States that joined a national pledge led by three high-profile education advocacy and research groups to cut chronic absenteeism in half over five years fared better. The 16 states and Washington, D.C. posted results “substantially above the average rate” of decline, though exact numbers are not yet available, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the trio.

The national chronic absenteeism average dropped from 28.5% in 2022 to 25.4% in 2023, and fell an additional two points to 23.5% in 2024. Virginia, which is among the 16 participating states, cut its chronic absenteeism by 4.4 percentage points, year over year, to 15.7%, as of spring 2024.

Speaking of the states collectively, Malkus told ����Ӱ��, “That’s good but it’s not as good as we need it to be. I think it points to the need for sustained pressure and a sustained campaign to bring absence rates down and to bring more students back to consistent attendance.”

Last July, AEI and EdTrust, right-and left-leaning think tanks, respectively, and the national nonprofit Attendance Works joined forces to launch The 50% Challenge. This week, the organizations hosted in Washington, D.C., to report on their progress, re-up the call to action and hear insights from state, district and community partners on how they are improving student attendance and engagement.

With California and Georgia recently joining, the 16 states and D.C. who signed on to the pledge account for more than a third of all students nationally. While Malkus doesn’t necessarily attribute their better results to the pledge itself, he noted that their participation shows a willingness to commit to the cause and be publicly accountable for their results. 

“I will hold their feet to the fire on this goal,” he added during his opening remarks in D.C.

While felt most acutely by students of color and those in poorer districts, the spike in chronic absenteeism — students missing more than 10% of school days a year — regardless of size, racial breakdown or income. Chronic absenteeism from 13.4% in 2017 to 28.5% in 2022 before beginning to drop in 2023.

Only about one-third of students nationally are in districts that are on pace to cut 2022 absenteeism in half by 2027, according to an , and rates improved more slowly in 2024 than they did in 2023, “raising the very real possibility that absenteeism rates might never return to pre-pandemic levels.

Research has shown that students with high rates of absenteeism are more likely to fall behind academically and are at a greater risk of dropping out of school. About 8% of all learning loss from the pandemic is attributed just to chronic absenteeism, according to soon-to-be-released AEI research.

The continued disproportionate impacts of chronic absenteeism were confirmed by recent , which found that in roughly half of urban school districts, more than 30% of students were chronically absent — a far higher share of students than in rural or suburban school districts.

RAND also found that the most commonly reported reason for missing school was sickness and one-quarter of kids did not think that being chronically absent was a problem.

SchoolStatus, a private company that works with districts to reduce chronic absenteeism, also released  for some 1.3 million K-12 students across 172 districts in nine states. Districts using proactive interventions, the company reports, drove down chronic absenteeism rates from 21.9% in 2023–24 to 20.9% in 2024–25.

At this week’s event, numerous experts across two panels emphasized the importance of a tiered approach to confronting the issue, which has resisted various remedies. Schools must build enough trust and buy-in with kids and their families that they are willing to share why they are absent in the first place. Once those root causes are identified, it is up to school, district and state leaders to work to remove the barriers.

And while data monitoring must play a significant role, it should be done in a way that is inclusive of families.

“We need to analyze data with families, not at them,” said Augustus Mays, EdTrust’s vice president of partnerships and engagement.

It’s imperative to understand the individual child beyond the number they represent and to design attendance plans and strategies with families so they feel supported rather than chastised.

“It’s around choosing belonging over punitive punishment,” Mays added.

One major and common mistake schools make is “accountability without relationships,” said Sonja Brookins Santelises, the superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools.

“You can’t ‘pull people up’ if you don’t have enough knowledge of what they’re really going through,” she said.

Panelists were transparent that all this would require immense funding, staff and community partnerships.

Virginia achieved its noteworthy drop in chronic absenteeism after launching a $418 million education initiative in the fall of 2023, in part after seeing their attendance data sink, with about 1 in 5 students chronically missing school. At least 10% of those funds are earmarked to prioritize attendance solutions in particular, according to panelist Emily Anne Gullickson, the superintendent of public instruction for the Virginia Department of Education. 

These strategies are far-reaching, she noted: Because parents had been told throughout the pandemic to keep their kids home at the slightest sign of illness, schools partnered with pediatricians and school nurses to help counter the no-longer-necessary “stay home” narrative.

Gullickson said she also broke down bureaucratic silos, connecting transportation directors and attendance directors, after realizing the role that transit played in chronic absenteeism. The state now has second chance buses as well as walking and led by parents or teachers along a fixed route, who pick up students along the way.

And they are “on a mission to move away from seat time and really deliver more flexibility on where, when and how kids are learning,” she said. 

“This isn’t one strategy. It’s a set of strategies,” said Attendance Works founder and executive director Hedy Chang, who moderated the panel.

In Connecticut, state leaders have launched the , a research-based model that sends trained support staff to families’ homes to build relationships and better understand why their kids are missing school. 

A recent study confirmed that six months after the program’s first home visits, attendance rates improved by approximately 10 percentage points for K-8 students, and nearly 16 percentage points for high schoolers, said Charlene Russell-Tucker, the commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education.

Schools must also work to motivate kids to want to show up in the first place, panelists said, making it a meaningful place that students believe will support and help them in the long run. The only way to do this is to start with student and family feedback, said Brookins, the Baltimore schools chief.

During the pandemic many parents saw up-close for the first time what their kids’ classrooms and teacher interactions looked like, “and I don’t think a lot of folks liked what they saw for a variety of different reasons,” Brookins said.

“I think it opened up boxes of questions that we — as the education establishment — were unprepared to answer,” she added. But chronic absenteeism cannot be successfully fought without engaging in those uncomfortable conversations.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to EdTrust and ����Ӱ��.

After decades of plunging enrollment, Kansas City Public Schools is setting a new trend. The number of students is ticking upward.

For the third year in a row, the district’s enrollment count in late September ran higher than the previous year. Preliminary figures show KCPS added 570 K-12 students since the official count day last year, about a 4% increase.

That leaves it with more than 14,000 students for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic helped bring enrollment to a low point. Including pre-kindergarten students, it has more than 15,000.

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With growth come changes in whom the district serves.

Black students, who made up about 58% of the district during the 2024-15 school year, dipped below the majority this year to about 46% of pre-K-to-12 enrollment. Hispanic students represent an increasing share of the district, more than a third this year.

Much of the recent growth has been fueled by families moving into schools that feed into Northeast High School and students who need help learning English.

But growth doesn’t necessarily pause even after students are counted, and the year is in full swing. During the last school year, KCPS between early September — before the count day — and mid-April.

That’s happening again, said Deputy Superintendent Derald Davis. “We continue to enroll new students each and every day.”

