September 27, 2024 • 60 mins
Hedy Chang is the Founder and Executive Director of Attendance Works. A 1986 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Hedy brings a wealth of knowledge and passion about the intricate tapestry of factors that influence why students may not make it to class. Her Chinese American background and family legacy of activism provide a rich context as we discuss her dedication to unraveling the complexities of chronic absenteeism—an issue that's foundational to achieving justice in our education system.
This is a re-release of a popular episode, one that is particularly timely as millions of children in the U.S. are back in school for the Fall semester.
Learn more about Hedy Chang and Attendance Works.
We are thrilled about the global reach of this podcast; we currently have listeners in more than 650 cities across over 50 countries! We would be delighted to hear from our listeners, wherever you may be in the world. Send us a message on our dedicated Telegram channel:
https://t.me/+23EKRv8eAWVlZDFh
We are always looking for new guests to interview, so please pitch us your suggestions. If we end up interviewing them, we will recognize you on the show and send you some show swag.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and making a donation. Your generosity helps support our limited budget, enabling us to continue producing high-quality content. Click here to donate.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Having a kid in school so they can learn and
thrive is something thateveryone of every background can
say oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
In this conversation, I was privileged to sit down
virtually with Hedy Chang.
Hedy is the founder andexecutive director of Attendance
Works, which is a national andstate-level initiative that's
aimed at advancing studentsuccess by addressing chronic
absence.
Hedy has served as seniorprogram officer at the Evelyn
(00:43):
Walter Haas Jr Fund and asco-director of California
Tomorrow, which is a nonprofitcommitted to drawing strength
from cultural, linguistic andracial diversity.
In February of 2013, hedy wasnamed by the White House as a
champion of change for hercommitment to furthering
African-American education.
Hedy talks about her originstory, how she got into thinking
(01:09):
about and working on the topicof chronic absenteeism in 2006,
when very few states even keptsuch data, and it brings us up
to the current moment, where allstates, or virtually all states
, gather and use and work withthis data.
She talks about the differentfactors impacting student
(01:33):
attendance, the importance ofconnection, belonging, relevant
and rigorous education on ourcampuses, and much, much more.
I hope that you enjoy and learnfrom this conversation as much
as I did.
Welcome to the Superintendent'sHangout, where we discuss topics
(01:56):
in education, charter schools,life in general, and not
necessarily in that order.
I'm your host, dr Shredda, comeon in and hang out.
Necessarily in that order.
I'm your host, dr Shredda.
Come on in and hang out.
Welcome, hedy.
(02:16):
Thank you so much for joiningus this afternoon virtually and
taking the time for thisconversation heading into the
weekend, my pleasure.
I was wondering if you couldstart by sharing your origin
story, personally andprofessionally, and really with
an emphasis on the curves inyour path that ultimately led
you to the work you do today.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, so I think my origin story starts with the
fact that I grew up ChineseAmerican in the Midwest and also
come from a family that has along history of community
building and activism both inChina and actually the United
States.
Okay, so now I am probablygoing to take a little bit of a
(02:57):
divergence.
You can see, David, whether youwant to include it.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
No, it's great.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
My great grandfather was a Chinese immigrant who came
here in the 1880s and then wasconverted to Christianity, went
to New York City and at the timethis is the time of the Chinese
Exclusion Acts he ended upmarrying my great grandmother,
who was a woman named Louise VanArnum who's a woman named
(03:27):
Louise Van Arnum.
His name was Huey Kinn and theygot married at a time when
intermarriage wasn't consideredvery acceptable and in fact, my
great-grandmother, who wasgenerations Dutch-American, lost
her citizenship when shemarried my grandfather.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Because of it.
Is that a result of the ChineseExclusion Act?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It's that and because if you married someone non-US,
your citizenship became that ofthe person.
So my great-grandmother losther citizenship.
Later on they had six daughtersand three sons.
The six daughters all marriedChinese scholars and my
grandmother then subsequentlylost her citizenship, even
though she was American born.
And then I grew up.
My mom was born in China, thencame back to the United States.
(04:11):
I grew up here in the Midwestwhere I was it's St Louis
Missouri not exactly a lot ofChinese American families,
mostly a black white environment, and having grown up
understanding kind of a historyof otherness and committed
myself to because I could seehow, when you have to walk in
(04:34):
different milieus and understanddifferent realities, it gives
you a different understanding ofhow to make change and how to
move forward.
And so I really was alwaysthought I was going to take my
own personal understanding andfight for equity and justice.
That's always been my goal aslong as I can remember, and
(04:57):
originally I was working for anorganization called California
Tomorrow where I really lookedat more racial equity,
linguistic diversity, how do youdraw strength upon our
diversity but also understandthe inequities and look for
where we have to make systemicchange had also, when I became a
(05:17):
mom, realized what atransformative power having kids
is for adults.
There are things we will do forour kids that we won't
necessarily do for ourselvesbecause we want them to have a
different kind of life.
Right, and had a mentor in life, a guy named Ralph Smith, who
(05:39):
was a senior vice president ofthe Annie Casey Foundation,
still continues to be a mentorof mine who helped me take
actually a fellowship calledEmerging Leaders Fellows where
it was in South Africa.
Ambassador Dane Joseph was likemy main faculty member and had
a chance to think about.
(06:00):
At that time I was trying tothink about career changes.
I'd be in philanthropy and Icreated a life mission statement
about where I wanted to go andit was about how do you use two
generation approaches to movefamilies out of poverty and
create a different future.
And I created this missionstatement, showed it to my
(06:21):
friend colleague, mentor Ralph,who was at the senior, who was a
senior vice president at theAnna Casey Foundation.
He said we should do somethingthat allows you to realize that
mission, personal missionstatement.
And he said I have this project.
I think kids missing too muchschool in the early grades is
the reason they're not readingat the end of third grade, which
(06:43):
then has huge lifelong outcomesin terms of graduation and
economic success.
And he asked me if I wouldfigure out.
Was there any research thatcould prove this was an issue,
because what would?
Didn't we know about bestpractice, and was data around
this being collected in a waythat we could eventually include
(07:04):
this information in the AnnieCasey Foundation's Kids Count
data book?
And so my work started becauseI said, okay, I'll take that on,
and I will also say at the sametime that Ralph asked me to
look at that.
I had my kids in a publicelementary school, pretty mixed
income public elementary schoolhere in San Francisco.
That was very intentionalbecause I believed that I wanted
(07:26):
my kids to understand kids fromall sorts of walks of life.
And one little boy in my oldestchild's class, who was born on
the exact same day as my kid,was a kid who grew up with very
different opportunities in thesense that he was living in
public housing, his mom wastrying to work her way off
welfare, but this little boy wasso engaging and bright and, I
(07:52):
know, had every ability tosucceed that my own kid did.
But in second grade this littleboy's mom died very suddenly
shortly after.
We actually had a jointbirthday party for them and I
think it's because his mom neverhad access to decent public
(08:13):
health lots of other issues.
And then I saw this little boygoing in the child welfare
system and even though we had acaring school environment, we
didn't quite know.
I was involved as a parent, soI wasn't on staff but did a lot
of the after-school programming,and so when my friend Ralph
asked me if I would take on thisissue, I had this outrage and
(08:36):
sense of injustice about thissituation and I felt like if I
could figure out how to notallow for this injustice to
occur, that every kid who hadthe potential to succeed got the
resources and we had the dataand the tools to ensure that
equal opportunity, then I wantedto try it out.
So that was in 2006.
(08:59):
And the first thing I figuredout was that no one was really
actually collecting data on howmany kids were actually missing
too much school for any reason.
We looked at unexcused absencesIn some places.
We looked at average dailyattendance.
There was one longitudinalstudy our database called the
Early Childhood LongitudinalStudy that you could look at it
(09:19):
and that data when we were ableto work with Columbia to crunch
it showed that about one out of10 kids were chronically absent
in kindergarten and first andthen.
In fact, if you could track thekids in a cohort all the way
through, chronic absence inkindergarten particularly for
kids who are low income actuallypredicted lower third grade,
lower fifth grade outcomes.
And it was an issue becausethen we started looking at data
(09:43):
in a few localities.
At the time, by the way, mostlocalities weren't looking at
data because we took data onattendance paper and pencil, so
you couldn't even calculate yourchronic absence levels.
But in the few places thatalready had longitudinal student
(10:03):
data systems in 2006, 2007, youcould start to look at it, and
in one major urban area I sawthat 40% of the kindergartners
in that area in that major urbanarea, 6,000 kindergartners were
chronically absent and Ithought, oh my God, this is not
(10:24):
a little issue.
I remember texting my friendRalph.
I said this is a huge issue.
We're giving up on a generation.
We never even gave them achance and we don't even know
that we've done this.
And so that was the launch ofwhat became the research that
led to me eventually, in 2010,creating Attendance Works
(10:47):
because I felt like we needed tofind a way to help people
understand this was an issue,start to calculate and crunch
their data.
And I will also say what'sreally funny now is so in 2010,
when we launched, there was onestate in the entire country that
had a little bit of data thatwas kind of like chronic absence
.
It was Maryland, because NancyGrasmick at the time had sought
(11:09):
to get people to submit on howmany kids missed 20 days or more
, five days or less, so a highattendance and a chronic absence
issue.
I don't even know that she didit from research.
I think she did it from commonsense, and this was the Anna
Casey Foundation, by the way,that had funded this initial
work, and part of they had beenfrustrated because they were
(11:31):
doing work nationally and theycould only get data like this in
Maryland, and I had to explainto them well, you can only get
data like this in Marylandbecause only Maryland has the
data In fact, all the otherstates in the country don't of
data.
In fact, all the other states inthe country don't.
David, now 48 states inWashington DC have chronic
(11:55):
absence data in some form ontheir state websites.
We are so different.
And the other thing that waswonderful is when I first wrote
back to Ralph and I said youwant this in Kids Count.
We don't have enough data tomake this part of Kids Count and
this year, 18 years later, theKids Count is going to be
talking about chronic absence.
I had written him back and saidit only took me 18 years to
(12:16):
eventually achieve the goal thatyou wanted me to in 2006.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So when you it strikes me as you described that
and thank you for both yourexcitement about the trajectory
but also the highly personalaspect of what really got you
into this, right through yourson's friend and classmate and
his experience it strikes methat if you're sitting next to
(12:44):
someone on an airplane they say,hey, how's it going?
You know you want some peanutsand what do you do for a living?
You've kind of got theresearcher hat and you've also
got the activist hat right, kindof.
At the same time, you need tohave some element of activism,
of passion to push through 18years of trying to fight for
(13:07):
states to actually count,something that you have a hunch
is going on.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well, I think a couple things.
One is that it's interesting tomove change in this country.
I think we all have to be ableto see and hear each other.
We're way too partisan.
We don't have our kids as ourcommon investment for a better
(13:34):
future for our country.
One of the things that I loveabout the work of Chronic
Absence is that I think it's acommon sense vision.
Having a kid in school so theycan learn and thrive is
something that everyone of everybackground can say oh, that
(13:56):
makes sense.
It also allows you to say well,when kids aren't here, we need
to pay attention and where theactivist part has to come.
One of the challenges we have inthis country is that often, or
historically, when a kid hasn'tbeen in school, we have this
(14:16):
kind of truancy mindset, andthis is usually the unexcused
absences.
