It’s a Two-Way Street: Data Tracking and Student Interviews to Combat Low Attendance

Sarah Goodman • Cahn Fellow 2022

The pandemic has had a dramatic impact on student attendance rates across the country.  “Absenteeism in New York City was worse than the national average before the pandemic, but the pandemic significantly exacerbated the issue. Only 96 of 1,518 schools kept their average daily attendance rates steady or boosted them from 2018-19 to 2021-22.” (Kingsbury, Ian, May, 2023, Empire Center, Schools Out Forever: Truancy in NYC Reaches New Heights).  Hunter’s Point Community Middle School was unfortunately not one of the 96 schools maintaining attendance.  Our daily attendance rate dropped from 87% in 2019 to 77% in 2022.  Our chronic attendance rate rose to over 25% from less than 15% before the pandemic. Chronic absenteeism is calculated being below 90% for the school year.   Even though students have returned to school full time, our attendance rates have continued to decline.  Our school's attendance team and advisory system has instituted a number of different systems over the years to track attendance and support families to varying degrees of success.