Where enrollment growth is happening

Northeast area schools have led the way in increased enrollment, adding hundreds of students both this year and last year.

This year, East High School feeder schools also added 150 students, and the Central High School region added almost 90. Only the Southeast High School area lost students.

Many of those new students are still learning English. The 430 additional English language learners compared to last year account for about two-thirds of the total pre-K-to-12 enrollment growth.

Overall, make up nearly a quarter of the district. The biggest group of them were born in the U.S., Davis said.

“They may have families that originated from elsewhere,” he said. “If English is not spoken in the home, we still could have many students who arrive at kindergarten with limited English proficiency.”

Hundreds of other students come from Honduras, Mexico and Tanzania.

The growth comes as KCPS prepares to finalize a building plan meant to improve learning and address deferred maintenance issues in a district built for a higher number of students.

A involves opening, closing and moving schools to different buildings. It isn’t as focused on paring down the number of schools as the plan the district unveiled in 2022.

Enrollment growth makes it easier to justify keeping buildings open and helps bring in the state tax dollars needed to maintain them. But the plan hinges on voter approval of a bond in April 2025.

A district strategic plan calls for KCPS to enroll at least 15,000 K-12 students by 2025, a goal it could hit with about 5.5% enrollment growth over the next year. By 2030, KCPS wants to have 17,000 students.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Whether Maine students have recovered from pandemic-era learning disruptions is unclear due to the state’s choice to not make most data before 2020 publicly available.

That’s according to a new national report by the Center for Reinventing Public Education, that developed a “report card” to gauge how easily accessible every state made data on student achievement, chronic absenteeism and high school graduation.

Maine was one of only three states across the country — the other two are New Mexico and North Dakota — that earned zero points out of the 21 possible. That means Maine had no data before 2020 available on any of the seven metrics mentioned in the report, including achievement levels, growth and proficiencies in English Language Arts, mathematics, science and social studies, chronic absenteeism or other attendance indicators, high school graduation rates, and English language learner proficiency, according to the CRPE report.

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The lack of this data conceals crucial information from parents and other stakeholders on how well their school district is doing on key performance indicators, according to Morgan Polikoff, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and an author of the report. While making long-term data available is only one of the numerous ways of measuring transparency in public education, it is an important metric, according to the report and Polikoff.

“Parents … and other stakeholders may not be aware of the magnitude of this issue when states don’t make this data available for comparison, given how important covid was in disrupting education,” he said.

COVID-19 had enormous impacts on American education. Nationwide, public school students have not recovered from pandemic-era learning loss, chronic absenteeism continues to be an issue, and the pandemic disrupted high school graduation rates, which .

“But those facts are only visible if the data are available,” Polikoff said.

The Maine Department of Education did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Changing state assessments may be part of the problem

The issue of limited data availability is compounded by changing state-level assessments in Maine. The state has changed how it evaluates student performance at least five times in the last 15 years or so.

These testing discrepancies have continued post-pandemic. Testing paused for the 2019-20 school year, and the way Maine students are evaluated has not remained consistent since. The DOE announced a new mechanism in 2021, which was used for two years. The way students are evaluated changed again for spring 2023 testing, according to a note on the DOE website.

That means even with three years of publicly available data, test scores from the spring of 2021 and 2022 can’t be compared with 2023 to gain a comprehensive understanding of how students are performing.

Other states also have dealt with changing state-level assessments, Polikoff said, but still made data available while presenting the caveat of changing testing models, which Maine could have done for previous years.

“Maine has clearly made the choice to not present any information from pre-2020 and that might be … because they change their tests and so they don’t really feel it’s appropriate,” Polikoff said.

“But I would argue that that might be true of the standardized test data, but it’s definitely not true of some of the other indicators,” he added, pointing to high school graduation rates and chronic absenteeism data.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com. Follow Maine Morning Star on and .

Bridget Bolder sent her daughter, Mia, to kindergarten at a neighborhood public school. After all, it seemed the “normal, regular thing to do.”

But Bolder started to worry that some of her daughter’s classmates were exposing her to inappropriate topics. Early in the school year, Mia had to tell a teacher about a boy groping some of the other girls.

“I’m like, she’s a baby,” Bolder said. “Bring her home a little while longer before I throw her to the wolves.”

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Brian Wilson and his wife homeschooled three of their children last year. They struggled to juggle home life, both parents’ jobs and teaching the kids.

The family briefly switched to in-person school, but Wilson said it only validated the parents’ theory that the individual attention the kids got at home had been working.

“They seemed like head and shoulders above all the other kids when it comes to learning,” he said. “My son, Aaron — he’s the youngest — he was actually helping kids in his class.”

Both families have turned to the new Brookside Virtual Academy so they could keep their kids at home and still rely on professional teachers to lead their schooling.

The academy is attached to Brookside Charter School and bills itself as Kansas City’s only virtual program where teaching happens on live, interactive video calls.

Online school isn’t widely popular. It’s been blamed for some of the learning loss that set kids back during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kansas City Public Schools closed its virtual academy for kindergarten through fifth grade this year because of shrinking enrollment, district spokesperson Shain Bergan said in an email.

But for a girl with severe social anxiety? A boy with leukemia? A young athlete with a rigorous training and travel schedule?

Leslie Correa, who helped design the KCPS program, said certain students and families need the option. So she found a home for the program at Brookside, where she’s now the virtual academy principal.

“The students that virtual works for, it works really well for,” she said. “We cannot close the door to them for having a great education.”

Who succeeds in virtual education?

For some students, the computer screen provides a layer of distance that makes them braver, Correa said. Learning from home can also reduce distracting for some kids with autism.

For example, loud or persistent background noise, visually busy environments or other students bumping into them could overwhelm some children.

Other students might need virtual school for logistical reasons.

That could include students who are barred from in-person school for disciplinary issues, traveling athletes, kids going through intensive medical treatment like dialysis or chemotherapy, or parents who struggle with transportation.

Some families identify as homeschoolers but want professional help teaching reading and math, Correa said. Since virtual school is more concise, it leaves more flexibility in the day.

Parents’ fears can also push them toward keeping kids at home.

“Anytime that there has been a violent occurrence in one of our schools in Kansas City, I get a big uptick in enrollment,” Correa said. “They feel scared and they’re looking for an alternative.”

When virtual learning doesn’t work

To figure out if it’s a good fit, Correa starts by asking parents why they’re interested in virtual school.

“If it’s, you know, ‘I don’t have day care and I need my 12-year-old to be home to watch my kid,’ it’s kind of an alarm,” she said. “I’m not the one to judge what their decision is, but I am the one to help arm them with information.”

