To meet the needs of our most vulnerable kids, learn the lessons of school reform history

Chronic absenteeism, defined as students missing 10% or more days in school, is surging. Recently, The Oklahoman drew upon Attendance Works’ Hedy Chang, who said chronic absenteeism is an “all-hands-on-deck moment.” She also called on schools to “learn the specific barriers to attendance that their students experience before crafting a response to those unique challenges.”

In August, the Tulsa World reported that “About half of the Tulsa high school students are chronically absent” and explained why this complex and serious problem is “showing no signs of improvement.” The World cited the work of Georgetown’s Phyllis Jordan who explained the need to reconnect “what’s going on in the school and what’s going on outside the school.”

I’d urge educators and legislators to consider the history of promising, but largely failed efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism. I will draw on the experience of an outstanding Oklahoma partnership in 2010 that nearly persuaded Oklahoma City Public Schools (OKCPS) to draw on the excellent work of Johns Hopkins’ Robert Balfanz, a colleague of Phyllis Jordan and Hedy Chang.

Community partners studied the nation’s top cognitive research on lessening summer “learning loss” and addressing an interconnected crisis ― chronic absenteeism. We learned from Balfanz that in high-poverty schools, “There are too many needy kids and not enough adults. Until you change that equation, it doesn’t matter if you give them new strategies.” He called for early warning systems and said that progress occurs “when schools focus on reducing absenteeism and course failure” as opposed to “cramming for an annual test.”

While a holistic tutoring system was part of the solution, if it became viewed as "remediation," the interventions would fail. Poor children who struggled to attend school had to be treated with the respect bestowed on affluent students who would go on summer vacations and, year-round, would engage in other stimulating activities.

Understandably, some of the district’s top administrators did not want to shift focus from schools’ attendance rates, which were used for accountability purposes, to the much more challenging task of fighting chronic absenteeism. But the Oklahoma City school district agreed to adopt the slower, more complex, humane science-based approach, which would be founded on trusting relationships, not remediation.

The problem was that 2010 was also the year when Oklahoma mandated Common Core standards, which were years above the reading levels of our disadvantaged students, as well as a Teacher Evaluation System, based on unreliable algorithms biased against teachers in high-poverty schools. Common Core might have worked if it weren’t tied to students’ exit exams and educators’ evaluations, but if those accountability systems weren’t repealed, a tragic collapse in students graduating would be inevitable. So, the calendar and chronic absenteeism reforms Oklahoma City Public Schools promised deteriorated into additional weeks of test prep and remediation.

By 2016, then-state schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister led efforts to return to valid accountability systems and place the welfare of high-challenge students above flawed numbers. But, understandably, many education leaders were reluctant to tackle issues, like chronic absenteeism, where they might face punitive actions for failing to single-handedly solve long-lasting problems.

I wanted to prioritize data used for diagnostic purposes to help the 40% of my school's students who missed 10 or more days of school. But I could understand why Patrick Forsyth, a University of Oklahoma professor who had analyzed the state’s A-F report card system, said "using attendance to measure school effectiveness is like using rates of tobacco use to measure hospital effectiveness. It keeps blame on the schools yet does nothing to address chronic poverty.”

Of course, there is no nonpolitical reason why schools and politicians have to subordinate the welfare of students to the “blame game,” but that has happened throughout my decades in urban education. As bad as it was when accountability-driven, competition-driven “reforms” reached their peak, today’s assaults on public education are worse.

Even so, there is little chance of serving the needs of our most vulnerable kids, unless we learn the lessons of school reform history. Then, as now, Oklahoma schools have many partners who respect education research and who could bolster the confidence of educators, who are once more under attack but who would love to create schools where the struggling children are treated with love and respect.

John Thompson is a former Oklahoma City Public Schools teacher.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Chronic absenteeism is a crisis that affects most vulnerable students