The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting school closings lowered grades and increased chronic absenteeism at San Diego Unified schools, according to statistics district leaders released this week.
New data presented during a board workshop Tuesday shows about 14 percent of the district’s students were chronically absent from school this year, when most students were learning online during the pandemic. This figure is higher than 8 percent from last year and 12 percent from the previous year.
Students are considered to be chronically absent if they miss at least 10 percent of the days of class in a year. Chronic absenteeism is associated with lower grades and lower graduation rates.
About 45 percent of San Diego middle and high school students have received a D or F in at least one class this school year, up from 36 percent last year.
Meanwhile, for elementary school students, who are rated on a four-point scale with 4 as the best score, about 65 percent received a 1 or 2 in English or math this school year, compared to 62 percent for the year. past.
Grades and truancy rates are significantly worse for black, Latino, English learner, and students with disabilities than for white students.
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There are several potential reasons why student attendance dropped during COVID, including a lack of reliable internet for some students, new attendance maintenance procedures, and students who left the district during the year, the area superintendent said. Bruce Bivins at Tuesday’s meeting.
“When we see that the data is not favorable, it means that our system is failing our students. This does not mean that our students are failing our system, ”said Bivins.
School board president Richard Barrera on Wednesday attributed worsening absenteeism rates and grades to COVID, saying there had been improvements in student outcomes in the years leading up to the pandemic.
“We know that distance learning cannot be anywhere near – for most students – as effective as learning in person,” Barrera said. “All of those are pandemic-related setbacks of strategies that had been showing real improvement.”
The district presented a comprehensive plan Tuesday, aimed at addressing issues such as absenteeism and poor grades and improving learning for underserved student groups such as black and disabled students.
“When we get it right for our most underserved students, then we can affirm that we stand up for all children,” Acting Superintendent Lamont Jackson said during the workshop Tuesday. “But it won’t be until we make a difference for the most marginalized.”
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With San Diego Unified set to return to full-time in-person learning in the fall with $ 450 million in federal COVID relief money and a positive state budget outlook, the district is preparing to roll out several important initiatives to help students recover from the pandemic, district officials said.
“(For) many of these important issues, we already know what works; we have strategies that we have developed before COVID that were showing real success,” said Barrera. “I think everyone sees that there is a real opportunity now to invest. , to take those strategies to a larger scale, so we should see a bigger improvement now that we get out of COVID than we did in those few pre-COVID years. “
San Diego Unified School District officials on Tuesday laid out their plans for universal transitional kindergarten, ethnic studies at all grade levels and other new initiatives to make schools anti-racist and improve student outcomes.
District leaders said they plan to make transitional kindergarten available to all 4- and 5-year-olds and will create a permanent online K-12 magnet school.
There will also be summer programs specifically to help students transition to middle and high school, tutoring for multilingual students, and longer school days for students who need extra help.
The district’s plan ties in with previously announced initiatives such as its expanded summer learning program that is open to all students, and changes to grading and student discipline to make it less punitive.
The district plans to offer Ethnic Studies to all students in all grades. In 2019 the school board voted to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement for high school students.
The district has also said it will create a teacher development program aimed at helping more people of color become district teachers.
Educators will receive training and professional development in a number of areas, including teaching reading, teaching math, and how to be anti-racist in the classroom.
The district’s plans are part of its proposed Local Control and Accountability Plan, or LCAP, a state-required document that outlines a district’s goals and plans to improve student outcomes over three years. The school board will officially vote on the district’s LCAP at a future board meeting.
The proposed LCAP attracted some praise and some suggestions from some community members. Some said they wanted to see the district focus more on students with disabilities and gifted students.
Moira Allbritton, former chair of the district’s Community Advisory Committee on Special Education, said the district has not improved outcomes for students enough after years of hearing district leaders announce various plans to help students. .
“In two decades with the San Diego Unified School District, I have seen dozens of programs and initiatives, and almost universally we fall short when we pass professional development,” Allbritton said during Tuesday’s meeting. “We fell short of meaningful commitment to part of the family. We fell short in implementing the reform with fidelity and responsibility. And we fell short of closing the achievement gap for our student subgroups. “
Jackson, a longtime educator in the district, said he and his co-workers have to be willing to “feel uncomfortable” and acknowledge past failures to do the right thing for underserved students.
“We have to make no apologies for diversity and inclusion, access and equity,” Jackson said. “We have to look at ourselves in the mirror (…) and recognize that we have not collectively cared for all the students and that, therefore, some have not succeeded.”
“We have to be able to change the narrative, that we are about our children who are black and they are brown and our students who are marginalized, and not be afraid to say that.”
Jackson became interim superintendent last month when former superintendent Cindy Marten
she left office to become the United States Under Secretary of Education.
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