The virtual academy serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Because Kansas City-area charter schools can only operate within the boundaries of KCPS, its students have to be from that area.

The virtual academy doesn’t turn students away based on their reason to enroll, Correa said, but it monitors their progress. If a student isn’t thriving, she meets with a parent to make a plan, like tutoring or switching the child to in-person school.

Schools can deny virtual education if they document that it’s not in the student’s best interest.

“My goal before getting to that point is always to have the parent make that decision for themselves through very hard conversation,” Correa said. “But it does happen.”

Problems can arise when the virtual school doesn’t think it can fulfill an individualized education program, or IEP, often used to support students with disabilities.

“The parent has the option to return to in-person learning or waive the IEP, and then their student does not get that support,” Correa said. “They almost never waive the IEP.”

Students can also get removed from virtual school, and referred for truancy, if they stop signing in or engaging at all for too many days.

Correa said she’s also attentive to offering ways for virtual students to get more comfortable with in-person interaction.

Virtual school students can attend optional in-person events and participate in Brookside clubs and sports.

“If they want to kind of test the water, the opportunity is there,” she said. “If a student is saying to me, ‘I am ready to go in a building,’ then OK. But then also, if a student is saying to me, ‘I need out of the building,’ OK, I’m here. I just don’t want to disrupt their education.”

How virtual learning works 

Right before the school year started, Brookside Charter School’s STEAM lab was set up for virtual academy orientation.

Teachers and school leaders passed out laptops, hot spots for internet access and school supplies.

The supply bags include books, basics like pencils and glue, whiteboards and dry erase markers (extra for younger kids, who tend to leave the caps off), and individually packaged science kits for lessons on the solar system, geology or density.

But first, families settled in for a presentation to learn the basics.

Brookside Virtual Academy starts at 9 a.m. with a lesson on leadership.

Most days, students then launch into reading class, followed by math. Wednesdays are for science.

Students spend about two and a half hours in live virtual lessons each day, and another 90 minutes online working through a task list that includes social studies and science.

Live classes use video calls and technology that lets teachers monitor what students are looking at and control their screens.

Parents aren’t responsible for teaching their kids, but they’re expected to keep in touch and generally make sure the students are online and on task.

Connecting with families

For some parents, being extra involved in part of the draw.

Wilson, the parent of three kids in the program, said he appreciates that it cuts the school day down to essentials, allowing parents to be more strategic about where they put time into their kids’ education.

Bolder, the parent of a first grader, said she’s looking forward to more easily monitoring what her daughter is learning so she can help supplement that.

Virtual education makes it easier to connect with families, said Tina Duvall, a reading and math interventionist for kindergarten through fourth grade.

“I get to be in their home with them. It takes away a whole lot of anxiety for kids,” she said. “I thought in my years past teaching that I knew — really, really knew — my students’ families, but not like this.”

Duvall will be working with breakout groups of students, grouped by grade or ability level.

With about 100 students as of Aug. 20, two or three grades are combined under each of four virtual academy teachers. But staggered schedules and help from interventionists like Duvall will allow each grade to learn separately.

The biggest challenge, Duvall said, is not being able to sit by a student to point things out or hand them what they need.

“You just want to reach through the screen and help,” she said.

Bolder and Wilson said they have their kids in in-person activities so they can socialize. But they’re not sure if they’ll ever go to in-person school.

“There shouldn’t be such a thing as a bad school,” Wilson said. “But because there is, until we’re able to put our kids in a good school … then we feel like we’re more suited to teach our kids at home.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

CORVALLIS – More than 700 teachers from across Oregon have spent the last two days in classrooms and lecture halls at Oregon State University in Corvallis to tackle post-pandemic learning gaps.

With $7 million in federal COVID relief money, the Oregon Department of Education launched in late 2023 the Equitable Accelerated Learning Project, which culminated in the two-day summit Tuesday and Wednesday. The project goal was to bring teachers from around the state together to address gaps and inequities exacerbated by the pandemic through better instruction.

Among the issues teachers are dealing with are chronic absenteeism; low reading and writing proficiency; middling math skills; and growing achievement gaps among students with disabilities, students from low-income families, rural students and English-language learners. The project aimed to get teachers to research instructional methods that can help close those gaps, said Angelica Cruz, director of literacy at the Oregon Department of Education.

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It also was designed to help teachers learn from one another about how to better instruct struggling students, she said.

She said the gathering focused on ways to invest in teachers and encourage leadership. Those who participated are expected to return to their districts and share takeaways.

The state launched the Equitable Accelerated Learning Project in December, asking teachers to join workgroups to hone in on pervasive education issues exacerbated by pandemic school closures. In all, more than 550 teachers in 89 districts joined 16 work groups to come up with projects and solutions for improving Oregon’s schools. They also looked at solutions to absenteeism and teacher shortages and improving student mental health and well-being.

In October, the Oregon Education Department will create materials and professional development sessions for teachers statewide, based on the workgroup findings and suggestions.

The money spent on the project is the last of the more than $112 million the state education department received from the nearly $1.6 billion that the U.S. Department of Education sent the state and its 197 school districts between 2020 and 2021. The Oregon Department of Education and the districts have until September to use up all the money.

Proposed solutions

There were no silver bullets proposed at the Oregon State University summit, but teachers discussed methods for math instruction that rely less on formulas and more on questioning and inquiry. They also looked at assessment techniques that ensure all kids are getting the same amount of class time and exposure to content even as they learn at different speeds. Some ideas were as simple as getting parents to read to their kids by ensuring everyone in the family has a library card, or organizing parent nights at schools, where teachers model for parents what good reading instruction looks like.

“Some of these parents have never been read to as a child. They don’t own books. They don’t know what that looks like,” said Elaina Lambert, an English-language development teacher in Medford.

A major focus of the education department’s Equitable Accelerated Learning Project has been getting Oregon teachers exposed to the state’s new literacy framework adopted in May 2023.

The 100-page guideline is an attempt to move instructional standards away from reading instructional methods that have been found to be detrimental to kids, such as using pictures or guessing at words based on the first letter or sentence context, and instead preparing teachers to instruct kids to read and write according to proven methods. The science of reading encompasses a large body of cognitive and neuroscience research and evidence that has shown that the human brain does not learn to read or write naturally, but relies on instruction in specific skills. Everyone needs these skills to read, but they learn them at different speeds.

Some suggested year-round school would be a positive development. The common challenge teachers expressed at the conference, and one that has also gotten worse since the pandemic, is a lack of time. At 165 days, Oregon has one of the shortest school years in the country. Teachers expressed a growing desire for year-round school.