And our truancy mindset is well, david didn't come to school
and that must be because Daviddidn't care, and therefore the
way to get David to school is totake increasingly punitive
measures to force him and hisfamily to get David to school
(14:38):
when there's no evidence, noresearch that shows taking
punitive measures improvesattendance.
What you have to do in order toget kids to come to school is
understand why they aren'tshowing up in the first place
and then come up with solutionsthat address that.
And we have these differentbuckets.
(14:59):
Is it barriers?
You don't have access to healthcare, you have unstable housing
, you have unsafe paths toschool.
Is it aversion?
Because what have access tohealth care?
You have unstable housing.
You have unsafe paths to school.
Is it aversion because what'shappening in school the bullying
, the anxiety is pushing out?
Is it?
Is it disengagement?
Because you have so much staffturnover, there's no
relationship building, so thecurriculum doesn't feel engaging
and relevant, so you don't wantto go to school.
(15:21):
Or is it misconceptions?
You don't realize absences thatare adding up?
Want to go to school?
Or is it misconceptions?
You don't realize absences thatare adding up?
You don't think you have to bein school to learn.
You think you can't addresshealth-related absences or
prevent them.
You got to know those thingsand once you know those things
you can improve it.
But blaming kids and familiesdoesn't allow you to know what's
going on.
(15:41):
The key to solutions is buildinga relationship so you can talk
to families about why and thencome up with solutions.
And where the activist partcomes in is when you meet people
and you say, hey, you know, soI work on making sure kids come
up, show up to school every day.
And then when people start tosay, well, the reason they don't
(16:04):
show up to school is blah, blah, blah, that's where you have to
kind of shift the conversationand say, well, what do we know
about it?
Get people to go into questions.
I think when people seeabsences, they ought to be
asking questions and saying thisis a moment to build a
relationship, so I can find outwhy kids might not be going to
(16:25):
school and then how we cancollectively come up with
solutions to get them there.
And that's where the activistpart comes in, as well as the
research part.
Because I have to say and Iremember talking with some folks
in a southern state wherethey're like they wanted to talk
to me about doing more punitivemeasures, and I said, well,
(16:47):
that's interesting, because theresearch that I've seen, for
example in South Carolina, whichis a southern state, shows that
the kids who were missing a lotof school for unexcused
absences, who they put into thecourt system after they did that
, compared to peers who didn'tgo in the court system, their
attendance actually got worse.
(17:15):
Their attendance actually gotworse, and part of that is
because court systems aren'tdesigned to find out and address
why kids don't show up toschool in the first place.
The deterrent works when youthink all of this is just
because kids are, andoccasionally, by the way, there
may be kids who are missingschool intentionally, but a lot
of times that even comes out ofschool in the beginning didn't
ever engage them in the firstplace.
(17:35):
So anyway, so I just say thatyou know the activism is get to
people to really not makeassumptions and see poor
attendance, not showing up toschool as a reason to build
relationship and deep ourunderstanding of each other's
realities.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
When you mentioned the punitive piece, I broke out
into a cold sweat because yourfirst year of working on this in
2006, was my first year as amiddle school principal and I
was in my mid thirties and I washaving some challenges with
some students not attending.
And so I thought I'm going tocall the county probations
(18:15):
department and they had anattendance support division or
something and they sent out anofficer and the officer came and
did a presentation on whatJuvenile Hall was like and then
stood up there and said to themiddle school students hey, is
anyone in here?
How do you feel about you know,being locked up?
And they started this wholepunitive talk and I thought I
(18:37):
was yeah, I didn't do it withany malice intent, but I'm
standing up there thinking I'mgetting my point across.
All it did was make dozens ofparents really mad at me and
call me up and yell at me, whichI ultimately deserved had no
impact on attendance at all, andthat's the kind of the dark
(18:58):
ages end of the spectrum righton supporting student attendance
.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, unfortunately I don't think it's so.
Dark ages, david, I think, inpeople's frustration over the
chronic absences now when Istarted it was about one out of
six kids nationwide.
Now it's closer to one out ofthree.
And the increase?
One of the responses to theincrease is we need to take more
(19:22):
punitive action.
I think I want to actuallyfigure out what we can find of
evidence of that, but I hearthat in the media a lot.
I think there's morelegislation happening and you
know, one of the things that Iwant to talk about is that one
of the things we don't realizeis that even our definition of
excused and unexcused so youknow, all our punitive stuff is
(19:43):
around unexcused absences andthere's a every state, there's a
lot of variation can be whatcan be excused and what can be
unexcused.
A lot of times unexcused has todo with not having
documentation over the reasonswhy you're missing school.
Right, you know, california hascertainly widened and broadened
(20:07):
, especially after the pandemiclots of different reasons why
you might be able to be missingschool.
But you ultimately usually haveto have some kind of note that
says and it has to fit inCalifornia what those absences
are and when kids' absences areunexcused.
It has a number ofrepercussions.
(20:27):
If your absence is unexcused,teachers aren't necessarily
required to help you make up forthe lost time in the classroom.
Teachers can say, oh, theymight, you don't get to go on
this field trip because you hadan unexcused absences.
It starts to almost bias theview of the teacher towards a
kid because, oh, david doesn'tcare, they didn't show up.
(20:50):
But imagine two kids.
They both missed five days andthey were both sick.
One kid, hedy, has health care,David does not.
Hedy comes in with the doctor'snote, david does not.
And now I get any help withwhatever I missed and you don't.
(21:11):
So we start a process of pushoutand then you look at
California's notifications oftruancy any three times
unexcused and you get the firstnotification.
Any three times late by 30minutes, you get a notification.
And by law right now we have inthat notification that we have
language that says and if youdon't start showing up to school
(21:33):
I'm going to take you to court.
Not exactly the way to buildpartnerships with kids and
families.
Threats don't buildpartnerships.
And in Los Angeles we actuallyworked with LA Unified when
Deborah Duarte is now thesuperintendent of LA County, but
she was in the school districtand we came up with these
(21:54):
different versions of the noticeof truancy.
And we actually and this waswhen Kamal Harris was our AG, so
we asked for her permission wesaid if we took the really
negative truancy language andshoved it at the bottom of the
letter in small font and at thetop of the letter put what we
wanted, does that count formeeting the language of law?
(22:15):
She said OK.
Her staff said that's fine.
It turns out if you write anotification that starts one not
in legalese but normal humanlanguage, normal reading.
You know, hey, your kid missedthese days.
Did that seem right?
You know we're concernedbecause if David continues to
miss and you know it hasconsequences, these kinds of
(22:36):
consequences, can we help you?
If you write that note and putall the other stuff at the
bottom, you get betterattendance than when you sent
out.
Use the standard truancynotification out.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Use the standard truancy notification.
That's interesting.
Um, it's the all in themessaging and and the suggestion
of a relationship, rather thanyou know, like the speeding
ticket notification that you getyeah, you exceeded the speed
limit.
Now, if you don't show up atcourt, the fines doubled.
Kind of well.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Part of it, too, is that, um, one of the big
motivators for kids to show upat court the fine's doubled.
Well, part of it too, is thatone of the big motivators for
kids to show up to school isrelationship.
So if your first response is tomake kids feel alienated from
school and that no one caresabout them, that in of itself
has not very good consequencesfor getting kids to school.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I'm not sure that there's broad consensus or
understanding about what itmeans to be chronically absent.
I know that in Californiathere's 10% or more of the days
that a student is enrolled.
If they're absent that counts.
But can you kind of paint thepicture, both nationally what
(23:51):
that looks like and also whatthe working definition is that
you use in your organization?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah.
So I will say that 10% is ourrecommendation and I think
California's rules very muchdirectly reflect that
recommendation that we made.
And we suggest 10% and thatincludes any reason excused
unexcused suspensions, and the10% was based on a combination
(24:18):
of research and a little bit ofwhat we thought worked in
classrooms.
So there's a whole plethora ofresearch.
Now Part of my work as anorganization has been catalyzing
needed research and we haveresearch showing, from starting
with a chronic absencepredicting lower literacy by
third grade, worse middle schooloutcomes, suspensions and then
(24:40):
not graduating from high school,and even some evidence that it
can affect your continuation onto post-secondary ed.
Part of what you want to do islook for a metric that you know
kids are in trouble if they haveit and so, but it's also an
early warning metric.
So the 10% was not was to avoidpeople saying, oh, day 17,.
(25:01):
I better do something aboutDavid Right, day 17 is too late.
Day 18, which is 10%, which isone, 18 days out of 180 school
years too late.
I wanted people to notice youknow, hedy missed school in the
first two days.
After she missed two days of thefirst month, four days of the
second month, six days of thethird month, so that you're
taking an early warning approachto noticing kids on track for
(25:25):
chronic absence and then takingaction.
There is actually some evidencelike Santa Ana has some
research this was before COVIDthat showed kids missing just 5%
.
Already it has an impact onsome of their academic
achievement, but if you lookedfor every kid who just missed
one day in the first month ofschool, you would be crying wolf
(25:46):
way too many kids.
So we're trying to find ametric that both made sense from
the research but from an earlywarning perspective also made
sense so that you wereidentifying kids who were more
challenged.
And the best predictors ofchronic absence are both that
you are chronically absent theprior year and also if you are
(26:10):
missing 10% of the first monthof school.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
So you started to look at this nearly 20 years ago
and there's no way you couldhave predicted a global pandemic
at the time, and I think we allknow what the pandemic did to,
not only to school attendancebut to just almost every element
of our lives.
Can you paint a picture, basedon your research, what chronic
(26:42):
absenteeism looked like inCalifornia just prior and then
post-COVID?
I know you did some interestingresearch.
I just read a report where youshowed a little bit of promise
coming out of COVID that rateswere down but they're still way
higher than they were prior, andthen some interesting patterns
where elementary schools spikedway up whereas pre-COVID,
(27:05):
historically, elementary has hada better attendance than
secondary.
Can you kind of paint that?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, yeah, and that's research that we did with
PACE.
So if folks want to find it,you can go look for this
research report we wrote.
So what you know is thatchronic absence in California
went from something like 12.1 to30% in 21, 22, 22, 23.
It's at about 24.9%.
(27:32):
So we are still double thelevels of pre-pandemic.
But part of the research thatwe talked about is saying you
don't want to just look at thenearly one out of three kids who
are chronically absent, youwant to notice how many kids are
in a school with 20% or morelevels of chronic absence.
Now research by MichaelGottfried and this was actually
(27:55):
done in California too, I thinkit was in Santa Barbara was
where they found this.
Michael found that when kidsare in schools with 20% or more
of their peers chronicallyabsent, it affects the
achievement of the entireclassroom, not just the kids who
are chronically absent.
So you've been a classroomteacher.
(28:15):
When you have kids turning inand out of your classroom, it
makes it a lot harder for you toteach because you don't know
whether we move forward with thelesson, repeat the lesson,
setting classroom norms.
And then there are some kidsthat get more flustered when
they're, you know with the noiseof other kids coming in and out
and that kind of thing.
So before the pandemic,something like nationwide it was
(28:43):
25% of kids schools had about20% or more levels of chronic
absence or 20.
And then post pandemic, it'slike 66, two thirds of all
schools have 20% or more levelsof chronic absence.
And then post-pandemic, it'slike 66, two-thirds of all
schools have 20% or more levelsof chronic absence.
In California in 21-22, we wentup to 75% of schools with 20%
(29:06):
or more levels of chronicabsence.
In 22-23, it was still at 68%and this is compared to, I think
, about 20% before pandemic.
