By Carol J. Bova  Posted October 19, 2022

On October 18, I posted Mathews County Chronic Absenteeism Rates from the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) School Quality reports broken out as one part of Learning Climate for each of our schools. The numbers were alarming for some subgroups, particularly economically disadvantaged high school students at 42.9% and Black high school students at 45%.  What the Learning Climate reports do not show is the total numbers the percentages are based on because the number of the absent Black or economically disadvantaged high school students were too small to show on a report. Another set of VDOE reports under School Climate – Chronic Absenteeism tells a different story.

Of 224 chronically absent students in all three of our schools, only 17 were Black students. Now 224 out of 903 students is still too many to be absent more than 10% of the school  year, but 17 is 7.6% of all chronically absent students in all grades–a far cry from 45%. With rounding off, the real number could be as low as two or three students, but could not be more than eight! The following chart shows the numbers of absent students are spread out through all grades, but are the worst in ninth, tenth and eleventh grade.

It will take continuing efforts to get all our students back in school on a regular basis, and it must be done if our children are going to have the best possible future.

I regret any undue concern caused by using the VDOE Learning Climate percentages in the October 18 post. We must, as a community, insist that VDOE reports be constructed in a way that doesn’t mislead a user and require sorting through 21,103 lines of information to extract real numbers for our local schools.

Source of School Quality/Learning Climate reports: https://schoolquality.virginia.gov/divisions/mathews-county-public-schools#desktopTabs-6

Source of School Climate/Chronic Abenteeism Reports: https://doe.virginia.gov/statistics_reports/school_climate/index.shtml