Guest Column: Attendance rates spell trouble

And yet, Oregon’s public schools continue to have one of the worst marks in the nation for chronic absenteeism, defined as students missing more than 10 percent of the school year.

The Oregonian newspaper did the state a real public service last year with a series of stories, “Empty Desks,” which reported on the state’s issues with chronic absenteeism.

This year, to its credit, the Oregon Department of Education released current information on absenteeism on its own, without getting badgered by The Oregonian, so there’s a growing sense that chronic absenteeism is an issue that the state needs to address.

That’s the good news, and we don’t mean that as understatement: We can’t fix problems if we’re not aware of them.

But here’s the bad news: The state’s overall rate for chronic absenteeism has barely budged over the past three years, although it’s drifting in the right direction: The rate for the 2014-15 school year in Oregon was 17.4 percent, down slightly from 17.7 percent in 2012-13. (Inaccurate reporting by school districts for the 2013-14 school year prevented the state from accurately tracking the rate that year.)

So think about this another way: For the last school year, nearly 1 in 5 students missed more than 10 percent of the school year.

You can probably guess what happens to students who miss a lot of school, and the research on this topic says that you’d be right: Students who are chronically absent are considerably more likely to become poor readers, which contributes to another bad result: They’re more likely to drop out of school.

As it turns out, Oregon has one of the worst four-year graduation rates in the nation. Anyone think there might be a connection between the two?

As bad as the state rate is, some of the mid-valley’s school districts have absenteeism rates that are higher.

The Lebanon School District posted a 27 percent rate, according to The Oregonian. Sweet Home also had a 27 percent absenteeism rate, and Harrisburg was just a touch better, with 26 percent.

By contrast, some big districts across the state boast absenteeism rates of 9 or 10 percent.

Obviously, parents have an important role to play in improving the number: It’s vital to get the message across to children early on that they’re expected to attend school every day.

But schools have an important role to play as well, and that can start by flagging enrollment problems early on, before absenteeism rather than attendance becomes the habit.

You can’t teach students if they’re not in the classroom. We want every adult Oregonian to have a high school diploma by 2025? It’s just talk until we do a better job of getting students into the classroom.

Editor’s Note: The Chronicle publishes a variety of editorial viewpoints from different newpapers on Thursdays.