About half of Baltimore City students are chronically absent. Which schools have highest, lowest rates?
This is an excerpt from the Baltimore Sun article written by Lilly Price on May 13, 2024
Principal James Sargent beamed as he held up a large trophy before a packed classroom of students and staff.
The prize recognized Success Academy, a small alternative program in East Baltimore, as the latest winner of Mayor Brandon Scott’s attendance challenge. The quarterly contest seeks to motivate students to be consistently present in school after the coronavirus pandemic severely impacted attendance.
After school closures and quarantines, every state saw a dramatic spike in chronic absenteeism — when a student misses 10% or more days in a school year, which amounts to more than three weeks absent. Maryland’s rate remains high at 29.8% for 2023.
During the 2021-22 school year, Baltimore’s chronic absenteeism rate skyrocketed to 58%, at least 45,000 students. High schoolers, particularly freshmen, were the most chronically absent that school year, at about 69%.
The best-attended schools in the district were charter elementary and middle schools; a traditional, stand-alone elementary school; elementary schools combined with middle schools; and two high schools that have entrance criteria. Alternative educational programs and traditional high schools had the worst attendance.
“The overwhelming majority of city schools students came out of the pandemic missing 20 days or more of school,” Sonja Santelises, CEO of the Baltimore City Public School System, said in an interview. But the rate of chronically absent students has improved, she said, and continues to decline because of the work and attention of educators. Data for the 2023-24 school year is incomplete, but she estimated chronic absenteeism has dropped to 45%.
“The work that we do is not in vain,” Sargent said at an April news conference.
In addition to lower grades, test scores and graduation rates, missing a significant amount of school can impact entire classes when teachers have to repeat lessons, education experts say. Students also miss out on creating meaningful relationships with peers and teachers, resulting in more absences.
“It can be a really self-reinforcing cycle,” said Jing Liu, an assistant professor in education policy at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Schools with lowest chronic absenteeism
State attendance data in 2023 shows that charter schools and public schools with arts and magnet programs had city schools’ lowest rates of chronic absenteeism.
Besides Eager Street Academy, a middle and high school program serving incarcerated teenagers, the highest attendance and lowest chronic absenteeism rates were at City Neighbors Hamilton, a charter elementary/middle school focused on the arts. Hampstead Hill Academy, The Green School of Baltimore and City Neighbors Charter School had chronic absenteeism rates of around 15%, ranking in the top five best attendance rates.
Charter and alternative schools could also have smaller populations and be better at connecting with students than larger, traditional schools, said Robert Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins University School of Education research professor and director of Hopkins’ Everyone Graduates Center, who spoke generally about chronic absenteeism.
“You could speculate that they’re are better-suited or more conditioned to really try to focus on this idea of relationships with kids, being connected with kids, making them feel welcome and wanted in schools,” Balfanz said.
McKenzie Allen, executive director of the Maryland Alliance of Public Charter Schools, said charter schools’ attendance successes could be because they invite families into the school system in a way traditional schools historically have not.
