really only a couple days per month so parents may not even realize their students are chronically absent. they might think it is just a day here or there but it adds up. another thing is health support at the school and social services which helps build engagement. connecticut had a successful pilot program where they sent school staff or a trusted member of local community organizations to visit families in their homes if their child was on track to be clinically absent. they tried hard to make sure it was people who spoke the same language as a family and there was no punitive element like you were going to get in trouble. it was just, how can we make sure -- how can we help you make sure your tickets back in class? and there was a lot of success in the districts where they tested it. host: sharon luyre from chronic absenteeism. -- from associated press. our first guest is sylvia. caller: i have a cousin who has daughters. i worried about her because of all these shootings going on in schools. the parents should be afraid of sending their kids to school. host: in a broad sense, where the school security factor into students staying home or a parent wanting students to stay home? guest: that is a factor. there are parents out there who are really scared of school shootings or just in general of danger on school campuses. there has been reports of increased behavioral issues in school since the pandemic, since students have started coming back. i think that is very much an issue on a life parents vines. the main family that i interviewed for this story did bring up school shootings as a concern. i also talked to families that entirely switch to homeschooling because of concerns about security. host: this is a viewer off our texting service. she asked, do you think part of the reason teenagers stop attending high school is the structure format and information they receive is irrelevant to the lives they live? is that because some of the students because of covid learned from home and that changed the way they approached all, do you think that is factoring in? guest: yes. i think covid fundamentally changed our ideas of what school could be. it did introduce parents to the idea that you do not have to go to a physical classroom every day for your child to learn. of course, a lot of families do not enjoy remote learning and preferred being in a physical classroom. but there were families who were like, actually, i could do this. it is fine. host: jean from maryland, an educator. thank you. caller: i am a retired teacher. the states have done away with seat time and counties adjusted lc policies. back in the day, if you missed five or more classes, you could lose credit for the course. this is something school districts have done to themselves. it is a trickle-down effect. students are like, i don't have to intend and when i do want to come back, students bend over backward to get them ready for actuation. -- for graduation. they changed policies because people of color and low income students were being harmed by this. they were losing credit. this was to boost graduation rate. host: from maryland. caller: -- guest: we saw a wide variation in how states approached attendance policies. for some states, if you missed a certain percentage of the day, so if you didn't show up or left halfway through, they counted that as absent. other states were more lenient. it does vary widely by state. host: i am looking at showing people the website and part of the graphic shows the 10% of students that were missing school a year. you talked about alaska. 29% of those students from 20 18-2019. then that sums up to 49% -- that jumped up to 49% from 2021-2022. guest: it varied widely by state but in every state we looked at, it went up. there were no states where it stayed the same or went down. in some states, it grew -- astronomically. we were not quite able to decipher the reasons why certain states grew at a higher rate than others. professor deeooked into the masking policies and different covid rates states had, but neither of those explanations explained why some states grew more rapidly than others. what we do know is every single state that increase in chronic absenteeism, and even states we did not include, we generally did not because they had a year of data missing or because they used a different definition of chronic absenteeism, like a different number than 10%. even in those states, chronic absenteeism still went up according to their definition. it is a universal trend. host: if you want to go to the website, there is a chart about chronic absenteeism and how it grew in every state. it is at projects.-- caller: i would like to know what your definition of chronic absenteeism is. if a student is sick, they can still go online. it should be mandatory that all students teach physically in the building and online at the same time like they did during covid. then students who are sick have the opportunity. i just need
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