In the 2021-22 school year, chronic absenteeism rates among US K-12 students whose schools offered only remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic were 6.9 percentage points higher than those attending in-person–only schools, rising to 10.6 percentage points for at-risk students, per a JAMA Network Open study published yesterday.
University of Notre Dame researchers analyzed data from 22,034 observations at 11,017 school districts from the 2018-19 and 2021-22 academic years using a difference-in-difference framework. The dataset represented about 87% of all students.
Each school year, numbers of students who are chronically absent according to districts and local education agencies are reported to the National Center for Education Statistics. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of school days per year.
"Chronic absenteeism has been associated with several negative outcomes, including lower test scores, a reduction in educational and social engagement, lower rates of high school completion, and higher rates of substance use," the researchers noted.
Poverty tied to greater absenteeism
In the 2020-21 school year, an average of 39.3% of school days took place in person, 33.9% were hybrid, and 26.8% were virtual.
Chronic absenteeism rates climbed 13.5 percentage points, from an average of 15.9% in 2018-2019 to 29.4% in 2021-22. Rates among students attending schools with a 100% virtual format were 6.9 percentage points higher than among those attending school only in person. Hybrid learning was not tied to increased absenteeism.
The link between virtual instruction and chronic absenteeism varied by socioeconomic status, with the conditional correlation much greater for at-risk students. Rates were 10.6 percentage points higher among students learning from home in districts in the top quintile of poverty than those in districts with only face-to-face learning.
Can negative outcomes be undone?
"The accumulating evidence … suggests that virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic was detrimental to students’ educational development and mental well-being," the authors wrote.
Questions remain, they said, for parents, educators, scholars, and the medical community.
The accumulating evidence … suggests that virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic was detrimental to students’ educational development and mental well-being.
"First, how can these negative consequences be undone? Surveys of both teachers and school administrators believe that as we move past the pandemic, virtual instruction will continue to be a major component of K-12 education," they wrote.
"A second key question then is how to deliver virtual learning in K-12 learning without these potential negative consequences," they added. "Educators and policy makers must be prepared to implement evidence-based policies and practices related to online learning going forward."
Learning how to reduce chronic absenteeism and use remote instruction without poor outcomes is key in formulating policy, the investigators said. "Key future questions include understanding whether this result is causal and why lower district income was associated with worse outcome," they concluded.
