About half of Baltimore City students are chronically absent. Which schools have highest, lowest rates?
Baltimore public schools' chronic absenteeism rate skyrocketed to 58% last year. What can we learn from schools with the best and worst attendance?
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. 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 schools can have strict attendance policies and entrance criteria, Liu said. But they, too, can also struggle with attendance.
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.
Baltimore School for the Arts, a performing arts school, and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a magnet high school, had the lowest chronic absenteeism rates for non-charter high schools, at 16% and 25%, respectively. Baltimore School for the Arts applicants must audition, and only 11% are accepted. Poly students must apply and meet high academic criteria.
All traditional schools with chronic absenteeism rates below the state average were elementary schools or combined elementary/middle schools. William Paca Elementary, a stand-alone elementary school in East Baltimore, had the lowest rate at 16.8%.
Schools with highest chronic absenteeism
BCPSS schools with large populations of low-income students, alternative schools and schools with specialized programs, such as medicine and law, had the worst attendance rates in 2023.
Act replaced No Child Left Behind that states widely adopted chronic absenteeism as an accountability metric. Chronic absenteeism includes both lawful and unlawful absences. Students who are unlawfully absent for 20 days in a school year are considered truant, which carries a legal penalty for parents and guardians.
“It’s a relatively new idea for schools,” Balfanz said. “They weren’t all prepared for this big wave of post-pandemic chronic absenteeism.”
For schools with large populations, an increase in the percentage of students regularly missing school can amount to hundreds of kids with chronic absences, “a number that overwhelms you,” Balfanz said of school administrators.
In Baltimore, at least 95% of students were chronically absent at two alternative programs: Excel Academy at Francis M. Wood High, an adult program with credit recovery, and Achievement Academy at Harbor City High, which has 200 students. Excel Academy won the mayor’s attendance challenge in the year’s second quarter.
Alternative schools generally have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism because they concentrate children with obstacles to learning and regular attendance in a single school, Balfanz said. Students who attend alternative schools are more likely to have to work to support themselves or their families, are more likely to have greater sibling or elder care responsibilities, and over time might have a looser attachment to schooling — the very reasons they might attend an alternative school, he added.
Reginald F. Lewis High School of Business and Law, a traditional high school in Northeast Baltimore with more than 550 students, had a 92% chronic absenteeism rate. So did Vivien T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy, a 400-person high school focused on medical training.
Renaissance Academy, a 200-person high school focused on law and government, had an 89% chronic absenteeism rate.
Edmondson-Westside High and Frederick Douglass High, two traditional schools with at least 700 kids, each had an 87% chronically absent rate. More than 75% of students were from low-income families at both schools.
A city schools spokesperson declined to make principals at schools that did not win the quarterly attendance challenge available for interviews.
What can be done?
At Success Academy, the school population fluctuates around 100 formerly incarcerated students, those who have missed a significant amount of school and suspended students who return to traditional schools. Sargent dedicated staff to aggressively monitor attendance, resulting in the district’s largest year-over-year improvement in attendance during 2023-24’s third quarter. .
Success Academy’s attendance team met weekly to track who was on the cusp of being chronically absent. One staff member made 3,000 phone calls to students and their parents this year, Sargent said.
“It’s getting to the point now where kids are saying, ‘Please don’t call my house; I’m on my way,’” he said with a laugh.
Research has shown promise in preventing chronic absenteeism by strengthening relationships between students and their school communities, and with home-based interventions, Liu said. Sending persistent “nudge letters” and visiting the homes of targeted students have shown success, but those strategies take time and manpower that can strain school resources, he said.
Principal Rashida Ford overhauled the attendance strategy at Booker T. Washington Middle School after 83% of her students were chronically absent in 2022. She wanted to understand why students were missing school.
Booker T. Washington, a performing arts school in West Baltimore, is one of the few stand-alone middle schools in the city. Students can apply to attend, but most come from the Upton neighborhood and McCulloh Homes community. Art is a strategy to boost attendance, Ford said. Student actors and musicians must rehearse to be part of an end-of-the-year play, and their peers will hold them accountable if they’re not at practice.
Over the summer, Ford and her team drove to every sixth grade student’s house to introduce themselves. And when students are absent three days in a row, they can expect a knock on the door. Booker T. Washington also uses Concentric Educational Solutions, a home visit service, to reengage students.
“Going to houses, going to doors really makes a difference,” Ford said.
Chronically absent students have personalized attendance plans, and some check in and out of school with staff. Students are awarded field trips and other incentives for good attendance. The driving factor for the improvement was making students feel safe and engaged at school, she said.
The efforts resulted in the school’s chronic absenteeism rate dropping to 68% last year. Ford was awarded on the first day of school as the mayor’s first attendance challenge winner.
“At the end of the year, seeing that number … I got a little emotional,” she said. “You don’t always see the reward for attendance because it’s always this moving target. But being able to see the outcome of the hard work our team put in just gave us further motivation to keep going.”