“I feel like we have kids, especially because we have these summers, these long summers, if they don’t have the automaticity of their letters by the end of kindergarten, they come back in the fall and they’ve forgotten all of their letters,” Alice Williamson, a reading specialist in the Eugene School District, said.

Williamson and others expressed enthusiasm about the work groups they participated in, and especially about statewide investments in teacher reading instruction and literacy. Many are training in how to teach reading with the $90 million from the Early Literacy Success Initiative that was passed by the state Legislature in 2023. The money was meant to fund teacher training, tutors and curriculum rooted in the science of reading.

Several teachers described graduating from their teacher degree programs in Oregon and Washington without having received any training in teaching literacy.

“I did not know how to teach kids how to read when I went into my first teaching job teaching first grade,” said Beth Brex, who has been teaching for 18 years and currently teaches kindergarten in Eugene. This year she’s been taking specialized reading training paid for by the district with state literacy funds, and is trying to get other teachers at her school to take it as well.

Closing gaps

Even before the pandemic, many Oregon students and students across the U.S. were struggling with proficiency in core subjects. The pandemic made this worse.

In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the “nation’s report card,” showed that proficiency in math of American students in fourth, eighth and 12th grade fell for the first time since results were published in 1973. Those results also showed the largest decline in reading proficiency nationwide since 1990.

Oregon’s results reflected the nationwide trend.

Over the last 25 years, nearly two in five Oregon fourth graders and one in five eighth graders have scored “below basic” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often referred to as the nation’s report card. That means they struggle to read and understand simple words.

The most recent annual state assessment data, from 2023, shows that the average proficiency in math and reading among most Oregon students remained about 10% below prepandemic levels in 2019, though the gap between 2022 and 2023 outcomes shows declines are beginning to level off.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

The North Carolina Division of Non-Public Education has released their on homeschooling statistics, which covers the 2023-24 school year. The report breaks down homeschooling numbers by county, by type of school — religious or independent — and by age.

The statewide total registered home schools increased from 94,154 during the 2022-23 school year to 96,529 this year. That’s a roughly 2.5% increase, marking a rebound after two years of decline following the temporary surge in homeschooling during the pandemic. At its peak during the 2020-21 school year, the number of registered home schools was 112,614.

EdNC focuses its reporting on the number of registered home schools rather than homeschool enrollment since the number of students enrolled in home schools . However, for reference, the estimated student homeschool population was 179,900 compared to the at the start of the 2023-24 school year.

, the majority of North Carolina’s 100 counties have seen an increase in the number of registered home schools, with the largest percent increases in Tyrrell, Johnston, Stanly, and Moore counties.

Since the 2020-21 school year peak, however, only a few counties have seen an increase, including Tyrrell County with a 54.8% increase during a period when most of the state saw a decline. Across the Albemarle Sound, Pasquotank County had a decrease of 56.4% over the same time.

With 45,708 independent schools and 50,821 religious home schools registered in the 23-24 school year, the proportion of independent versus religious schools moved closer to an even split. Religious schools made up 52.6% of home schools during the 23-24 school year, down from 60.4% in 2016.

hasn’t been updated since 2019, when the number of homeschooled students nationwide had fallen for the first time. But regardless of attitudes across the country, it is clear homeschooling is still a popular alternative to public and private schools in North Carolina.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Three high-profile education advocacy and research groups crossed political lines in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to announce an ambitious goal: cutting chronic absenteeism in half over the next five years. 

For the first time, the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the left-leaning Education Trust and the national nonprofit Attendance Works joined forces to confront an issue that continues to plague K-12 classrooms four years after the pandemic first hit. 

“This is not a problem for some schools. This is not a problem for some subset of students. This is a nationwide rising of a tide that’s going to harm [all] students,” said Nat Malkus, AEI’s deputy director of education policy studies. 

While felt most acutely by students of color and those in poorer districts, the spike in chronic absenteeism — students missing more than 10% of school days a year — regardless of size, racial breakdown or income. Chronic absenteeism from 13% in 2017 to 28% in 2022 and remained high in 2023. 

Research has shown that students with high rates of absenteeism are more likely to fall behind academically and are at a greater risk of dropping out of school. The three organizations are eyeing a return to those pre-pandemic percentages.

“The goal is to get us back to a baseline where we knew we needed to do a lot more work anyway, but at least we can work towards that and do so aggressively,” Lynn Jennings, The Education Trust’s senior director of national and state partnerships told ����Ӱ��. 

Five years from the launch would be 2029, but the groups are hoping that districts further along in their efforts will be able to hit the benchmark by 2027 — five years after chronic absenteeism’s 2022 peak.

The goal is doable, according to Topeka schools Superintendent Tiffany Anderson, who spoke at a panel discussion Ed Trust, AEI and Attendance Works held in D.C. this week to launch their initiative. The 12,858-student district was able to lower its chronic absenteeism by investing in families through home visits. In Topeka, if a student is absent for more than two days without parent contact, it warrants a visit.

“You cannot serve needs you don’t know. So the key is understanding … it works,” she added.

Numerous experts at the event discussed the importance of a tiered approach to confront an issue that has resisted various interventions. Schools, they said, must create trust and communication with families so they can learn why students are absent — as officials did in Topeka — but then, they must work to actually remove those barriers. 

Anderson said in speaking with her Kansas families she learned that chronic health issues, such as asthma, were impacting student attendance. So, she brought health care to the school, partnering with a local hospital. Now students and their families can see a pediatrician on site.

Some schools, panel experts noted, get stuck in that first tier: understanding families’ struggles in getting their children to school, but never implementing the solutions. Another remedy discussed at the panel, which included the vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Caitlin Codella Low, was emphasizing career pathways so school feels more meaningful to students and necessary to their own futures.

At the event, Attendance Works presented a six-step roadmap to assist states in achieving a 50% reduction in chronic absenteeism and will develop resources to share with state leaders moving forward.

“Our work over the past 10 years shows us that state leaders are uniquely positioned to take on this challenge,” they wrote. And these three organizations, they believe, are uniquely positioned to help.

Attendance Works founder and executive director Hedy Chang said her organization brings the “how:” They’re able to provide states and districts with the advice, tips, and resources to take action. Education Trust brings the advocacy lens and helps keep school districts accountable through data. And The American Enterprise Institute brings a more conservative audience to the conversation, along with the data.

�Ѳ�����ܲ�’s , where he compiles and analyzes district-level attendance data for over 14,700 school districts and charter schools nationwide, will serve as the hub to help states see if they are on track to meet the five-year benchmark. 

“We’ve got to take a long-term approach, and we’ve got to use our data to call everyone,” Chang said. “It needs all hands on deck.”

Denise Forte, president and CEO at Education Trust, noted the importance of the cross-organization partnership, saying that while she and Malkus haven’t historically always agreed on policy issues, this was one where they knew they could — and needed to — come together. 

