Washington CSD cites chronic absenteeism after performance profile released

WASHINGTON — Washington’s annual school performance profile, released by the Iowa Department of Education last week, shows below-average scores for 4- and 5-year graduation rates, math proficiency and language arts proficiency across the district. On all four measures, it reported the lowest score in Washington County, and was among the bottom four for the Southeast Iowa Union coverage area.

The district’s middle school and high school were given the “targeted” status for English learners and students with disabilities, a metric that shows those subgroups performing disproportionately poorly. It’s the second year of such a designation in both buildings.

Superintendent Willie Stone said he attributed the district’s below-average scores to chronic absenteeism. Around 30.5% of Washington’s students missed at least a tenth of school days in the 2022-2023 school year, well above the state average of 25.6% of students.

“Everything ties together, if students aren’t here, it’s pretty hard to learn what you’re supposed to be learning,” Stone said. “If 50% of our English language learners aren’t here, there’s a good share of those that aren’t going to pass. If they aren’t going to pass, they’re not going to be able to graduate.”

The data seems to largely confirm that assessment. Washington CSD’s targeted groups have an outsized rate of chronic absenteeism: 41.6% for students with disabilities, and 48.1% of English learners. Both of those jump above 50% at the district’s middle school and high school, where the state says they’re falling behind.

Among all students, chronic absenteeism in the district is most prevalent in the targeted buildings, with grades 8-11 reporting the problem for over one third of pupils — although first graders last school year were absent the most compared to the state average. (37.1% to the state’s 20.2%.)

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The numbers at Washington High School are worse than in previous years across demographics, despite a stepped up public awareness campaign. The building nearly doubled its all-student chronic absenteeism rate from last year’s report, jumping from 17.2% to 34%.

"They are worse than what we were expecting to see,“ Stone said. ”We’ve created a (team) to work on it … and we’re in the process, at our next meeting, to create a plan to address it districtwide.“

The details of that plan are up in the air at this point. Stone said it would likely involve more public awareness efforts, and pivoting student sick day expectations to pre-pandemic norms, with a higher standard expected to opt out of school for the day.

“Some of it’s just making sure people are educated, not only our families but also our community,” he said. “Making sure people understand how important it is — whether they’re early childhood or whether they’re high school — getting kids to school.”

Stone said the district would devise further details from a statewide program called “Attendance Works,” recommended by the DOE as a policy guideline for addressing absenteeism.

The performance profile isn’t all bad news.

While Washington students, on average, showed lower rates of math and language arts proficiency than their peers across the state, the district’s scores (48.85% and 48.08%, respectively) were the highest they’ve been since before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lincoln Elementary, specifically, went from an overall rating of “needs improvement” to “commendable,” jumping its index score of all performance indicators by about 9%.

“We may not be where we want to be, but we are taking big steps forward with student growth,” Stone said. “Ultimately, that’s our goal, to make sure all of our students grow to meet the needs that they have.”

While the schools are still gathering data on how they pulled that off, Stone said he believed teachers were getting better at converting educational standards into goals, and refining professional development practices.

“We have some really good things going on, we just have high-focus areas that we need to target,” he said. “We’re trying to meet the needs of those, and the first thing we’re going to be doing is trying to make sure they’re getting here, to school.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com