So we had this huge increase.
Now, when you break that down,elementary and middle high
school, we saw increases in thenumbers of schools with 20% or
(29:31):
more levels of chronic absence.
In elementary, middle high.
The only place that didn'treally increase was alternative
ed, which always was really high.
So they were likeextraordinarily high.
Before the pandemic continuedto be really high.
Post pandemic we saw increases.
But you know there are moreelementary schools than any
other kind of school becauseelementary schools are kind of
(29:51):
small.
I also think elementary schools.
You know there are moreelementary schools than any
other kind of school becauseelementary schools are kind of
small.
I also think elementary schools, you know, they don't have a
lot of staff.
They have a principal, theyhave teachers.
Maybe you're good and you'vegot a social work, but it's not
because they're small schools.
They don't tend to have a wholelot of extra staff, right,
(30:15):
whole lot of extra staff, right.
And elementary schools beforethe pandemic I think it was less
than 700, 600 something schoolsthat had 20% or more levels of
chronic absence and by 22, 23,it was almost 4,000.
That increase is huge.
When you have a small handfulof kids who are chronically
(30:36):
absent, you can kind of take amore individual solution.
I'll have, you know, a coupleteachers you know, or the
counselor or something, or thedistrict staff person can come
in and we'll problem solve withyou because you got like five or
six kids, you know maybe 10kids problem solved with you
because you got like five or sixkids, you know maybe 10 kids.
But when you start to have 20%of your entire school
(30:58):
chronically absent in some casesit's much higher than that you
need to have a whole schoolapproach where you're taking
comprehensive, tiered approach,where you're really investing in
what we call positiveconditions of learning and
everyone, including all yourstaff, are on board with this
approach.
But you now have thousands ofelementary schools who never
before had to take a systemicapproach, now having to take a
(31:22):
systemic approach.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
A lot of things are going through my mind as you're
speaking, because I'm flashingto our own experiences all the
time.
I noted in that I think it wasin the study that you said was
the PACE-sponsored study whereyou talk about as schools, the
greater percentage ofsocioeconomically disadvantaged
(31:44):
students, the more challengeswith chronic absenteeism.
However, there were also someindications that in schools that
didn't have a highsocioeconomically disadvantaged
population, they were alsowrestling with chronic
absenteeism, perhaps fordifferent reasons around, maybe
a more prevailing view of schoolbeing somewhat optional.
(32:05):
How do you tease that out inyour research?
I don't know.
I guess I wrestle with that tooright, because I have anecdotal
experience of parents goingwell during COVID.
We weren't here at all and sowe're planning to go skiing at
Mammoth and it's just going tohappen, and why can't I go
online?
That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah.
So I think I want to again talkabout we need to understand
root causes and we also have tounderstand some root causes may
affect all kids, but be presentto understand root causes and we
also have to understand someroot causes may affect all kids,
but be present, and some rootcauses may affect some kids more
than others.
And I also want to say you know, one of the things that we're
seeing is, since the pandemic,more middle class affluent kids
(32:48):
are starting to fall in thechronic absent category than
before.
But I still want to say themajority of kids who are
chronically absent 70%, I thinkof them, maybe higher are
actually socioeconomicallydisadvantaged.
So, while there is an increasedpercentage of more affluent
(33:10):
kids who are chronically absent,we should keep in mind that the
vast majority of kids who arechronically absent are
socioeconomically disadvantaged.
In addition, we know thataffluent kids are less affected,
at least academically, bymissing school because their
(33:31):
families find things to make upfor that time.
I'll hire the tutor, I'llcreate the online curriculum.
I have access to a lot moredigital learning.
Families figure out ways Now.
There may be consequences, bythe way, for more affluent kids,
because I think sometimes theirability to connect to peers,
(33:53):
their sense of their anxietylevels, their under.
You know there's a lot ofsocial emotional development
that happens in schools, thatwhen kids aren't there they lose
out.
The routine of going to schoolevery day actually can have some
contributors, I think, towell-being, because we know when
(34:14):
kids are anxious one of theways you want to do is keep in
routine.
So I'm not saying there aren'tsome consequences for affluent
kids, but it's not the same asthe academic consequences for
lower income kids who don't havethe same access to resources to
make up.
And we got to keep in mind sothis misconception that you tend
(34:36):
you don't have to be in schoolto learn, which I think is a
misconception.
And it's not just learning.
School brings in a whole bunchof other socialization and other
benefits that kids learn from.
We need kids who can be withkids who are different from
themselves.
Negotiate conflicts, findcommonalities, respect
differences Like this is socrucial to our future as a
(34:59):
society.
So there may be learning thatgets lost.
It's not just not captured byour tests, but For low-income
kids, they not only don't havethe same access to the same
opportunities to catch up ormake up, but they face much
different barriers, so chronicand acute illness, their
(35:23):
families may not have access tohealth care.
We've been decreasing ouraccess to health care for
low-income kids, increasing ouraccess to health care for low
income kids Trauma.
They faced much greater traumaduring the pandemic because
their families were frontlineworkers.
They lost family members, poortransportation.
We may have a culture shift, youwill Right, and how that's
(36:02):
playing out for more affluentkids versus low-income kids is
really quite different, in thesense that low-income kids it
may be that, oh, if school isn'tengaging in getting me to a
better future, maybe I will takethis job, because I think you
know, for right now it's helpingmy family make ends meet,
whereas an affluent kid, youknow, maybe the decision is
between going to school andtaking an extra long weekend to
(36:25):
go do something with theirfamily.
Those are very different kindsof situations and I think we got
to get clear about who'schronically absent, why and what
is the supports they need.
At the same time, I think somethings are probably common
across kids School needs to beseen as an engaging, fabulous
(36:47):
place.
That will get me to a differentfuture, and that needs to be
true for all kids, and I thinkit is raising the bar.
I think one of the challengesis that and this is not totally
research informed, but I thinkour kids spend a lot more time
on screens than they ever hadduring the pandemic.
And coming back from that tomaking sure kids see in-person
(37:11):
learning and engaging, and alsosometimes thinking about how do
we take advantage oftechnological innovation to make
school engaging, at least forour older kids.
But we have an engagement and abarrier issue going on.
Part of this high levels ofchronic absence is because I
think kids and families don'tfeel engaged as much as they
(37:32):
could or should be by ourschools, and when I've gone to
schools that have are the brightspots that have low levels of
chronic absence, what I see is atension.
It's like two sides of the samecoin.
One side is making schoolincredibly engaging and making
sure kids and families know howengaging school is and why they
(37:55):
need to be there every day, andthe other side is making sure
that they can provide support tokids and families who are
experiencing barriers.
And in between the two of them,the center of that coin is
relationship building.
The center of that coin isrelationship building Because
the relationship building bothhelps with the engagement and
makes sure that if a kid'sfacing a challenge, that the
(38:17):
school, especially the teacherwho sees kids every day.
And this is not about addingresponsibility to teachers, it's
about leveraging the fact thatteachers see kids every day so
that we can help teachers knowwhen they notice something that
they get supports to connectkids to those supports.
That's what makes a hugedifference in kids showing up
(38:37):
every day.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
It's interesting to me that you know, coming out of
COVID, there was this wholething about, at the professional
level, the quiet, quittingconversation among you know
employees right among you, knowemployees right who?
Who were we?
We all go to work because we wechoose to work there.
(38:59):
But even so there were peoplewho were quiet, quitting, or
people who said I'm not goingback in person.
I like this hybrid lifestyle, Ilike to work from home, I want
to be treated well at work.
I'm not.
I'm just not feeling it when Igo in there.
Or career is not everything tome, I'm going to quit and do
something else.
All of those very humanreactions, whether they were
rational or not, at the adultlevel.
But to have the courageousconversation and it's something
(39:20):
I'm nibbling around the edge of,it doesn't always make me
popular, but I look at teacherand staff attendance at work pre
and post COVID and there's nocomparison at Albert Einstein
Academies between levels ofstaff absenteeism pre COVID and
(39:41):
post.
It's way higher post right, andthat's not.
I'm not blanket criticizing agroup of hardworking
professionals, but I thinkthere's some indicators there
that I think there's someparallels in society and with
our families and with our kids.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Well, and when we see high levels of absenteeism for
either teachers or kids, I thinkwe need to have the same
response, which is let me builda relationship and find out why.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
What's driving it?
Sometimes the issues driving kidand teacher absenteeism may be
the same.
I remember being in a schoolthis is pre-COVID but it could
still hold true where I wastalking to a principal and we
were looking at chronic absencelevels by classroom and grades
(40:27):
and there was one classroom andshe goes oh yeah, that classroom
has a lot of absenteeism, butwe also had some mold issues.
You think that answers you know, like before you do anything
else, maybe we need to get, likethe building inspector, in and
figure out what's going on,because I'm sure that's going to
affect both.
(40:47):
And then you have a cycleTeachers, respiratory is
affected, the kids, you know,and then the teacher doesn't
have the relationship and sothen the kids are more absent.
But if we unpacked the issues,I think this issue of lack of
relationship building, like wesometimes talk about how I
realize there needs to be moreresearch showing that readings
(41:08):
by the door actually improvesattendance.
I think it's hard because it'susually part of some larger
piece, but greetings by the doorare important, not just for
kids, they're for the staff whenstaff walk in, do they?
say hello to each other?
Do they say hello to the kids?
If everyone says hello to eachother and makes you feel welcome
(41:31):
and connected, I think thatwould make everyone want to show
up to school more.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I mean, think about the last time you went to a
dinner party, right that?
Usually the good dinner parties, the host or the hostess is
standing at the hey welcome, I'mgoing to introduce you.
Go put your coat over here,right?
That's a human thing.
So if you can find a way toseparate that out in your
research, I'll be the first oneto be reading that.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
And I think, though, that this is where we should
sometimes just use common sense.
Yeah no, it's like I think weall got more guarded with COVID.
We all, for good reasons, triedto wear masks, do, I think?
But we still have to feel caredfor, and so I think, how we use
(42:21):
our data to unpack where thechallenges are and also see
who's doing better work.
So again I go back to thesebright spots and David, we had a
webinar on April 3rd which wasteachers at the front line, and
we had two amazing, anelementary school and a high
(42:42):
school principal that talkedabout all the ways they brought
their kids into their classroom,connecting them, connecting to
the families, making sure thatkids don't feel anxious in their
classrooms, you know, becausethat also can drive kids.
But there's a whole bunch ofthings that fall within what
teachers can do, and we have tohelp teachers be able to do this
, because they have a ton ontheir plates, and it's also
(43:05):
about sometimes making sure thatwe have nurses who can help or
counselors.
So if I have a kid who comes inand who's clearly having a bad
day and having challenges, I canbring someone who can come and
help me with that kid so I canpay attention to what's
happening with my classroomwhile someone pays attention to
this kid who clearly needs anadult to sit down and talk to
(43:27):
them.
We have to build our systems,but this is what I mean by a
system, and now we have allthese 4,000 almost elementary
schools in California that don'thave these systems, that we
then now have to have systemsbuilding on the fact that they
have teachers as their backbone.
How do we respect that,understand that, support that
(43:48):
and it's not just teachers, it's, in my view, one of the most
important people in the schoolis that front office person who,
when you walk into the schooloffice, do they smile, do they
greet you, do they say hello?
That makes such a difference.
There was in Arkansas this ispre-COVID, but it's still all
(44:10):
true this one principal who hadall of her attendance.
