It is time to examine the impacts of platforms like Canvas on student attendance and engagement.
I believe that it was last month that I found myself browsing The New York Times, looking for something interesting to read, when I came across an article titled “Why School Absences Have Exploded Almost Everywhere”. Immediately intrigued, I began reading. One aspect of the article that particularly drew my attention was the feature that allowed readers to compare attendance rates in school districts across the country. Playing around with this feature, I realized the extent to which the 4J district, as well as South as a school, truly struggles to get students to class.
Of course, South’s attendance rates have followed national trends: after the pandemic, rates of chronically absent students (students who were not regular attendees, which are defined as students who miss ten percent or more of a school year) skyrocketed. At the national level, average attendance rates dropped from 85 percent regular attendees in 2019 to 74 percent in 2023 – an 11 percent drop. Though attendance rates in South’s own district, District 4J, were already lower than the national average, their effects were further exacerbated by the pandemic; they dropped from 79 percent regular attendees in 2019 to 61 percent in 2023 – an 18 percent drop. That is a difference of 7 percent between the drop in attendance in District 4J and the drop in attendance at the national level, a disparity that, to me, suggests underlying problems in our district to properly address issues such as the pandemic. It comes as no surprise to me that, given this data, Oregon is the only state not to have rebounded in state test scores since 2022 (as reported by The New York Times) – it could be that instead of being a district problem, chronic absenteeism is a statewide issue. Oregon did, after all, bring students back to school quite late in the COVID cycle – many months after most other states – and has struggled in many areas since the pandemic. In a study of 15 school districts across Oregon, both the median and the average drop in regular attendance rates were 18 percent – a statistic that shows District 4J is not alone. And though our district’s attendance rates pale in comparison to national averages, they look incredibly high in comparison to some of their Oregon counterparts. Regular attendance rates in Reynolds school district in the Portland suburb of Fairview, for example, dropped from 72 percent to 49 percent between 2019 and 2023, a 23 percent drop and almost a quarter of the student population. District 4J’s regular attendance rates still remain well above 50 percent, which is evidently not the truth in all districts. The remarkably bad attendance rates across Oregon suggest that District 4J’s attendance rates are not a reflection of administration here, but rather administration at the state level.
Yet it could also be a problem in South as a school. Though attendance rates at South did not drop quite as drastically as some of Oregon’s most affected districts, they remained rather low. South’s regular attendance rates have consistently been lower than district averages, even as they dropped from 77 percent (as compared with the 79 percent district average) during the 2018-2019 school year to 58 percent during the 2022-2023 school year (as compared with the 61 percent district average).
Earlier in the year, my fellow reporter and The Axe News Editor-in-Chief Aria Lynn-Skov and I wrote about the disparity between graduation rates and attendance rates at South. We found that whereas South graduated 94 percent of its students in 2023, only 58 percent of its students were regular school attendees. We also wrote about how South administrators devised a plan that included hiring a new staff member, reintroducing and reinforcing the hall-pass system, holding meetings with families, creating attendance contracts for students, and having more staff presence in the hallways during passing periods and lunch. Despite these sundry efforts, I have heard many teachers complain about continued attendance and tardiness problems.
“I appreciate the attempts to ameliorate attendance rates, but I think especially at 11th [and] 12th grade … students are skipping because they have homework to be doing,” South physics teacher Mackenzie Vignoul said. “So I think it’s maybe less directly related to the district’s attempts to do attendance stuff.”
Vignoul also mentioned that the new schedule might have something to do with student absenteeism, though she also pointed out that it is harder to tell with the new schedule, as she only sees each student three times every week. The impact of missing one day has ballooned, as it means students miss about half of the week’s content.
“It’s just that much harder for students to catch up,” she stated, “which I think then creates this feedback loop of students maybe feeling behind, skipping. I’ve even had students approach me asking to work in the library for that day of class because they feel behind and are wanting to catch up.”
And some students agree, though for different reasons, with Vignoul. They did not think that implementing many of the policies outlined by Zublin has solved – or will continue to solve – South’s abysmal attendance rates.
According to these students, stress and mental health play a key part. One South junior told me that she often skips because she becomes stressed in a class, but that having the extra stress of a looming consequence for skipping class wouldn’t make her wish to go to school any more. Rather, she contended, stress would disincentivize coming to school and that implementing more and larger consequences would “make it that much worse for students.”
South sophomore Cameron Perry told me that he had not noticed any consequences for skipping other than an email home, a consequence that he implied did not seem to do much.
Another student, South junior Jocelyn Hansen, suggested that the students who skip probably do not care whether or not there are extra consequences, so the implementation of those consequences probably would not do much to better South’s dismal attendance rates.
And yet, while the drop in South’s attendance rates from the pandemic far outpaced the drop in attendance rates across the nation, its grade inflation also far outpaced the latter’s.
“In 2019, the average graduating senior from South graduated with a 3.41, 0.30 GPA points higher than those at the national average,” Lynn-Skov and I wrote in December. “Just four years later, South’s graduating class of 2023 held an average GPA of 3.53, 0.12 points higher than in 2019. To put this statistic into perspective, over the 10 years between 2009 and 2019, national averages rose only 0.11 points – 0.01 points lower than the four-year average change for South.” Though I have not found reliable data on national averages in the time since 2019, it would be a well-educated assumption that South’s inflation has continued to outpace that of the nation’s.
But the question still remains: how can South’s GPA remain so high when its attendance rates are so low? South is well known for its academic achievements – 168 students graduated with a 3.75 or higher last year – so why is there no correlation with excellence in attendance?
I believe that there is an obvious answer: Because classwork is available online on platforms such as Canvas, students can blow off class, but still get credit for the work they decide to do at home. There no longer seems to be a need to come to school to pass a class or even receive a good grade in that class.
Perry voiced these concerns about possible ramifications of Canvas.
“It’s definitely possible [to get a good grade in a class], since everything’s on Canvas,” he said. “There are some things that you need to show up to class for, but for 75 percent of it, you can just do it online.”
This ease of doing work at home, in my opinion, is the prime problem with Canvas. It provides a virtual space that attempts to mimic physical space by giving students work instruction online. But it’s hard to get rid of, since the district has invested their money in it. I’m not necessarily a proponent of getting rid of the program, but steps need to be taken to ensure that going to class feels imperative to a good education – a feeling that should already exist.
But these steps should put some accountability on students. If students at South are so obsessed with grades, then maybe teachers should penalize students for missed class in the gradebook, whether or not those students have done work on Canvas. Or maybe the district should look for incentives that help students instead of stressing them out. Whatever the solution, it is important that students go to class so as to get the best from their education, no matter the grade.
“If you want a good grade honestly,” Hansen said, “it’s best to go to class.”
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