What's the best way to monitor school attendance during distance learning? No one knows

INDIANAPOLIS — Three times a week, Beth Riedeman's son has a live video chat with his first-grade class. About half of his classmates are “showing up” on a regular basis, she said.

In the brave new world of remote learning, this is what school attendance looks like.

Participation in teacher-led live video chats, signing on to online learning platforms and submitting assignments — either digitally or through printed materials sent back to schools — are a few of the ways schools across much of the country are tracking students’ “attendance,” or more importantly, their participation in learning while school buildings remain closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

And though the U.S. Department of Education told schools that they will not be required to report attendance information during the crisis, schools are still trying to keep track of their students — not to report truancies, but to make sure kids are doing OK and able to keep learning.

“It’s really important to make sure they do have the opportunity to continue working on their skills and developing,” said Keith Thomas, a math teacher at Paramount Schools of Excellence in Indianapolis. “One day, eLearning will stop and we’ll be back in class.”

When that day will come is still unclear. While schools are preparing to reopen in the fall, most have said they’re preparing for a variety of scenarios, including a continuation of distance learning. If that is the case, the learning plans they have in place now — and the ways they keep track of student participation in that learning — will be crucial road maps.

Keeping track

When Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb ordered schools closed through the end of the current school year, he also mandated that public schools, charter schools and private schools that participate in the state’s voucher program submit plans for how they would continue to teach students.

Nearly all of those roughly 730 plans have been finalized and approved by the Indiana Department of Education, providing a window into how schools are reaching students during this extended period of remote learning.

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When school buildings are open, student attendance is obvious. But when buildings closed, student attendance became a different question.

Most Indiana districts are tracking attendance through one of four ways, said Adam Baker, spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Education: completed work, a daily attendance question online, live video sessions or personal contact with students or families, like a text message, email or phone call.

Lawrence Township Schools consider students “in attendance” if they log into the school’s learning management system, access assignments from the district website, access paper learning packets from their school or have contact with their teacher through a phone call, email or other means.

Washington Township Schools are keeping spreadsheets to track family communication and responsiveness, according to the district’s learning plan.

“If teachers are not seeing engagement or participation from students, then teachers, instructional assistants, counselors, or social workers are reaching out to determine what the barriers may be for work completion,” the plan states.

Several plans say that teachers should check in with students who they haven't heard from to make sure they have the tools they need and are safe.

At Paramount, teachers across the network of three charter schools are using a system that Thomas developed to track students’ participation in daily assignments. Each grade has a series of spreadsheets — one for each teacher – that list each student and the week’s assignments. Teachers keep track of how many of the week’s assignments get completed so they can easily spot a student who hasn’t “shown up” to school.

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Thomas said that around two-thirds of students are getting their assignments done on a regular basis. Those that aren’t, he said, get contacted by a teacher or counselor. There are a variety of factors, he said, that could contribute to students not completing their work, such as a lack of access to high-quality internet at home. Teachers are also reaching out to families twice a week, since school buildings closed.

That participation level can vary greatly, depending on how schools are tracking it and the circumstances of their students. In Indiana's Carmel Clay Schools, about 95% of students were regularly engaged with their school work as of late April, a district spokeswoman said.

Different approaches

Riedeman, whose son attends a school in the Indianapolis Public Schools district, said she tries to keep the 6-year-old on a schedule for schoolwork but also accounts for days when he's emotional about missing school or struggling with the assignment.

On those days, she said schoolwork can be moved to the evenings, when she's done working from home, or be pushed to Fridays, which the district has designated for catching up on assignments.

According to the learning plan the Indianapolis district submitted to the state, the district is "monitoring student engagement via LMS logons, participation in teacher office hours, and student work submitted."

Alicia Long is trying to keep her two kids on track with their remote learning for Decatur Township Schools, but the amount of work assigned can get overwhelming.

"We'll get it done when we get it done," she said. "We try to do the Monday stuff on Monday unless something drastic happens."

Decatur Township’s learning plan says that attendance is updated every two weeks. So as long as the work gets done, Long’s kids will be counted “present,” no matter if they turn the assignment in on the designated day or another.

Indiana hasn’t set firm standards for how schools should measure attendance. While some are taking Decatur Township’s approach and recording it less frequently, others are recording daily attendance.

What’s the right approach?

No one knows.

At least not yet, said Hedy Chang, executive director and president of Attendance Works, a national initiative aimed at addressing chronic absence. It’s a question schools and states across the country are grappling with, all at the same time.

“The honest truth is we don’t yet know how to best monitor when kids are showing up,” Chang said.

In traditional school settings, chronic absence is measured as students missing 10% of school in a month. It’s a benchmark that was arrived at through study, over time. She said it’s not clear how that translates to remote learning without research but schools should be looking for some level of engagement or logging in every day.

“Chronic absence is really a measure of the lost opportunity to learn in school,” Chang said. “The more kids lose out on opportunities to learn this year, the harder the transition to next year will be.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Coronavirus: How schools track attendance during distance learning