The front office staff got intoattendance but what happened
was they were lecturing everykid who came late and onto these
long lectures.
So then the families and thekids decided well, we'll just
miss school that day, becauseI'd rather miss school than have
to subject myself to thelecture.
So she started by changing youknow, the whole tone of what
(44:35):
happened in the front office.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, as you say, the common sense is sometimes we
don't need to wait for theresearch studies to come out
right, we can just go.
What makes me feel good when Igo to a restaurant?
Do I like to be greeted when Iwalk in the door to have a bunch
of staff go?
You're five minutes late foryour reservation.
So I wanted to talk about themoney.
(44:58):
We've been talking about thehuman side.
We've been talking about thelearning loss and the impact on
students From a school fundingstandpoint.
My understanding is that thereare I don't know half a dozen or
so states in the country, likeCalifornia, that fund schools
(45:21):
essentially on average dailyattendance, and that there's a
whole swath of states where themodel is different, right, where
it may be more related toenrollment.
Not sure exactly what that lookslike.
If you had a magic wand, whatwould you change, if anything,
in the way that schools arefunded?
Because I have to say thatsomewhat cynically, that I
(45:47):
believe that many school leadersare hyper fixated on chronic
absenteeism.
Now in California, becausethere's a red, the dashboard is
flashing red at the state levelon the accountability and it's
also a huge financial impact tobuild your budgets around.
(46:07):
You know, just anecdotally, webuilt we historically in our
organization built our budgetsaround 97.5% ADA average daily
attendance.
We did that for 15 years andthen COVID hit and we were
struggling at 88% and 89, 90.
And so now we build our budgetsaround 95% because we have to
(46:32):
keep the lights on and have ourstaffing levels appropriate and
even 95 is hard for us.
So are there cases where stateshave a different model?
That's better or worse forgetting educators to really
focus on chronic absenteeism asa problem?
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, this is actually a tough issue and I do
think COVID has changed it some.
First of all, there is only ahandful of states that fund
based on average dailyattendance California, kentucky,
texas.
Anyway, there's about seven,eight states that fund based on
average daily attendance and theother places base it on
(47:13):
membership or student count days.
I don't know if they're better.
To be honest, I'm not alwayssure because, like you do
student counts in September andthen a bunch of kids move Like
Maryland does student counts, Ithink and then kids in Baltimore
then, after student count day,move over to Anne Arundel, and
then you know how are you goingto, like you get.
So there are pros and cons ofthe different funding issues.
(47:35):
The big issue I think, withaverage daily attendance is one
it does create a level ofunpredictable and enrollments
actually falling too.
So even in the enrollment-basedones there's some challenges.
The one benefit of averagedaily attendance it's gotten
(47:57):
people to focus on attendancethroughout the year, more so
than I think.
Maybe places that haven'tlooked at that, although now
there's much more accountabilityfor chronic absence, which is
actually a different questionthan the funding one for chronic
absence, which is actually adifferent question than the
funding one.
I think the thing is.
The question about funding isare we adequately funding
schools to do what they need todo, and how do we create
(48:19):
stability in school funding?
And there may be a multiplicityof answers.
And there's actually a good PACEbrief that looked at ADA versus
enrollment, what are the prosand cons, and I think it's
important to look at that.
But I do think this issue of howdo you and that really is
separate from the dashboard,which is saying how many and
(48:44):
which kids are chronicallyabsent, and if you have
disproportionality, do you needschool improvement those are
actually two kinds of separatepolicy conversations.
I think that school districtsbasically need to use their data
to understand how chronicabsence is affecting achievement
(49:05):
and how chronic absence givesthem clues about which are the
student populations that needmore outreach and support, and
then engage in partnerships withthose kids, families and the
community organizations that maybe connected, and also
educators, to better unpackwhat's causing some of the poor
(49:26):
attendance and then what couldhelp them.
And some causes may be moreuniversal, like do kids and
families really understand whatthey're learning every day so
they know they need to show up?
And if they don't, how are you,as a school district and school
and through your everydayinteractions, going to equip
everyone to make sure kids andfamilies know this is why you
(49:48):
need to show up to school andnot because of money.
Money isn't what drives us,it's relationship and it's the
notion that I'm learning a skillthat will get me to a better
future.
This is why, for example, inCalifornia, career tech
education programs have a lotbetter attendance.
That's because it's like acareer pathway.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
I know where.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
I'm going.
And then, if you, think aboutcareer tech education programs.
Usually they have a cohort ofkids who are now in a cohort, so
they're meeting other kids.
They have a faculty advisor whothen gets to know them.
So we know that for older kids,kids come to school when they
feel connected, that's, I knowthere's an adult who cares about
(50:27):
me.
I know there's other kids whoI'm connected to, I'm engaged in
something pro-social and I feelwelcome at my school.
Those four things make adifference.
Career tech kind of does allfour things.
But in California another thingthat we should be looking at for
funding is we have expandedlearning programs.
(50:47):
We have more.
We have billions of dollars inexpanded learning programs in
California.
We have more money in expandedlearning in California than the
entire country has in expandedlearning programs and are we
leveraging that to createstudent connection?
Are we using our communitypartners who get to know kids,
(51:09):
who see them after school, whocan build relationships with
families, and are we using thatand leveraging that to improve
attendance and the earlylearning opportunities program?
The LOP dollars that doesn't goaway.
Coa dollars goes away at thatstage, are we using our
community schools dollars?
We have a lot of money incommunity schools.
(51:30):
Are we using our earlychildhood, we have transitional
kindergarten, we have resourceswe got to connect.
It's not always about creatingsome new initiative.
It's about taking theinitiative that we have that
help increase engagement andmaybe create other resources to
address barriers to getting toschool.
(51:50):
And we need to make sure usingour data on chronic absence is
informing how we effectivelydeploy those resources.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
You've been very generous with your time and I
just had a couple more questionsfor you.
Hedy, I really thank you andalso thank you for clarifying
and wading through my kind ofmuddy question where I lumped a
couple different issues together, but I wanted to just from one
Thomas J Watson fellow toanother.
(52:20):
I'm not sure how many of ourlisteners are aware of the
Thomas J Watson Fellowship, butit was a really transformative
process and experience for me inthe early 90s.
And can you tell us a littlebit about what you did for your
Watson Fellowship?
And you and I were laughingpre-recording about how neither
(52:40):
of us really could connect ourfellowship to our current work.
But maybe when you describewhat you did, maybe listeners
will find some threads throughthere.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Well and there may be some threads.
So I did my fellowship lookingat Chinese factory women and how
they handled the double burdenof domestic labor and factory
work and compared what washappening in mainland China,
singapore and Taiwan.
One of the things that wasreally helpful was really I
tried to go and got my Chinesestill not that good, but enough
(53:13):
so that I could talk to people,because you got to talk to
people and hear what their livesare like and understand that.
So, as well as look at data, Ialso think I learned a lot about
.
One of the things I learned atthat time was how much women's
lives were being controlled,regardless of the government
(53:36):
they were in.
In mainland China, you werewith a work unit that kind of
you were assigned all your lifeand literally there was lots of
control because it was a onechild only policy and there was
a lot of monitoring onchildbirth practices, like
whether you were using a birthcontrol In Singapore women.
(54:01):
The government the Singaporeangovernment was really focused on
making sure they were worriedbecause of the uneducated often
non-Chinese were having kidsmore than the Chinese.
So they created tax incentivesso that if you were poor and got
a tubal ligation, you ended upgetting money in your Social
(54:25):
Security and your housing and ifyou were wealthy you got a tax
credit.
And in Singapore and in Taiwanthere was this M curve where
women would work in the earlyyears, they'd have kids and then
they'd have to come back andwork later on because they
needed it for economic survival.
So it was really seeing how Iguess there's a connection about
(54:52):
both using qualitative andquantitative data.
I also at the time ended uprealizing, because I was doing a
lot of my research, by goingthrough family members,
particularly in mainland China,and feeling incredibly worried
that if I did something, that myfamily members would suffer the
(55:15):
consequences of my actions andI would not.
And it made me choose not to dointernational work because I
thought I understand what thismeans because I have family here
.
But if I'm in a country where Idon't have family, do I fully
appreciate the consequences ofmy actions for the local people
(55:36):
who are here, who ultimatelymust pay the price if I make a
mistake?
Now what I learned over yearsis I'm not so sure it's as clear
(55:57):
to me that we don't have thatsame dynamic going on in the
United States.
I'm middle class, I'mprivileged, I live in a
community where some of the whathappens doesn't have the same
consequences for me as they doin communities of color where I
don't live for me as they do incommunities of color where I
don't live, and I think I became.
It helped me see that, you know, we really ought to take stock
(56:25):
of how both our lives areinterrelated, but also really
understand that those who mostbear the consequences of
policies and action have achance to have voice in where
their future goes.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
So thank you for that .
I see a lot of through threadsactually from what you described
of your Watson to your currentwork.
So thank you.
Current work, so thank you,thank you.
I, in my case, am thankful allthe time for both becoming
bilingual and becoming fluent inSpanish, just from that year
(57:03):
spent in Central America andMexico, and also learning from
the mistakes that I made andhaving a disorganized project
and, I think, part of Watson,they assume you're going to kind
of bumble around a little bitfor a year.
You know you're 22 years old andyou know you're full of
idealism and, at least in mycase, pretty low on logistical
(57:26):
details pre-internet era.
But I muddled my way throughand I've found in my current
work.
You know that I go back and goah, that's a mistake I made 30
years ago.
I'm not going to make it today.
So oh, but yeah, thomas JWatson Fellowship pretty
remarkable gift to the world.
I wish it were more broadlyaccessible in more universities
(57:50):
around the country or in someother way.
Before I ask the last question,is there anything that we have
not touched on, related tochronic absenteeism, that's kind
of been kicking around for youand that you'd like to just
mention?
Speaker 1 (58:05):
I would just say that we can't accept the current
levels as a new normal we can'taccept the current levels as a
new normal.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
I was going to ask you that.
I was going to say is this thenew normal?
Will we ever get back to wherewe were?
Speaker 1 (58:20):
I believe we can, but it's going to take
intentionality.
Relationship building,rebuilding trust doesn't happen
overnight.
We can use data to figure outhow to get there and we have to
have persistence over time.
It's not going to happen.
It's going to take, you know,maybe five years, maybe a little
longer.
We got to be prepared for along haul approach to using our
(58:44):
data to inform how we buildrelationship, to make sure that
people most affected have avoice in the solutions, and it's
going to take.
I think everyone can make adifference here and we're all
going to also have to contributeto making a difference.
Speaker 2 (58:57):
My last question is a hypothetical.
If you have the opportunity tocreate a billboard for the side
of whatever freeway is nearwhere you live, I had one person
say I don't believe inbillboards.
They pollute my view.
So we're going to get past thatbecause this is just
hypothetical.
So if you had a chance tocreate a billboard that would
(59:19):
contain a message that you wouldlike the world to know about
your work and what you believein, what would that billboard
say?
As people drive by, eithergoing 70 or, in the case of San
Francisco, maybe seven miles anhour, depending on what time of
day it is?
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Kids show up to school.
When we show, we care and welisten.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Kids show up to school.
When we show, we care and welisten.
That's a perfect place to wrapup today's conversation.
Hedy, thank you so much foryour time and your expertise and
for your combination ofactivism and scholarship and
research on behalf of all of ourstudents.