The urgency of the issue created a shared sense of purpose, all three groups said.

“We’re in a pretty partisan world. People feel so divided on so many things,” Chang added. “But we can’t risk our children’s future by being divided on this one.”

Clarification: This article has been updated to better reflect the timeline in which the three organizations aim to cut chronic absenteeism by half.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to The Education Trust and ����Ӱ��.

DALLAS — In Eran McGowan’s math class, students try to teach each other.

If a student is brave enough to share how they solved a math problem, they stand up in front of the other third graders and say, “All eyes on me.” The classroom responds, “All eyes on you,” and the student explains how they did it.

This collaborative method of learning math is part of a new curriculum, named , that was launched in the Dallas Independent School District this school year. It emphasizes helping students better grasp mathematical concepts instead of their performance on the state’s standardized test. The new curriculum is described as a step away from memorization.

The new curriculum “moves away from using tests as a way to measure success,” said McGowan, who teaches at the Eddie Bernice Johnson STEM Academy. “It’s more focused on the kids understanding the concept, and in turn, that will help a child pass assessments.”

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While the teaching approach is different, the intent ultimately continues to be helping students do better on the math portion of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. Last summer’s showed that Texas students have still not caught up to the math scores they had in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Forty-five percent of students who took math in third through eighth grade or Algebra I last year passed the STAAR test. While their math scores represent a slight increase from last year, they are still 7 percentage points behind the state average in 2019.

What’s more, the number of students who went above and beyond and “mastered” the subject has not recovered since the pandemic. In 2023, 19% of all Texas students mastered math at their grade level, down from 26% in 2019. While Texas students’ overall math scores last year were four points higher than the national average, the percentage of students who master math in the state is significantly behind the national average of 38%, according to the Nation’s Report Card, which samples fourth- and eighth-grade students’ reading and math grades across the country.

Policymakers and educators worry that the low number of students who master math will mean not enough Texans will have the skills to meet the demands of the most lucrative, in-demand jobs in the next few decades. They fear Texas will not be able to produce its own workforce and will be forced to look for talent elsewhere. According to a Stanford University , students who do not bring their math scores back up to pre-pandemic levels will earn 5.6% less over the course of their lives than students with better grades just before the pandemic hit.

“Is our inability to get kids back towards this increased level of mastery — for math — going to limit them in the long run for the types of jobs that you’re going to be able to access, or even feel like they can access, in the future?” said Gabe Grantham, a K-12 policy analyst at Texas 2036, a public policy think tank. “If we don’t do anything about this at the state level in 2025, we’re going to be behind the ball.”

Texas won’t know how well Eureka Math is working until later in the year, when the next STAAR results are released, but there is optimism. About 400 other Texas school districts, both private and public, are using the curriculum. Across the country, districts that have the curriculum have seen scores . Dallas ISD the program at Anson Jones Elementary before adopting it districtwide and found that students’ math scores and confidence in their handling of the subject went up.

The Texas Legislature has also taken steps to make it easier for students to advance in their math studies. Lawmakers last year passed , which automatically promotes middle schoolers to a higher math class if they do well at a lower level.

The law’s author, state Sen. , R-Conroe, said having students perform at a high level in math will increase their lifetime earnings and contribute to a healthy Texas economy. Lawmakers, policy analysts and public education officials are looking for other ways to help students bring up their math scores ahead of the 2025 legislative session, he said.

Grantham said Texas is behind other states when it comes to math reform at the legislative level, but it’s better to design policies based on data and a careful review of what’s working and what’s not.

“We don’t want to throw things at the wall and see what sticks,” he said. “Everyone wants the same silver bullet, but we’re trying to parse out what that actually looks like.”

For now, Texas is betting on laws passed over the last couple of years to help struggling students, such as mandated tutoring and, more recently, a law that makes it easier for teachers and districts to have access to “high-quality” instructional materials. Texas education experts and school administrators believe both policies are promising, though they say staffing shortages have made it difficult to comply with mandatory tutoring.

Teaching challenges

When the pandemic forced Texas schools to close and shift to virtual learning, STAAR scores plummeted to lows not seen in a decade.

Schools and families weren’t ready for the change. Some children didn’t have internet access or computers at home; others were completely absent. Academic achievement in both reading and math took a hit.

Four years later, reading scores have surpassed pre-pandemic levels but students are still struggling with math.

“The pandemic was just such a large-scale interruption, one that our system didn’t really know how to engage with,” said Carlos Nicolas Gómez, an assistant professor of STEM Education at UT-Austin. “And due to that, even coming back, we’re still dealing with the interruption.”

Gómez and Grantham said the reason why students have recovered faster in reading is because they can practice it at home much easier than math.

“Reading, it’s a lot easier for parents to read to their kids at home,” Grantham said. “Math is going to take a lot more direct instruction. That was just lost when kids were out of school.”

When kids came back to the classroom, many didn’t have a grasp of mathematical concepts they should’ve learned in previous years, said Umoja Turner, principal of the Eddie Bernice Johnson STEM Academy.

It fell on teachers to come up with learning plans that incorporated the concepts students are supposed to learn at each grade level, plus fill out the gaps in learning caused by the pandemic.

But Michelle Rinehart, superintendent of the Alpine Independent School District, said the state’s teacher shortage crisis and the departure of experienced teachers from schools have made it difficult to help students catch up. Only two out of her seven math teachers in grades 3-8 have taught math before, she said.

Experienced teachers lead to increased student achievement, according to the , an education policy think tank. But during the last school year, 28% of new teachers hired in Texas did not have a certification or permit to teach, and 13% of all teachers left the profession. Both figures represented historic highs.

“That is a really high challenge right now,” Rinehart said.

The teaching shortage is especially hard for rural districts compared to their urban counterparts. For starters, Rinehart said, small districts like Alpine can’t pay teachers as much and usually have far fewer resources.

A new way to learn

Before Eureka Math was introduced in Dallas and Alpine ISDs, teachers could use a variety of different curricula, mostly geared toward passing the STAAR and memorizing how to solve equations.

This led to differences in how students across the state learned math. Turner said this sometimes causes students who move to a different campus to struggle when adapting to a new teaching method.

With Eureka Math now being widely adopted across Dallas ISD, students have a more consistent way of learning math, which hopefully will result in better test scores, he said.

McGowan said the curriculum he used in the past heavily emphasized passing the STAAR.

“With previous curriculums, it was just, ‘we have an equation, we solve it,’ but the kids cannot explain the process well,” he said.

Brittany duPont with Great Minds, the company that designed Eureka Math, has been helping Dallas teachers adopt the new curriculum. She said it’s been a huge shift in math teaching, and some veteran teachers have pushed back.

