State laws mandate that students attend school for a minimum number of hours or days, but some states have suspended attendance requirements during the coronavirus shutdown.
Photo: Prensa Internacional/Zuma PressHow hard is it to teach more than 50 million children remotely? So much so that schools can’t agree on one of their most basic functions: how to take attendance.
Many schools count students as present if they log in to do work in programs like Google Classroom. Others give attendance credit for weekly progress on completed work. In some, parents calling in to vouch for their children is enough.
And some districts aren’t bothering with attendance at all.
If the Los Angeles Unified School District is any indication, throngs of students aren’t participating in remote learning—which much of the country switched to in recent weeks when schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The district recently estimated that on any given day in a week about 25% of high-school students, or at least 30,000, didn’t log in to learn—an improvement over the 32% not doing so last month.
Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner has a good idea of who isn’t logging in regularly in his district, the second-largest in the U.S. after New York City.
“Many of them are amongst our most vulnerable—in the foster-care system, or living in deep poverty, students with disabilities, or those who’ve struggled to attend school on a regular basis in ordinary times,” Mr. Beutner said. “Our goal is to connect every student.”
Mr. Beutner said his district first focused on online learning at the high-school level where most students are able to learn independently. The plan is to reach all other schools by May as devices arrive from suppliers. He said the district is investing $100 million to get everyone connected. For high school, it is estimated that 7,400 students still aren’t connected.
Most U.S. schools have been closed for at least three weeks and some have said they don’t expect to reopen the rest of the school year. While schools treat the online assignments as regular classwork, many aren’t requiring the work because they can’t ensure that all children can access it, or are excluding grades that negatively impact a student’s final grades or academic standing.
Many of the nation’s largest districts—including New York City—didn’t have attendance records last week, or have yet to release them, showing just how tricky it can be to account for students away from the classroom. Some schools are handing out packages of work to students who can’t get online, making it difficult to measure day-to-day participation.
Attendance is typically basic and exact, something schools know in detail by midmorning. State laws mandate that students attend school for a minimum number of hours or days, and attendance typically drives state and local funding. Some states have suspended attendance requirements and won’t lessen funding over it during the shutdown, but their districts still track it to determine participation, which can help decide class completion and promotions. Many states are leaving it up to school districts to set rules to determine who gets promoted or graduates.
Some superintendents are parking buses with Wi-Fi in parking lots for students without internet to connect and be counted. Others are sending employees out to make house calls to check on unresponsive students.
The Clark County School District in Las Vegas is among those using email and telephone calls as well as electronic logins to track student attendance. Around 42,000 students, about 13% in the district, didn’t engage in distance learning the week of March 23 through March 29, the district reported Thursday. The district last school year had an average daily attendance of about 95%.
Some school districts aren’t tracking attendance on any given day.
“We’re not really taking attendance,” said Walter Gonsoulin Jr., superintendent of Jefferson County Schools in Birmingham, Ala. “We have teachers that are working, and they are expected to contact our kids, give them work, and make sure it’s done.”
Belleville Township High School District 201 in Illinois uses online check-in to take attendance, and places buses with Wi-Fi in lots around the city.
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“Families can pull up to the buses and students can login and download what they need and get their assignments finished,” said Belleville’s Jeff Dosier, superintendent of the district of about 4,700 students. He said attendance is running about 75%, and administrators and teachers are working to reach out to students not participating. The attendance rate last year was about 88%.
Some districts have been working for years to build their technology programs, with a desire to be a “1:1 district,” meaning every student has a device, like a laptop or tablet computer. It is those districts, already with a robust technology program or at least a good plan, that have had the smoothest transition to moving to online learning and determining who is participating, according to a Wall Street Journal review.
The Dallas Independent School District, which started working on its technology several years ago, is touting a 98.8% attendance rate based on student login or other contact, such as phone or email or in person.
“We’re pleasantly surprised at how far we’ve been able to get,” said Dallas ISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa. The district spent a couple of days handing out devices to students who didn’t have them and then getting hot spots to those who needed them, he said last week.
Write to Tawnell D. Hobbs at Tawnell.Hobbs@wsj.com
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