And you gave me hope in ourconversation, because I've been
(01:00:05):
trending towards that place ofresignation and saying I just
don't know if we're ever gonnaget back to where we were.
So this has revived that hopefor me.
So thank you, thank you.
Thank you for listening to theSuperintendent's Hangout.
You can follow me on Twitter atDVS1970.
(01:00:28):
Please be sure to share thisshow with friends and family on
social media and in the realworld.
Thank you to Brad Backeal forediting and production
assistance and to Tina Roysterfor scheduling and logistics.
Thanks for hanging out and havea great day.
Having a kid in school so they can learn and
thrive is something thateveryone of every background can
say oh, that makes sense.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
In this conversation, I was privileged to sit down
virtually with Hedy Chang.
Hedy is the founder andexecutive director of Attendance
Works, which is a national andstate-level initiative that's
aimed at advancing studentsuccess by addressing chronic
absence.
Hedy has served as seniorprogram officer at the Evelyn
(00:43):
Walter Haas Jr Fund and asco-director of California
Tomorrow, which is a nonprofitcommitted to drawing strength
from cultural, linguistic andracial diversity.
In February of 2013, hedy wasnamed by the White House as a
champion of change for hercommitment to furthering
African-American education.
Hedy talks about her originstory, how she got into thinking
(01:09):
about and working on the topicof chronic absenteeism in 2006,
when very few states even keptsuch data, and it brings us up
to the current moment, where allstates, or virtually all states
, gather and use and work withthis data.
She talks about the differentfactors impacting student
(01:33):
attendance, the importance ofconnection, belonging, relevant
and rigorous education on ourcampuses, and much, much more.
I hope that you enjoy and learnfrom this conversation as much
as I did.
Welcome to the Superintendent'sHangout, where we discuss topics
(01:56):
in education, charter schools,life in general, and not
necessarily in that order.
I'm your host, dr Shredda, comeon in and hang out.
Necessarily in that order.
I'm your host, dr Shredda.
Come on in and hang out.
Welcome, hedy.
(02:16):
Thank you so much for joiningus this afternoon virtually and
taking the time for thisconversation heading into the
weekend, my pleasure.
I was wondering if you couldstart by sharing your origin
story, personally andprofessionally, and really with
an emphasis on the curves inyour path that ultimately led
you to the work you do today.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, so I think my origin story starts with the
fact that I grew up ChineseAmerican in the Midwest and also
come from a family that has along history of community
building and activism both inChina and actually the United
States.
Okay, so now I am probablygoing to take a little bit of a
(02:57):
divergence.
You can see, David, whether youwant to include it.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
No, it's great.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
My great grandfather was a Chinese immigrant who came
here in the 1880s and then wasconverted to Christianity, went
to New York City and at the timethis is the time of the Chinese
Exclusion Acts he ended upmarrying my great grandmother,
who was a woman named Louise VanArnum who's a woman named
(03:27):
Louise Van Arnum.
His name was Huey Kinn and theygot married at a time when
intermarriage wasn't consideredvery acceptable and in fact, my
great-grandmother, who wasgenerations Dutch-American, lost
her citizenship when shemarried my grandfather.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Because of it.
Is that a result of the ChineseExclusion Act?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
It's that and because if you married someone non-US,
your citizenship became that ofthe person.
So my great-grandmother losther citizenship.
Later on they had six daughtersand three sons.
The six daughters all marriedChinese scholars and my
grandmother then subsequentlylost her citizenship, even
though she was American born.
And then I grew up.
My mom was born in China, thencame back to the United States.
(04:11):
I grew up here in the Midwestwhere I was it's St Louis
Missouri not exactly a lot ofChinese American families,
mostly a black white environment, and having grown up
understanding kind of a historyof otherness and committed
myself to because I could seehow, when you have to walk in
(04:34):
different milieus and understanddifferent realities, it gives
you a different understanding ofhow to make change and how to
move forward.
And so I really was alwaysthought I was going to take my
own personal understanding andfight for equity and justice.
That's always been my goal aslong as I can remember, and
(04:57):
originally I was working for anorganization called California
Tomorrow where I really lookedat more racial equity,
linguistic diversity, how do youdraw strength upon our
diversity but also understandthe inequities and look for
where we have to make systemicchange had also, when I became a
(05:17):
mom, realized what atransformative power having kids
is for adults.
There are things we will do forour kids that we won't
necessarily do for ourselvesbecause we want them to have a
different kind of life.
Right, and had a mentor in life, a guy named Ralph Smith, who
(05:39):
was a senior vice president ofthe Annie Casey Foundation,
still continues to be a mentorof mine who helped me take
actually a fellowship calledEmerging Leaders Fellows where
it was in South Africa.
Ambassador Dane Joseph was likemy main faculty member and had
a chance to think about.
(06:00):
At that time I was trying tothink about career changes.
I'd be in philanthropy and Icreated a life mission statement
about where I wanted to go andit was about how do you use two
generation approaches to movefamilies out of poverty and
create a different future.
And I created this missionstatement, showed it to my
(06:21):
friend colleague, mentor Ralph,who was at the senior, who was a
senior vice president at theAnna Casey Foundation.
He said we should do somethingthat allows you to realize that
mission, personal missionstatement.
And he said I have this project.
I think kids missing too muchschool in the early grades is
the reason they're not readingat the end of third grade, which
(06:43):
then has huge lifelong outcomesin terms of graduation and
economic success.
And he asked me if I wouldfigure out.
Was there any research thatcould prove this was an issue,
because what would?
Didn't we know about bestpractice, and was data around
this being collected in a waythat we could eventually include
(07:04):
this information in the AnnieCasey Foundation's Kids Count
data book?
And so my work started becauseI said, okay, I'll take that on,
and I will also say at the sametime that Ralph asked me to
look at that.
I had my kids in a publicelementary school, pretty mixed
income public elementary schoolhere in San Francisco.
That was very intentionalbecause I believed that I wanted
(07:26):
my kids to understand kids fromall sorts of walks of life.
And one little boy in my oldestchild's class, who was born on
the exact same day as my kid,was a kid who grew up with very
different opportunities in thesense that he was living in
public housing, his mom wastrying to work her way off
welfare, but this little boy wasso engaging and bright and, I
(07:52):
know, had every ability tosucceed that my own kid did.
But in second grade this littleboy's mom died very suddenly
shortly after.
We actually had a jointbirthday party for them and I
think it's because his mom neverhad access to decent public
(08:13):
health lots of other issues.
And then I saw this little boygoing in the child welfare
system and even though we had acaring school environment, we
didn't quite know.
I was involved as a parent, soI wasn't on staff but did a lot
of the after-school programming,and so when my friend Ralph
asked me if I would take on thisissue, I had this outrage and
(08:36):
sense of injustice about thissituation and I felt like if I
could figure out how to notallow for this injustice to
occur, that every kid who hadthe potential to succeed got the
resources and we had the dataand the tools to ensure that
equal opportunity, then I wantedto try it out.
So that was in 2006.
(08:59):
And the first thing I figuredout was that no one was really
actually collecting data on howmany kids were actually missing
too much school for any reason.
We looked at unexcused absencesIn some places.
We looked at average dailyattendance.
There was one longitudinalstudy our database called the
Early Childhood LongitudinalStudy that you could look at it
(09:19):
and that data when we were ableto work with Columbia to crunch
it showed that about one out of10 kids were chronically absent
in kindergarten and first andthen.
In fact, if you could track thekids in a cohort all the way
through, chronic absence inkindergarten particularly for
kids who are low income actuallypredicted lower third grade,
lower fifth grade outcomes.
And it was an issue becausethen we started looking at data
(09:43):
in a few localities.
At the time, by the way, mostlocalities weren't looking at
data because we took data onattendance paper and pencil, so
you couldn't even calculate yourchronic absence levels.
But in the few places thatalready had longitudinal student
(10:03):
data systems in 2006, 2007, youcould start to look at it, and
in one major urban area I sawthat 40% of the kindergartners
in that area in that major urbanarea, 6,000 kindergartners were
chronically absent and Ithought, oh my God, this is not
(10:24):
a little issue.
I remember texting my friendRalph.
I said this is a huge issue.
We're giving up on a generation.
We never even gave them achance and we don't even know
that we've done this.
And so that was the launch ofwhat became the research that
led to me eventually, in 2010,creating Attendance Works
(10:47):
because I felt like we needed tofind a way to help people
understand this was an issue,start to calculate and crunch
their data.
And I will also say what'sreally funny now is so in 2010,
when we launched, there was onestate in the entire country that
had a little bit of data thatwas kind of like chronic absence
.
It was Maryland, because NancyGrasmick at the time had sought
(11:09):
to get people to submit on howmany kids missed 20 days or more
, five days or less, so a highattendance and a chronic absence
issue.
I don't even know that she didit from research.
I think she did it from commonsense, and this was the Anna
Casey Foundation, by the way,that had funded this initial
work, and part of they had beenfrustrated because they were
(11:31):
doing work nationally and theycould only get data like this in
Maryland, and I had to explainto them well, you can only get
data like this in Marylandbecause only Maryland has the
data In fact, all the otherstates in the country don't of
data.
In fact, all the other states inthe country don't.
David, now 48 states inWashington DC have chronic
(11:55):
absence data in some form ontheir state websites.
We are so different.
And the other thing that waswonderful is when I first wrote
back to Ralph and I said youwant this in Kids Count.
We don't have enough data tomake this part of Kids Count and
this year, 18 years later, theKids Count is going to be
talking about chronic absence.
I had written him back and saidit only took me 18 years to
(12:16):
eventually achieve the goal thatyou wanted me to in 2006.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So when you it strikes me as you described that
and thank you for both yourexcitement about the trajectory
but also the highly personalaspect of what really got you
into this, right through yourson's friend and classmate and
his experience it strikes methat if you're sitting next to
(12:44):
someone on an airplane they say,hey, how's it going?
You know you want some peanutsand what do you do for a living?
You've kind of got theresearcher hat and you've also
got the activist hat right, kindof.
At the same time, you need tohave some element of activism,
of passion to push through 18years of trying to fight for
(13:07):
states to actually count,something that you have a hunch
is going on.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well, I think a couple things.
One is that it's interesting tomove change in this country.
I think we all have to be ableto see and hear each other.
We're way too partisan.
We don't have our kids as ourcommon investment for a better
(13:34):
future for our country.
One of the things that I loveabout the work of Chronic
Absence is that I think it's acommon sense vision.
Having a kid in school so theycan learn and thrive is
something that everyone of everybackground can say oh, that
(13:56):
makes sense.
It also allows you to say well,when kids aren't here, we need
to pay attention and where theactivist part has to come.
One of the challenges we have inthis country is that often, or
historically, when a kid hasn'tbeen in school, we have this
(14:16):
kind of truancy mindset, andthis is usually the unexcused
absences.
And our truancy mindset is well, david didn't come to school
and that must be because Daviddidn't care, and therefore the
way to get David to school is totake increasingly punitive
measures to force him and hisfamily to get David to school
(14:38):
when there's no evidence, noresearch that shows taking
punitive measures improvesattendance.
What you have to do in order toget kids to come to school is
understand why they aren'tshowing up in the first place
and then come up with solutionsthat address that.
And we have these differentbuckets.
(14:59):
Is it barriers?
You don't have access to healthcare, you have unstable housing
, you have unsafe paths toschool.
Is it aversion?
Because what have access tohealth care?
You have unstable housing.
You have unsafe paths to school.
