While the news focus on Hartford Public Schools the past few weeks has been on budgets, boards, and back in ’68, the calendar has crept up on graduation season, like a fog “on little cat feet.”  With all due respect to the intentions of Carl Sandburg, I’m using his “fog” and “little cat feet” as a metaphor for the beautiful and talented children of HPS and the mystery of how so many are able to graduate on time.

In 2016, the Connecticut State Department of Education developed a system of twelve indicators (NextGen Accountability Index) to “tell the story of how well a school is preparing its students for success in college, careers, and life.”   This system, stated the CSDE, “provides a more holistic, multifactor perspective of district and school performance.”  One of the important indicators included in this new system is the district and school’s chronic absenteeism rate.

“Being chronically absent,” stated the CSDE, “has a huge impact on a student’s ability to read at grade level, perform academically, and graduate on time.”  The CSDE quoted national research in stating that “at every age and every stage, chronic absenteeism erodes the academic and social skills needed to succeed in school.”

However, at HPS, more than a third of graduating seniors apparently have not let the chronic absenteeism blues hold them back from finishing high school.  College, career, and life success is, however, still a foggy question for these ‘graduates.’

Using 2021-22 data provided by HPS to EdSight, “Connecticut’s official source for education data,” we can see that chronic absenteeism is not a barrier to graduating from HPS (I am using 2021-22 chronic absenteeism and graduation data due to this only being the 21st century and EdSight does not provide 2022-23 graduation data).

Anyhoo, the data states that for the 2021-22 school year, there were 1,007 seniors readying to leave HPS.  Of this group, 776, or 77%, graduated on time, while 231 did not.

Among the total cohort of seniors, 499 were counted as being chronically absent (49.5%).

Now, if we give HPS the benefit of the doubt and say that the 231 seniors who did not graduate were all among the chronically absent group of 499 seniors, that means that 268 (499-231=268) seniors listed as chronically absent were among the 776 seniors who did graduate, which means that 34.5% of HPS graduates in 2021-22 were chronically absent students (268/776=.345).

HPS’s Graduation Requirements Policy (6140) does not specifically hold a student accountable for being chronically absent (informally, however, it is  a “holistic” measurement of how prepared the student is for success), quoting state law (10-221(f)), the policy does state that to earn a credit for a course, the student must successfully complete 120 hours of class time per school year (40 minutes per class for 180 days = 7,200 minutes or 120 hours per class).  If a Hartford student misses the minimum 18 days by which he/she/other is then labeled chronically absent (you can bet the average chronically absent child misses more than the minimum 18 days), that means the student is missing 12 hours of the required 120 hours of class time, or 10% of the required class time.  HPS’ alternative credit earning flexibility machine must be one finely tuned machine!

While this report has focused chronic absenteeism among the HPS senior class, a 2017 report from the CSDE on chronic absenteeism warns of the dangers of students becoming chronically absent in lower grades.  Quoting sources, the report said:

“Children who are chronically absent in both kindergarten and first grade are much less likely to read proficiently by the end of third grade (Campaign for Grade Level Read-ing and Attendance Works, 2014). By sixth grade, chronic absence is a key early indicator of dropout from high school Baltimore Education Research Consortium, 2011). By ninth grade, attendance may be a better indicator of dropout than eighth- grade test scores (Allensworth, 2014).”

Last year, according to EdSight, nearly 40% (38.9) of all Hartford students were chronically absent.  This means that nearly 7,000 HPS students are missing 10% of required class time and yet, they move to the next grade level (despite the CSDE warnings) for the next school year, or they graduate, ready for college, careers, and life, as verified by HPS.

The fog of HPS as stated above, is spoken about in the context of minimum days missed to be listed as chronically absent, which is 18, or 10% of the school calendar.  The darkness caused by this fog is worsened however when we imagine that the most chronically absent students miss many more days than the minimum of 18, without formal accountability.

This unverified fact is doubted by outgoing board of education member Rigueur.  During the May 1st Committee of the Whole meeting, board member Walker, during a discussion on minimum grading (where he called for the end to the 50 minimum grading rule) and retention policies, hypothesized based on teacher discussions that perhaps students with 40 days of absences are still being moved on to the next grade level.  Rigueur, questioning whether this was fact or opinion, asked, “Where is that coming from?”   Ah, it’s coming from board members who engage and listen to teachers and from board members who have a take on the reality of HPS.

So, teachers, fire up your PowerSchool and email me (anonymity guaranteed) the number of students in your classes who have 40 or more absences yet will be moving onto the next grade level, or in the alternative, please submit an anonymous comment below if you know of such extreme chronically absent students being moved on, like fog “on little cat feet.”