But duPont said the teaching tactics that Eureka Math proposes are needed to help kids catch up with their math studies after the pandemic. They’re also timely because the recently redesigned STAAR test now focuses more on how a child solves a math problem, she added.

Kids are more excited to learn and master concepts with Eureka Math, McGowan said. Another upside of the new curriculum is that it gives teachers room to test kids’ knowledge on a topic before each lesson, making it easier for teachers to collaborate on ways to help students catch up, he said.

The new curriculum also emphasizes collaboration. McGowan lets his students debate concepts with each other and figure out how they got to certain conclusions. The process allows them to gain a deeper understanding of mathematics.

Moving to a new curriculum always poses a bit of a risk and challenge, especially when it’s easier to stick to what you know, but McGowan said he’s seen kids enjoy learning math in a way he never has in his 18-year career.

“It’s about trusting the process. Trusting that the kids will learn,” he said. “But we have to be consistent.”

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

At the first State Board of Education meeting of 2024 this week, Chair Eric Davis made comments regarding the work public schools are doing to overcome challenges created and exacerbated by the pandemic.

“Our students’ challenges around attendance, mental health, and learning are interconnected and mutually reinforcing,” Davis said. “So they require a holistic and integrated response. I urge all of us to focus our energies on actions and solutions that complete these challenges — ever in service of our students and the educators in our public schools.”

Davis said the recovery gap remains wide and may feel wider on top of existing equity gaps, but called on those listening to remain hopeful.

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“Honestly facing these brutal realities has the potential to manifest within us feelings of dejection and of being overwhelmed. But let’s find strength in remembering that those who came before us faced even greater challenges, and they instilled in us the spirit to overcome and to leave this a better place for future generations,” Davis said. “And we can set aside our differences and work together for the common good.”

This week’s meeting also included a report on the pandemic’s impact on North Carolina’s schools, unanimous approval of a temporary rule for three-year high school graduation policy, and proposed adoption of new temporary school athletics rules which, among other things, bar transgender athletes from participating in the sport that most closely aligns with their gender.

Year-over-year report

The state budget provided funds for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to partner with for a of student learning before, during, and after the pandemic. The analysis measures students’ standardized test scores from 2013 to 2023.

North Carolina remains one of the first states to conduct such an analysis, said Jeni Corn, director of research and evaluation for DPI.

“Tracking academic recovery across a decade – spanning from 2013 to 2023 – is something that has enabled our agency to chart a roadmap out of the pandemic and put our students on the path to recovery,” state Superintendent Catherine Truitt said in a press release. “While there is more work to be done, our agency’s Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration has worked closely with school leaders to help them design recovery programs and strategically target resources based on this data. North Carolina’s students are resilient, and I know we will continue to see improvements with time.”

The found achievement in standardized testing before the pandemic was generally stable. In 2021, during the height of the pandemic, all assessment results evaluated except for English II showed a sharp downward trend.

The next year, however, most assessment results showed improvement, though many did not meet a recovery threshold. By 2023, most assessments continued to improve, and the third-grade reading EOG and the English II EOC have exceeded the recovery threshold, emerging above the pre-pandemic trend.

John White, vice president of SAS EVAAS for K-12, called the positive trend for third-grade reading results a “bright spot.”

“That’s a very positive story, a very positive subject and grade,” White said.

Achievement in math assessments was harder hit by the pandemic than that in reading assessments, the report found. Individual results varied greatly across schools in the state, according to the report.

White said the data could help others understand the huge impact the pandemic left on learning while also showing the recovery process.

Three-year high school graduation

The General Assembly’s 2023 budget requires the Board to make a path accessible to students across the state. Students may apply with their public school unit to graduate early by completing a request form. Unless the student is emancipated or over the age of 18, the form must be signed by the student’s parent or guardian.

Read more on the three-year graduation requirements and discussion on the matter .

Changes to school athletics

The Board’s proposed for adoption new temporary for interscholastic sports this week. The new rules are in accordance with passed last year that would require school sports team to be based on sex assigned at birth, among other things.

Other rules relate to administration of athletes, student health and safety, the appeal process of final decisions, penalty rules, and more.

The Board is required to enact these temporary rules by the 2024-25 school year and expects to adopt them at their March meeting.

Other important happenings:

• The Board approved temporary rules for parental concern hearings, as required by , better known as the Parents’ Bill of Rights. Read more about the rules .
• The Board heard a presentation on , a nonprofit organization that allows schools to benefit students through providing learning on fields in technology, such as artificial intelligence or cybersecurity ​.
• Board members approved updates that clarify procedures relating to the , in which certain public school districts receive charter-like flexibilities.
• The board held discussion, but took no action, on authorizing Moreland University and Kipp North Carolina, a charter school, as an Educator Preparation Program.
• The Board submitted two reports to the General Assembly on and a study for
• The Board received a 2023 School Mental Health Policy report.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Each day after his shift as a machine operator, Eliberto Ortega used to walk through the front door of his east Houston home, take off his steel-toed work boots and call out, “¿Quién es la princesa de Papá?” meaning, “Who’s Papa’s princess?”

His daughter would holler back her own name, bolting into his arms. Ortega would scoop up his little girl and, after the hug, she would ask to carry his lunchbox into the kitchen.

It’s been over two years since Ortega’s daughter, now 8 and a third-grader at Houston ISD’s J.R. Harris Elementary School, has felt her father’s embrace.

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Ortega died of cardiac arrest while sick with the coronavirus in July 2021. Since then, there’s been a father-sized hole in the lives of Ortega’s daughter and her younger brother, who is 7. His daughter still struggles at times to sleep at night, as swirling memories of her dad occupy her thoughts. His son has become more reserved, listening to music about loss and longing.

“We still have an invisible string to him all the way up to heaven,” said Ortega’s daughter, whose name is being withheld by the Houston Landing due to the sensitive nature of discussing her mental health. “He’s with you. It’s connected with you but you cannot see the string.”

In Harris County, thousands of students continue to grapple with the long shadow of grief cast by the deaths of parents and caregivers from COVID-19. Yet today, with federal stimulus funding for schools drawing to an end and state lawmakers dedicating virtually no additional money for public schools during the 2023 legislative session, education leaders are starting to make tough choices about whether to maintain mental health support for children like the Ortegas.

Their decisions will have lifelong effects for students quietly struggling with their anguish. Researchers have found the sudden loss of a parent when it comes to impact on academic performance.

“​​Those kids who don’t want to think about or talk about what happened tend to struggle longer,” said Julie Kaplow, executive director of the Trauma and Grief Center at the Texas-based Hackett Center for Mental Health. Professionals trained in trauma-informed care — including those placed at schools — can help children process their grief in a healthy way, she said.