Is it aversion because what'shappening in school the bullying
, the anxiety is pushing out?
Is it?
Is it disengagement?
Because you have so much staffturnover, there's no
relationship building, so thecurriculum doesn't feel engaging
and relevant, so you don't wantto go to school.
(15:21):
Or is it misconceptions?
You don't realize absences thatare adding up?
Want to go to school?
Or is it misconceptions?
You don't realize absences thatare adding up?
You don't think you have to bein school to learn.
You think you can't addresshealth-related absences or
prevent them.
You got to know those thingsand once you know those things
you can improve it.
But blaming kids and familiesdoesn't allow you to know what's
going on.
(15:41):
The key to solutions is buildinga relationship so you can talk
to families about why and thencome up with solutions.
And where the activist partcomes in is when you meet people
and you say, hey, you know, soI work on making sure kids come
up, show up to school every day.
And then when people start tosay, well, the reason they don't
(16:04):
show up to school is blah, blah, blah, that's where you have to
kind of shift the conversationand say, well, what do we know
about it?
Get people to go into questions.
I think when people seeabsences, they ought to be
asking questions and saying thisis a moment to build a
relationship, so I can find outwhy kids might not be going to
(16:25):
school and then how we cancollectively come up with
solutions to get them there.
And that's where the activistpart comes in, as well as the
research part.
Because I have to say and Iremember talking with some folks
in a southern state wherethey're like they wanted to talk
to me about doing more punitivemeasures, and I said, well,
(16:47):
that's interesting, because theresearch that I've seen, for
example in South Carolina, whichis a southern state, shows that
the kids who were missing a lotof school for unexcused
absences, who they put into thecourt system after they did that
, compared to peers who didn'tgo in the court system, their
attendance actually got worse.
(17:15):
Their attendance actually gotworse, and part of that is
because court systems aren'tdesigned to find out and address
why kids don't show up toschool in the first place.
The deterrent works when youthink all of this is just
because kids are, andoccasionally, by the way, there
may be kids who are missingschool intentionally, but a lot
of times that even comes out ofschool in the beginning didn't
ever engage them in the firstplace.
(17:35):
So anyway, so I just say thatyou know the activism is get to
people to really not makeassumptions and see poor
attendance, not showing up toschool as a reason to build
relationship and deep ourunderstanding of each other's
realities.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
When you mentioned the punitive piece, I broke out
into a cold sweat because yourfirst year of working on this in
2006, was my first year as amiddle school principal and I
was in my mid thirties and I washaving some challenges with
some students not attending.
And so I thought I'm going tocall the county probations
(18:15):
department and they had anattendance support division or
something and they sent out anofficer and the officer came and
did a presentation on whatJuvenile Hall was like and then
stood up there and said to themiddle school students hey, is
anyone in here?
How do you feel about you know,being locked up?
And they started this wholepunitive talk and I thought I
(18:37):
was yeah, I didn't do it withany malice intent, but I'm
standing up there thinking I'mgetting my point across.
All it did was make dozens ofparents really mad at me and
call me up and yell at me, whichI ultimately deserved had no
impact on attendance at all, andthat's the kind of the dark
(18:58):
ages end of the spectrum righton supporting student attendance
.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Well, unfortunately I don't think it's so.
Dark ages, david, I think, inpeople's frustration over the
chronic absences now when Istarted it was about one out of
six kids nationwide.
Now it's closer to one out ofthree.
And the increase?
One of the responses to theincrease is we need to take more
(19:22):
punitive action.
I think I want to actuallyfigure out what we can find of
evidence of that, but I hearthat in the media a lot.
I think there's morelegislation happening and you
know, one of the things that Iwant to talk about is that one
of the things we don't realizeis that even our definition of
excused and unexcused so youknow, all our punitive stuff is
(19:43):
around unexcused absences andthere's a every state, there's a
lot of variation can be whatcan be excused and what can be
unexcused.
A lot of times unexcused has todo with not having
documentation over the reasonswhy you're missing school.
Right, you know, california hascertainly widened and broadened
(20:07):
, especially after the pandemiclots of different reasons why
you might be able to be missingschool.
But you ultimately usually haveto have some kind of note that
says and it has to fit inCalifornia what those absences
are and when kids' absences areunexcused.
It has a number ofrepercussions.
(20:27):
If your absence is unexcused,teachers aren't necessarily
required to help you make up forthe lost time in the classroom.
Teachers can say, oh, theymight, you don't get to go on
this field trip because you hadan unexcused absences.
It starts to almost bias theview of the teacher towards a
kid because, oh, david doesn'tcare, they didn't show up.
(20:50):
But imagine two kids.
They both missed five days andthey were both sick.
One kid, hedy, has health care,David does not.
Hedy comes in with the doctor'snote, david does not.
And now I get any help withwhatever I missed and you don't.
(21:11):
So we start a process of pushoutand then you look at
California's notifications oftruancy any three times
unexcused and you get the firstnotification.
Any three times late by 30minutes, you get a notification.
And by law right now we have inthat notification that we have
language that says and if youdon't start showing up to school
(21:33):
I'm going to take you to court.
Not exactly the way to buildpartnerships with kids and
families.
Threats don't buildpartnerships.
And in Los Angeles we actuallyworked with LA Unified when
Deborah Duarte is now thesuperintendent of LA County, but
she was in the school districtand we came up with these
(21:54):
different versions of the noticeof truancy.
And we actually and this waswhen Kamal Harris was our AG, so
we asked for her permission wesaid if we took the really
negative truancy language andshoved it at the bottom of the
letter in small font and at thetop of the letter put what we
wanted, does that count formeeting the language of law?
(22:15):
She said OK.
Her staff said that's fine.
It turns out if you write anotification that starts one not
in legalese but normal humanlanguage, normal reading.
You know, hey, your kid missedthese days.
Did that seem right?
You know we're concernedbecause if David continues to
miss and you know it hasconsequences, these kinds of
(22:36):
consequences, can we help you?
If you write that note and putall the other stuff at the
bottom, you get betterattendance than when you sent
out.
Use the standard truancynotification out.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Use the standard truancy notification.
That's interesting.
Um, it's the all in themessaging and and the suggestion
of a relationship, rather thanyou know, like the speeding
ticket notification that you getyeah, you exceeded the speed
limit.
Now, if you don't show up atcourt, the fines doubled.
Kind of well.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
Part of it, too, is that, um, one of the big
motivators for kids to show upat court the fine's doubled.
Well, part of it too, is thatone of the big motivators for
kids to show up to school isrelationship.
So if your first response is tomake kids feel alienated from
school and that no one caresabout them, that in of itself
has not very good consequencesfor getting kids to school.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I'm not sure that there's broad consensus or
understanding about what itmeans to be chronically absent.
I know that in Californiathere's 10% or more of the days
that a student is enrolled.
If they're absent that counts.
But can you kind of paint thepicture, both nationally what
(23:51):
that looks like and also whatthe working definition is that
you use in your organization?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah.
So I will say that 10% is ourrecommendation and I think
California's rules very muchdirectly reflect that
recommendation that we made.
And we suggest 10% and thatincludes any reason excused
unexcused suspensions, and the10% was based on a combination
(24:18):
of research and a little bit ofwhat we thought worked in
classrooms.
So there's a whole plethora ofresearch.
Now Part of my work as anorganization has been catalyzing
needed research and we haveresearch showing, from starting
with a chronic absencepredicting lower literacy by
third grade, worse middle schooloutcomes, suspensions and then
(24:40):
not graduating from high school,and even some evidence that it
can affect your continuation onto post-secondary ed.
Part of what you want to do islook for a metric that you know
kids are in trouble if they haveit and so, but it's also an
early warning metric.
So the 10% was not was to avoidpeople saying, oh, day 17,.
(25:01):
I better do something aboutDavid Right, day 17 is too late.
Day 18, which is 10%, which isone, 18 days out of 180 school
years too late.
I wanted people to notice youknow, hedy missed school in the
first two days.
After she missed two days of thefirst month, four days of the
second month, six days of thethird month, so that you're
taking an early warning approachto noticing kids on track for
(25:25):
chronic absence and then takingaction.
There is actually some evidencelike Santa Ana has some
research this was before COVIDthat showed kids missing just 5%
.
Already it has an impact onsome of their academic
achievement, but if you lookedfor every kid who just missed
one day in the first month ofschool, you would be crying wolf
(25:46):
way too many kids.
So we're trying to find ametric that both made sense from
the research but from an earlywarning perspective also made
sense so that you wereidentifying kids who were more
challenged.
And the best predictors ofchronic absence are both that
you are chronically absent theprior year and also if you are
(26:10):
missing 10% of the first monthof school.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
So you started to look at this nearly 20 years ago
and there's no way you couldhave predicted a global pandemic
at the time, and I think we allknow what the pandemic did to,
not only to school attendancebut to just almost every element
of our lives.
Can you paint a picture, basedon your research, what chronic
(26:42):
absenteeism looked like inCalifornia just prior and then
post-COVID?
I know you did some interestingresearch.
I just read a report where youshowed a little bit of promise
coming out of COVID that rateswere down but they're still way
higher than they were prior, andthen some interesting patterns
where elementary schools spikedway up whereas pre-COVID,
(27:05):
historically, elementary has hada better attendance than
secondary.
Can you kind of paint that?
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, yeah, and that's research that we did with
PACE.
So if folks want to find it,you can go look for this
research report we wrote.
So what you know is thatchronic absence in California
went from something like 12.1 to30% in 21, 22, 22, 23.
It's at about 24.9%.
(27:32):
So we are still double thelevels of pre-pandemic.
But part of the research thatwe talked about is saying you
don't want to just look at thenearly one out of three kids who
are chronically absent, youwant to notice how many kids are
in a school with 20% or morelevels of chronic absence.
Now research by MichaelGottfried and this was actually
(27:55):
done in California too, I thinkit was in Santa Barbara was
where they found this.
Michael found that when kidsare in schools with 20% or more
of their peers chronicallyabsent, it affects the
achievement of the entireclassroom, not just the kids who
are chronically absent.
So you've been a classroomteacher.
(28:15):
When you have kids turning inand out of your classroom, it
makes it a lot harder for you toteach because you don't know
whether we move forward with thelesson, repeat the lesson,
setting classroom norms.
And then there are some kidsthat get more flustered when
they're, you know with the noiseof other kids coming in and out
and that kind of thing.
So before the pandemic,something like nationwide it was
(28:43):
25% of kids schools had about20% or more levels of chronic
absence or 20.
And then post pandemic, it'slike 66, two thirds of all
schools have 20% or more levelsof chronic absence.
And then post-pandemic, it'slike 66, two-thirds of all
schools have 20% or more levelsof chronic absence.
In California in 21-22, we wentup to 75% of schools with 20%
(29:06):
or more levels of chronicabsence.
In 22-23, it was still at 68%and this is compared to, I think
, about 20% before pandemic.
So we had this huge increase.
Now, when you break that down,elementary and middle high
school, we saw increases in thenumbers of schools with 20% or
(29:31):
more levels of chronic absence.
In elementary, middle high.
The only place that didn'treally increase was alternative
ed, which always was really high.
So they were likeextraordinarily high.
Before the pandemic continuedto be really high.
Post pandemic we saw increases.
But you know there are moreelementary schools than any
other kind of school becauseelementary schools are kind of
(29:51):
small.
I also think elementary schools.
You know there are moreelementary schools than any
other kind of school becauseelementary schools are kind of
small.
