Nine months into full remote learning, Columbus City Schools is releasing alarming numbers when it comes to attendance, grades, and failing students. At Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting, CCS Superintendent Dr. Talisa Dixon cited an article calling this the “lost generation.”
“Not only are we dealing with unprecedented learning loss and course failure, we understand that it would take years to mitigate,” said Dr. Dixon.
The first data point released involved the drop in enrollment for CCS this school year of nearly 2,600 students. That brings the students count for the largest school district in the state to 46,300 kids.
As of this week, the daily student attendance rate sits at 72% which is at least a 15% drop from school years 2019/2020, 2018/2019, and 2017/2018. In contrast, chronic absenteeism for the district is climbing and now sits at 66%. CCS already had some of the worst chronic absenteeism rates in the state with a 33% rate in the 2019/2020 school year and a 49% rate in the 2018/2019 school year. The most recent numbers mean the majority of the district’s students have missed more than a week’s worth of school so far this semester.
“We want to get to the root cause of why our students aren’t attending,” said school board member Dr. Tina Pierce Tuesday.
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With no “deep dive” analysis conducted, CCS administrators believe the low student attendance is contributing to a higher failure rate among students taking high school courses. In the first fall quarter of last school year, 16% of students were failing their classes. Failing figures have more than doubled this first fall quarter to 36%.
Now district leaders are trying to figure out ways to keep kids in class while they continue to learn from home.
“We are working on a very robust attendance plan,” CCS Chief Accountability Officer Dr. Machelle Kline told the school board Tuesday. “It is going to take us a little bit of time. It does not happen overnight because as you know we have not had an attendance plan.”
New Chief Academic Officer Dr. Terri Breeden also discussed the need for a new grading policy without providing specific details of what that may look like. Right now, she’s instructing teachers to contact failing students at least three times and create progress plans. She gave a possible plan example of a teacher negotiating a better grade if the failing students completes some of their missing work.
“You have to be very careful when changing grades,” Dr. Breeden said. “We have an approved process.”
Dr. Pierce asked specifically about the district’s nearly 8,000 special needs kids as current attendance rates for those students sit at 66%.
This month, ABC6 On Your Side highlighted the story of Katie Reed, a sophomore at Eastmoor Academy, now not logging in and failing her virtual classes. Katie’s mother Melissa said her daughter suffers with ADHD and loss of hearing. She indicated her individual education plan includes the district providing an aide which Katie has not been getting since the spring. Disability Rights Ohio advised parents to document any services not provided by the district and hours their children could not participate in their education. DRO says school districts must make up that time.
“It’s going to take months on our part and possibly creative summer planning,” said Dr. Pierce on the recovery hours for the special ed kids. “Creative planning for years to come.”
This week, parents made public requests for CCS to transition out of remote learning next semester and allow kids back into the classroom. At this point, district leaders said the pandemic still poses a threat and conditions would not be safe.