No government agency has tallied the number of pandemic-bereaved children in the Houston area, but the number might reach about 5,000. An estimated 41,000 Texas children lost a caregiver to the virus, according to a maintained by the Imperial College of London, and about 12 percent of the state’s coronavirus deaths occurred in Harris County, Texas Health and Human Services show.

A 5,000-person estimate could understate the magnitude of the losses because parent deaths due to reasons other than infection, such as drug overdoses and other health issues, also increased nationwide during the pandemic.

A family man

In the Ortega family, before the virus that changed everything, Sundays meant time with Dad.

It was the one free day in Eliberto’s six-day work week, said Laura Ortega, his widow. After going to Mass in the morning, the afternoon would become an adventure of his design. Many weeks, the family would enjoy a bite to eat, then head to a flea market. The four would peruse the multicolored stalls and his daughter would ask to go on rides that her younger brother was still scared of. Eliberto, relishing the chance to spoil his daughter a little, would always say yes, Laura said.

The husband and wife met at a Houston nightclub when Laura was 19, him coaxing her onto the dance floor. After that, the couple dated for several years, at first only meeting up at parks to swing on the swing sets, then later watching Eliberto’s favorite Spanish telenovelas and dancing together to música norteña. Eventually, they married.

Both dreamed of becoming parents, but Laura struggled to get pregnant. Several years later, when her belly started to swell, it felt like a miracle. A second child followed a year afterward. It felt like everything was falling into place.

But one evening in 2021 shattered the future Laura had pictured. Eliberto, who had tested positive for the coronavirus earlier that day, took a rapid turn for the worse. As his children slept in the same room, his breathing became raspy, his lungs closing in on themselves. His eyes rolled back into his head as he slumped in his chair. A trickle of blood slid down from his nose.

Desperately, Laura tried speaking to him. She got no response.

“I literally felt at that moment like he took his last breath in my face,” Laura said. “Because after that, I didn’t feel his heartbeat. I didn’t feel nothing.”

Emergency medical staff arrived at the home to perform CPR and transport Eliberto to the hospital. But hours later, doctors pronounced Eliberto dead.

The next day, the kids arose to an alternate universe. As the news sunk in, the brother and sister spent the following days alternating between bewildered silences and hysterics.

It was late July, just a few weeks before the first day of school. The return to classes would inevitably mean classmates and teachers asking her kids how their summers had gone. Laura decided she had to get them help from a counselor.

Mental health needs mount

Across Texas, schools saw a surge of demand for the sort of services Laura was seeking.

The Texas Education Agency’s School Mental Health Task Force found a “staggering increase” in the rates of students experiencing depression, anxiety and other mental health concerns since the pandemic, according to its 2023 report. About half of roughly 750 school districts surveyed by the task force reported rising rates of “distress related to trauma and grief.”

Sean Ricks, senior manager of HISD’s crisis intervention team, said he saw a surge in student psychological challenges during and after lockdown. The district launched a 24/7 crisis hotline that fielded about 600 calls, according to HISD.

“If I can just use the Richter scale … we were used to tremors of 2.5 or 3,” Ricks said. “At the return of the students to school, I would say it was probably a 5.5 or 6.”

A shortage of psychological support for students has long plagued Texas public schools. For nearly a decade, zero districts in the state had all the recommended ratios of counselors, nurses, psychologists and social workers, a .

But facing never-before-seen levels of psychological distress among students amid the pandemic, and simultaneously flush with cash thanks to the passage of a federal stimulus package that sent billions to Texas campuses, districts began investing in mental health.

As of 2022, Texas schools had spent $64 million in pandemic relief grants on student mental health needs, according to data the TEA provided to the Landing. All told, districts planned to devote over $300 million to the issue, according to a , the most recent available. The vast majority of the spending went to bringing on new staff, the TEA data show.

The investments spurred tangible, though modest, increases in the number of adults that students struggling with their mental health could turn to.

Statewide, schools added about 820 school counselors and 230 social workers from 2019-20 to 2022-23, according to the Landing’s analysis of TEA data. The change nudged the number of students per counselor or social worker statewide from 389 down to 363. Although school counselors in Texas are required to have training in mental health support, their jobs typically also involve helping with scheduling and making plans for after graduation.

In HISD, which lags behind statewide averages in mental health resources per child, the shifts were more extreme. Over the same period, the student-to-counselor-and-social-worker ratio decreased from 793-to-1 to 547-to-1. HISD also brought on more staffers known as “wraparound specialists” meant to address students’ non-academic needs and this year that offer free psychological services.

Families like the Ortegas would finally have better access to the services they were looking for, it seemed.

‘They never call back’

That’s not exactly how the situation played out for Laura.

Before the 2021-22 year began, just weeks after the death of her husband, she spoke with leaders at her children’s elementary school. She explained what her kids had experienced and asked what counseling services might be available. To her astonishment, she learned the school did not have a counselor.

J.R. Harris Elementary, facing a tight budget, had no guidance counselor to start the 2021-22 school year, Principal Jessica Rivero confirmed during an early September community event attended by the Landing.

In the meantime, without options at her children’s campus, Laura looked for psychology practices after she enrolled in Medicaid following Eliberto’s death. Medicaid had suggested several providers, so she went down the list calling every number. It yielded nothing.

“They will just say, ‘Well, you can call this place, and you can call this place, and you can call this place,’” Laura said. “And you call them, but they never call back.”

The lag time without access to counseling meant Laura’s children spent roughly six months going to school every day, attempting to maintain a semblance of normal life, with no outlet to process their loss other than with family members who were also grieving.

That unmet need can be dangerous to children, said Bradley Smith, director of the University of Houston’s school psychology doctorate program. Young people often need therapy catered to dealing with traumatic experiences in order to process them in a healthy way, he said.

“The saying, ‘Time heals all wounds,’ that doesn’t really apply to trauma,” Smith said. “Just the passage of time doesn’t automatically take care of things. And so I think we have a lot of kids walking around that are still experiencing negative effects of the pandemic that haven’t been worked out.”

J.R. Harris Elementary ultimately added a school counselor midway through the 2021-22 school year. While the counselor was not a child psychologist, she agreed to meet regularly with Laura’s children throughout the spring semester. The school later added a second counselor.

Talking about the loss of their dad in one-on-one meetings over the course of months helped Laura’s children begin to heal, she said. Then, in mid-2023, Laura finally found a therapy practice that would accept her insurance. Her kids now attend sessions regularly.

Still, it can be hard for Laura to gauge how her children are processing their grief.