I also think elementary schools, you know, they don't have a
lot of staff.
They have a principal, theyhave teachers.
Maybe you're good and you'vegot a social work, but it's not
because they're small schools.
They don't tend to have a wholelot of extra staff, right,
(30:15):
whole lot of extra staff, right.
And elementary schools beforethe pandemic I think it was less
than 700, 600 something schoolsthat had 20% or more levels of
chronic absence and by 22, 23,it was almost 4,000.
That increase is huge.
When you have a small handfulof kids who are chronically
(30:36):
absent, you can kind of take amore individual solution.
I'll have, you know, a coupleteachers you know, or the
counselor or something, or thedistrict staff person can come
in and we'll problem solve withyou because you got like five or
six kids, you know maybe 10kids problem solved with you
because you got like five or sixkids, you know maybe 10 kids.
But when you start to have 20%of your entire school
(30:58):
chronically absent in some casesit's much higher than that you
need to have a whole schoolapproach where you're taking
comprehensive, tiered approach,where you're really investing in
what we call positiveconditions of learning and
everyone, including all yourstaff, are on board with this
approach.
But you now have thousands ofelementary schools who never
before had to take a systemicapproach, now having to take a
(31:22):
systemic approach.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
A lot of things are going through my mind as you're
speaking, because I'm flashingto our own experiences all the
time.
I noted in that I think it wasin the study that you said was
the PACE-sponsored study whereyou talk about as schools, the
greater percentage ofsocioeconomically disadvantaged
(31:44):
students, the more challengeswith chronic absenteeism.
However, there were also someindications that in schools that
didn't have a highsocioeconomically disadvantaged
population, they were alsowrestling with chronic
absenteeism, perhaps fordifferent reasons around, maybe
a more prevailing view of schoolbeing somewhat optional.
(32:05):
How do you tease that out inyour research?
I don't know.
I guess I wrestle with that tooright, because I have anecdotal
experience of parents goingwell during COVID.
We weren't here at all and sowe're planning to go skiing at
Mammoth and it's just going tohappen, and why can't I go
online?
That kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yeah.
So I think I want to again talkabout we need to understand
root causes and we also have tounderstand some root causes may
affect all kids, but be presentto understand root causes and we
also have to understand someroot causes may affect all kids,
but be present, and some rootcauses may affect some kids more
than others.
And I also want to say you know, one of the things that we're
seeing is, since the pandemic,more middle class affluent kids
(32:48):
are starting to fall in thechronic absent category than
before.
But I still want to say themajority of kids who are
chronically absent 70%, I thinkof them, maybe higher are
actually socioeconomicallydisadvantaged.
So, while there is an increasedpercentage of more affluent
(33:10):
kids who are chronically absent,we should keep in mind that the
vast majority of kids who arechronically absent are
socioeconomically disadvantaged.
In addition, we know thataffluent kids are less affected,
at least academically, bymissing school because their
(33:31):
families find things to make upfor that time.
I'll hire the tutor, I'llcreate the online curriculum.
I have access to a lot moredigital learning.
Families figure out ways Now.
There may be consequences, bythe way, for more affluent kids,
because I think sometimes theirability to connect to peers,
(33:53):
their sense of their anxietylevels, their under.
You know there's a lot ofsocial emotional development
that happens in schools, thatwhen kids aren't there they lose
out.
The routine of going to schoolevery day actually can have some
contributors, I think, towell-being, because we know when
(34:14):
kids are anxious one of theways you want to do is keep in
routine.
So I'm not saying there aren'tsome consequences for affluent
kids, but it's not the same asthe academic consequences for
lower income kids who don't havethe same access to resources to
make up.
And we got to keep in mind sothis misconception that you tend
(34:36):
you don't have to be in schoolto learn, which I think is a
misconception.
And it's not just learning.
School brings in a whole bunchof other socialization and other
benefits that kids learn from.
We need kids who can be withkids who are different from
themselves.
Negotiate conflicts, findcommonalities, respect
differences Like this is socrucial to our future as a
(34:59):
society.
So there may be learning thatgets lost.
It's not just not captured byour tests, but For low-income
kids, they not only don't havethe same access to the same
opportunities to catch up ormake up, but they face much
different barriers, so chronicand acute illness, their
(35:23):
families may not have access tohealth care.
We've been decreasing ouraccess to health care for
low-income kids, increasing ouraccess to health care for low
income kids Trauma.
They faced much greater traumaduring the pandemic because
their families were frontlineworkers.
They lost family members, poortransportation.
We may have a culture shift, youwill Right, and how that's
(36:02):
playing out for more affluentkids versus low-income kids is
really quite different, in thesense that low-income kids it
may be that, oh, if school isn'tengaging in getting me to a
better future, maybe I will takethis job, because I think you
know, for right now it's helpingmy family make ends meet,
whereas an affluent kid, youknow, maybe the decision is
between going to school andtaking an extra long weekend to
(36:25):
go do something with theirfamily.
Those are very different kindsof situations and I think we got
to get clear about who'schronically absent, why and what
is the supports they need.
At the same time, I think somethings are probably common
across kids School needs to beseen as an engaging, fabulous
(36:47):
place.
That will get me to a differentfuture, and that needs to be
true for all kids, and I thinkit is raising the bar.
I think one of the challengesis that and this is not totally
research informed, but I thinkour kids spend a lot more time
on screens than they ever hadduring the pandemic.
And coming back from that tomaking sure kids see in-person
(37:11):
learning and engaging, and alsosometimes thinking about how do
we take advantage oftechnological innovation to make
school engaging, at least forour older kids.
But we have an engagement and abarrier issue going on.
Part of this high levels ofchronic absence is because I
think kids and families don'tfeel engaged as much as they
(37:32):
could or should be by ourschools, and when I've gone to
schools that have are the brightspots that have low levels of
chronic absence, what I see is atension.
It's like two sides of the samecoin.
One side is making schoolincredibly engaging and making
sure kids and families know howengaging school is and why they
(37:55):
need to be there every day, andthe other side is making sure
that they can provide support tokids and families who are
experiencing barriers.
And in between the two of them,the center of that coin is
relationship building.
The center of that coin isrelationship building Because
the relationship building bothhelps with the engagement and
makes sure that if a kid'sfacing a challenge, that the
(38:17):
school, especially the teacherwho sees kids every day.
And this is not about addingresponsibility to teachers, it's
about leveraging the fact thatteachers see kids every day so
that we can help teachers knowwhen they notice something that
they get supports to connectkids to those supports.
That's what makes a hugedifference in kids showing up
(38:37):
every day.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
It's interesting to me that you know, coming out of
COVID, there was this wholething about, at the professional
level, the quiet, quittingconversation among you know
employees right among you, knowemployees right who?
Who were we?
We all go to work because we wechoose to work there.
(38:59):
But even so there were peoplewho were quiet, quitting, or
people who said I'm not goingback in person.
I like this hybrid lifestyle, Ilike to work from home, I want
to be treated well at work.
I'm not.
I'm just not feeling it when Igo in there.
Or career is not everything tome, I'm going to quit and do
something else.
All of those very humanreactions, whether they were
rational or not, at the adultlevel.
But to have the courageousconversation and it's something
(39:20):
I'm nibbling around the edge of,it doesn't always make me
popular, but I look at teacherand staff attendance at work pre
and post COVID and there's nocomparison at Albert Einstein
Academies between levels ofstaff absenteeism pre COVID and
(39:41):
post.
It's way higher post right, andthat's not.
I'm not blanket criticizing agroup of hardworking
professionals, but I thinkthere's some indicators there
that I think there's someparallels in society and with
our families and with our kids.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Well, and when we see high levels of absenteeism for
either teachers or kids, I thinkwe need to have the same
response, which is let me builda relationship and find out why.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
What's driving it?
Sometimes the issues driving kidand teacher absenteeism may be
the same.
I remember being in a schoolthis is pre-COVID but it could
still hold true where I wastalking to a principal and we
were looking at chronic absencelevels by classroom and grades
(40:27):
and there was one classroom andshe goes oh yeah, that classroom
has a lot of absenteeism, butwe also had some mold issues.
You think that answers you know, like before you do anything
else, maybe we need to get, likethe building inspector, in and
figure out what's going on,because I'm sure that's going to
affect both.
(40:47):
And then you have a cycleTeachers, respiratory is
affected, the kids, you know,and then the teacher doesn't
have the relationship and sothen the kids are more absent.
But if we unpacked the issues,I think this issue of lack of
relationship building, like wesometimes talk about how I
realize there needs to be moreresearch showing that readings
(41:08):
by the door actually improvesattendance.
I think it's hard because it'susually part of some larger
piece, but greetings by the doorare important, not just for
kids, they're for the staff whenstaff walk in, do they?
say hello to each other?
Do they say hello to the kids?
If everyone says hello to eachother and makes you feel welcome
(41:31):
and connected, I think thatwould make everyone want to show
up to school more.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
I mean, think about the last time you went to a
dinner party, right that?
Usually the good dinner parties, the host or the hostess is
standing at the hey welcome, I'mgoing to introduce you.
Go put your coat over here,right?
That's a human thing.
So if you can find a way toseparate that out in your
research, I'll be the first oneto be reading that.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
And I think, though, that this is where we should
sometimes just use common sense.
Yeah no, it's like I think weall got more guarded with COVID.
We all, for good reasons, triedto wear masks, do, I think?
But we still have to feel caredfor, and so I think, how we use
(42:21):
our data to unpack where thechallenges are and also see
who's doing better work.
So again I go back to thesebright spots and David, we had a
webinar on April 3rd which wasteachers at the front line, and
we had two amazing, anelementary school and a high
(42:42):
school principal that talkedabout all the ways they brought
their kids into their classroom,connecting them, connecting to
the families, making sure thatkids don't feel anxious in their
classrooms, you know, becausethat also can drive kids.
But there's a whole bunch ofthings that fall within what
teachers can do, and we have tohelp teachers be able to do this
, because they have a ton ontheir plates, and it's also
(43:05):
about sometimes making sure thatwe have nurses who can help or
counselors.
So if I have a kid who comes inand who's clearly having a bad
day and having challenges, I canbring someone who can come and
help me with that kid so I canpay attention to what's
happening with my classroomwhile someone pays attention to
this kid who clearly needs anadult to sit down and talk to
(43:27):
them.
We have to build our systems,but this is what I mean by a
system, and now we have allthese 4,000 almost elementary
schools in California that don'thave these systems, that we
then now have to have systemsbuilding on the fact that they
have teachers as their backbone.
How do we respect that,understand that, support that
(43:48):
and it's not just teachers, it's, in my view, one of the most
important people in the schoolis that front office person who,
when you walk into the schooloffice, do they smile, do they
greet you, do they say hello?
That makes such a difference.
There was in Arkansas this ispre-COVID, but it's still all
(44:10):
true this one principal who hadall of her attendance.
The front office staff got intoattendance but what happened
was they were lecturing everykid who came late and onto these
long lectures.
So then the families and thekids decided well, we'll just
miss school that day, becauseI'd rather miss school than have
to subject myself to thelecture.
So she started by changing youknow, the whole tone of what
(44:35):
happened in the front office.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, as you say, the common sense is sometimes we
don't need to wait for theresearch studies to come out
right, we can just go.
What makes me feel good when Igo to a restaurant?
Do I like to be greeted when Iwalk in the door to have a bunch
of staff go?