This past summer, she received a troubling report from a staffer at her son’s YMCA camp who said she saw him cutting himself with scissors on two occasions. The second time, the staffer said she asked Laura’s son what he was doing, and he said he wanted to be with his father.

The episode triggered her own memories of childhood trauma for Laura, who cut herself when she was young while struggling to find an outlet to process difficult experiences.

“I want to make sure he doesn’t go through the same thing I went through, that it was hard to get somebody to help, or to listen, to hear me out,” Laura said.

A fiscal cliff

Some of the mental health resources that Texas schools invested into supporting students’ mental health may now be in jeopardy.

The federal stimulus money that helped fund many positions will end in the fall of 2024, meaning districts will soon have to make tough choices about whether to keep or cut any recently added roles.

And state lawmakers, despite a nearly $33 billion surplus, ended their legislative sessions in 2023 without dedicating any new mental health funds to Texas public schools. One promised $100,000 or more per district for students’ psychological needs, but it died early in the legislative process. Barring an unexpected call for a special session, schools will not see significantly more funding until 2025 at the earliest.

That means school leaders likely will have to decide whether to pull money from other sources, such as teacher salaries, to pay for keeping recently added mental health services.  Those decisions will play into student learning, said Brian Woods, deputy executive director of advocacy for the Texas Association of School Administrators.

“A student with mental health needs, just like a student who’s hungry or can’t see well, is going to really struggle academically,” Woods said.

In HISD, district leaders hired seven “intensive mental health specialists” for positions that will not extend beyond the deadline to spend federal funds this year, spokesperson Joseph Sam said.

Nearby Fort Bend and Conroe independent school districts added six and 10 new mental health-related roles, respectively, thanks to stimulus funds. The positions will remain indefinitely, district officials said.

And Katy Independent School District said it has yet to decide the fate of 20 roles funded by the stimulus package, which totaled $4 million and included counselors and social workers.

Districts that decide against retaining pandemic-era mental health support fit into a troubling trend, said Kaplow, the Hackett Center grief specialist. People are eager to forget about COVID-19 and its lasting effects, she said.

“I do think it is in the rear-view mirror of most individuals,” Kaplow said. “I think that the silence around it is making it even more difficult for the children and families who are grieving.”

‘He’s watching them’

Laura does her best to erase the silence and show her children that it’s OK to talk about their father. She frequently sports the cowboy boots her husband bought for her last birthday before he died. She keeps a locket around her neck that, when the light hits it right, reveals an image of the couple stealing a kiss.

She and her kids still sleep in the same room where her husband died because there’s no extra space in the house they share with their cousins. On the wall, she hung a framed picture of her children’s father wearing a white cowboy hat and tan blazer, hands stuffed into pockets, eyes shadowed by the brim, but gaze strong and directly into the camera. A teddy bear named Eric, Eliberto’s nickname, sits on the bed.

Laura’s son said he often brings his father’s voice to mind. If he needs help staying calm, like if someone is annoying him at school, he remembers Eliberto.

“In my head, I don’t forget him,” Laura’s son said. “I know, if I forget him, I’m never going to know him anymore.”

Now, in lieu of the old rituals the family had, they have created new ones. Every Sunday after church, Laura and her children visit Eliberto’s gravesite. Most of the time, the kids race through the headstones in a game of tag or soccer.

Meanwhile, Laura sits by the stone marker, enjoying the fact her children can, once again, play in the presence of their father.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The , released in August by and research firm surveyed 900 Missouri voters about politics, schools and LGBTQ topics in education. Nearly a third of voters (29%) rated Missouri public schools as poor, markedly more than the 17% who did in June 2020.

Gary Ritter, dean of the university’s school of education, said the fact that Missouri voters are losing confidence in their schools isn’t a surprise — it’s also a finding that is reflected  

Ritter said like others across the U.S., Missouri voters saw their faith in education erode through the pandemic, as districts have struggled with remote learning and academic loss.

“We’ve had a peek into what goes on in crisis-mode school, when you’re trying to figure out how to deal with a pandemic,” Ritter told ����Ӱ��. “So folks are slightly less confident in school performance and school quality, just as I think any of us would have guessed. Missouri looks like the country in that way.”

The poll, which began in 2020, is conducted online about every six months with U.S. residents who have registered to participate in YouGov web surveys. It has a plus or minus margin of error of 4 percentage points. Most questions are similar each time and are about issues that are top priorities to Missourians.

The latest poll included more questions about teachers in general, said Ashley Burle, chief of operations and research fellow at Saint Louis University. 

“One thing that I tried to connect is some of the issues related to teachers and more broadly connecting it to the teacher pipeline issues,” Burle said. “We know that there are issues that need to be addressed. There are things that need to be done to help the teacher pipeline get back on track, so I’d love to see us kind of make that more clear connection between a lot of those points in the future polls.”

Just over half (51%) of voters said they have “a great deal” or “a good amount” of trust and confidence in Missouri’s public school teachers. Less than one-third (28%) of voters said they had some trust while the remaining voters either said no or weren’t sure.

About 54% of voters viewed the K-12 teacher shortage as a problem in their community and a strong percentage of respondents (81%) think teacher salaries should increase. 

But only 35% said they would advise a young adult to become a teacher, while 45% said they wouldn’t and 20% weren’t sure.

The poll also conveys a slight openness to charter schools with 55% of respondents saying they believe charter schools should operate in all areas of the state and 52% saying they want them to operate in their own district. 

Ritter said currently most charter schools operate in the Kansas City or St. Louis metropolitan areas because of that controls where the schools, which are publicly funded but independently run, can be located.

Burle said she was surprised about the results regarding more controversial topics in the classroom, such as gender identity and sexual orientation.

More than half (56%) of voters said they approve of the discussion of sexual orientation in high school compared to 18% in elementary school. These results were similar for the discussion of gender identity. Roughly half of voters also opposed the banning of books that feature LGBTQ youth.

Missouri grappled with of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill during this year’s legislative session. The bill would have banned the discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation in schools, but it failed to pass.

“It was interesting to see the gradation in responses. We kind of think this is an all-or- nothing issue — either we teach these things in all the schools or we don’t teach them in any of the schools,” Burle said. “In fact, voters think, ‘Hey, actually, for older kids, in high schools in particular, we actually think it’s OK.’ I think it just shows you there’s a little bit of an area of gray.”

Ritter said he hopes policymakers will use the results to inform themselves about what Missouri voters find important. While Saint Louis University researchers are still analyzing the latest poll results, people can on the university website.

“We’re going to be digging in to say, what question should we double down on in the next poll? What do we want to learn?” Ritter said. “So we’ll be trying to figure out again how we can find interesting trends.”