You're five minutes late foryour reservation.
So I wanted to talk about themoney.
(44:58):
We've been talking about thehuman side.
We've been talking about thelearning loss and the impact on
students From a school fundingstandpoint.
My understanding is that thereare I don't know half a dozen or
so states in the country, likeCalifornia, that fund schools
(45:21):
essentially on average dailyattendance, and that there's a
whole swath of states where themodel is different, right, where
it may be more related toenrollment.
Not sure exactly what that lookslike.
If you had a magic wand, whatwould you change, if anything,
in the way that schools arefunded?
Because I have to say thatsomewhat cynically, that I
(45:47):
believe that many school leadersare hyper fixated on chronic
absenteeism.
Now in California, becausethere's a red, the dashboard is
flashing red at the state levelon the accountability and it's
also a huge financial impact tobuild your budgets around.
(46:07):
You know, just anecdotally, webuilt we historically in our
organization built our budgetsaround 97.5% ADA average daily
attendance.
We did that for 15 years andthen COVID hit and we were
struggling at 88% and 89, 90.
And so now we build our budgetsaround 95% because we have to
(46:32):
keep the lights on and have ourstaffing levels appropriate and
even 95 is hard for us.
So are there cases where stateshave a different model?
That's better or worse forgetting educators to really
focus on chronic absenteeism asa problem?
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, this is actually a tough issue and I do
think COVID has changed it some.
First of all, there is only ahandful of states that fund
based on average dailyattendance California, kentucky,
texas.
Anyway, there's about seven,eight states that fund based on
average daily attendance and theother places base it on
(47:13):
membership or student count days.
I don't know if they're better.
To be honest, I'm not alwayssure because, like you do
student counts in September andthen a bunch of kids move Like
Maryland does student counts, Ithink and then kids in Baltimore
then, after student count day,move over to Anne Arundel, and
then you know how are you goingto, like you get.
So there are pros and cons ofthe different funding issues.
(47:35):
The big issue I think, withaverage daily attendance is one
it does create a level ofunpredictable and enrollments
actually falling too.
So even in the enrollment-basedones there's some challenges.
The one benefit of averagedaily attendance it's gotten
(47:57):
people to focus on attendancethroughout the year, more so
than I think.
Maybe places that haven'tlooked at that, although now
there's much more accountabilityfor chronic absence, which is
actually a different questionthan the funding one for chronic
absence, which is actually adifferent question than the
funding one.
I think the thing is.
The question about funding isare we adequately funding
schools to do what they need todo, and how do we create
(48:19):
stability in school funding?
And there may be a multiplicityof answers.
And there's actually a good PACEbrief that looked at ADA versus
enrollment, what are the prosand cons, and I think it's
important to look at that.
But I do think this issue of howdo you and that really is
separate from the dashboard,which is saying how many and
(48:44):
which kids are chronicallyabsent, and if you have
disproportionality, do you needschool improvement those are
actually two kinds of separatepolicy conversations.
I think that school districtsbasically need to use their data
to understand how chronicabsence is affecting achievement
(49:05):
and how chronic absence givesthem clues about which are the
student populations that needmore outreach and support, and
then engage in partnerships withthose kids, families and the
community organizations that maybe connected, and also
educators, to better unpackwhat's causing some of the poor
(49:26):
attendance and then what couldhelp them.
And some causes may be moreuniversal, like do kids and
families really understand whatthey're learning every day so
they know they need to show up?
And if they don't, how are you,as a school district and school
and through your everydayinteractions, going to equip
everyone to make sure kids andfamilies know this is why you
(49:48):
need to show up to school andnot because of money.
Money isn't what drives us,it's relationship and it's the
notion that I'm learning a skillthat will get me to a better
future.
This is why, for example, inCalifornia, career tech
education programs have a lotbetter attendance.
That's because it's like acareer pathway.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
I know where.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
I'm going.
And then, if you, think aboutcareer tech education programs.
Usually they have a cohort ofkids who are now in a cohort, so
they're meeting other kids.
They have a faculty advisor whothen gets to know them.
So we know that for older kids,kids come to school when they
feel connected, that's, I knowthere's an adult who cares about
(50:27):
me.
I know there's other kids whoI'm connected to, I'm engaged in
something pro-social and I feelwelcome at my school.
Those four things make adifference.
Career tech kind of does allfour things.
But in California another thingthat we should be looking at for
funding is we have expandedlearning programs.
(50:47):
We have more.
We have billions of dollars inexpanded learning programs in
California.
We have more money in expandedlearning in California than the
entire country has in expandedlearning programs and are we
leveraging that to createstudent connection?
Are we using our communitypartners who get to know kids,
(51:09):
who see them after school, whocan build relationships with
families, and are we using thatand leveraging that to improve
attendance and the earlylearning opportunities program?
The LOP dollars that doesn't goaway.
Coa dollars goes away at thatstage, are we using our
community schools dollars?
We have a lot of money incommunity schools.
(51:30):
Are we using our earlychildhood, we have transitional
kindergarten, we have resourceswe got to connect.
It's not always about creatingsome new initiative.
It's about taking theinitiative that we have that
help increase engagement andmaybe create other resources to
address barriers to getting toschool.
(51:50):
And we need to make sure usingour data on chronic absence is
informing how we effectivelydeploy those resources.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
You've been very generous with your time and I
just had a couple more questionsfor you.
Hedy, I really thank you andalso thank you for clarifying
and wading through my kind ofmuddy question where I lumped a
couple different issues together, but I wanted to just from one
Thomas J Watson fellow toanother.
(52:20):
I'm not sure how many of ourlisteners are aware of the
Thomas J Watson Fellowship, butit was a really transformative
process and experience for me inthe early 90s.
And can you tell us a littlebit about what you did for your
Watson Fellowship?
And you and I were laughingpre-recording about how neither
(52:40):
of us really could connect ourfellowship to our current work.
But maybe when you describewhat you did, maybe listeners
will find some threads throughthere.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Well and there may be some threads.
So I did my fellowship lookingat Chinese factory women and how
they handled the double burdenof domestic labor and factory
work and compared what washappening in mainland China,
singapore and Taiwan.
One of the things that wasreally helpful was really I
tried to go and got my Chinesestill not that good, but enough
(53:13):
so that I could talk to people,because you got to talk to
people and hear what their livesare like and understand that.
So, as well as look at data, Ialso think I learned a lot about
.
One of the things I learned atthat time was how much women's
lives were being controlled,regardless of the government
(53:36):
they were in.
In mainland China, you werewith a work unit that kind of
you were assigned all your lifeand literally there was lots of
control because it was a onechild only policy and there was
a lot of monitoring onchildbirth practices, like
whether you were using a birthcontrol In Singapore women.
(54:01):
The government the Singaporeangovernment was really focused on
making sure they were worriedbecause of the uneducated often
non-Chinese were having kidsmore than the Chinese.
So they created tax incentivesso that if you were poor and got
a tubal ligation, you ended upgetting money in your Social
(54:25):
Security and your housing and ifyou were wealthy you got a tax
credit.
And in Singapore and in Taiwanthere was this M curve where
women would work in the earlyyears, they'd have kids and then
they'd have to come back andwork later on because they
needed it for economic survival.
So it was really seeing how Iguess there's a connection about
(54:52):
both using qualitative andquantitative data.
I also at the time ended uprealizing, because I was doing a
lot of my research, by goingthrough family members,
particularly in mainland China,and feeling incredibly worried
that if I did something, that myfamily members would suffer the
(55:15):
consequences of my actions andI would not.
And it made me choose not to dointernational work because I
thought I understand what thismeans because I have family here
.
But if I'm in a country where Idon't have family, do I fully
appreciate the consequences ofmy actions for the local people
(55:36):
who are here, who ultimatelymust pay the price if I make a
mistake?
Now what I learned over yearsis I'm not so sure it's as clear
(55:57):
to me that we don't have thatsame dynamic going on in the
United States.
I'm middle class, I'mprivileged, I live in a
community where some of the whathappens doesn't have the same
consequences for me as they doin communities of color where I
don't live for me as they do incommunities of color where I
don't live, and I think I became.
It helped me see that, you know, we really ought to take stock
(56:25):
of how both our lives areinterrelated, but also really
understand that those who mostbear the consequences of
policies and action have achance to have voice in where
their future goes.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
So thank you for that .
I see a lot of through threadsactually from what you described
of your Watson to your currentwork.
So thank you.
Current work, so thank you,thank you.
I, in my case, am thankful allthe time for both becoming
bilingual and becoming fluent inSpanish, just from that year
(57:03):
spent in Central America andMexico, and also learning from
the mistakes that I made andhaving a disorganized project
and, I think, part of Watson,they assume you're going to kind
of bumble around a little bitfor a year.
You know you're 22 years old andyou know you're full of
idealism and, at least in mycase, pretty low on logistical
(57:26):
details pre-internet era.
But I muddled my way throughand I've found in my current
work.
You know that I go back and goah, that's a mistake I made 30
years ago.
I'm not going to make it today.
So oh, but yeah, thomas JWatson Fellowship pretty
remarkable gift to the world.
I wish it were more broadlyaccessible in more universities
(57:50):
around the country or in someother way.
Before I ask the last question,is there anything that we have
not touched on, related tochronic absenteeism, that's kind
of been kicking around for youand that you'd like to just
mention?
Speaker 1 (58:05):
I would just say that we can't accept the current
levels as a new normal we can'taccept the current levels as a
new normal.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
I was going to ask you that.
I was going to say is this thenew normal?
Will we ever get back to wherewe were?
Speaker 1 (58:20):
I believe we can, but it's going to take
intentionality.
Relationship building,rebuilding trust doesn't happen
overnight.
We can use data to figure outhow to get there and we have to
have persistence over time.
It's not going to happen.
It's going to take, you know,maybe five years, maybe a little
longer.
We got to be prepared for along haul approach to using our
(58:44):
data to inform how we buildrelationship, to make sure that
people most affected have avoice in the solutions, and it's
going to take.
I think everyone can make adifference here and we're all
going to also have to contributeto making a difference.
Speaker 2 (58:57):
My last question is a hypothetical.
If you have the opportunity tocreate a billboard for the side
of whatever freeway is nearwhere you live, I had one person
say I don't believe inbillboards.
They pollute my view.
So we're going to get past thatbecause this is just
hypothetical.
So if you had a chance tocreate a billboard that would
(59:19):
contain a message that you wouldlike the world to know about
your work and what you believein, what would that billboard
say?
As people drive by, eithergoing 70 or, in the case of San
Francisco, maybe seven miles anhour, depending on what time of
day it is?
Speaker 1 (59:35):
Kids show up to school.
When we show, we care and welisten.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
Kids show up to school.
When we show, we care and welisten.
That's a perfect place to wrapup today's conversation.
Hedy, thank you so much foryour time and your expertise and
for your combination ofactivism and scholarship and
research on behalf of all of ourstudents.
And you gave me hope in ourconversation, because I've been
(01:00:05):
trending towards that place ofresignation and saying I just
don't know if we're ever gonnaget back to where we were.
So this has revived that hopefor me.
So thank you, thank you.
Thank you for listening to theSuperintendent's Hangout.
You can follow me on Twitter atDVS1970.
(01:00:28):
Please be sure to share thisshow with friends and family on
social media and in the realworld.
Thank you to Brad Backeal forediting and production
assistance and to Tina Roysterfor scheduling and logistics.
Thanks for hanging out and havea great day.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.