Isaacsohn said chronic absenteeism has been skyrocketing since the pandemic began in 2020 and many students learned from home.
“This is the number one issue we are facing in education,” he said. “It is an absolute emergency, and we need to act like it.”
In Ohio, a student is considered chronically absent if they miss 10% of school hours for any reason. According to a report from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, in the last full school year before COVID (2018-19), Ohio’s chronic absenteeism rate was 16.7%. There’s no data for 2019-20. But in 2020-2021, the rate was 24%, then a peak of 30.2% in 2021-22, and 26.8% last school year.
Educators are worried since students already fell behind during the pandemic. The largest indicator of this has been the third-grade English Language Arts tests, which are a benchmark used by the state to indicate how well the students in third grade can read. In 2018-2019, 66.7% of third graders in Ohio tested at proficient or above. Last school year, 62% of third graders scored proficient – higher than the previous year of roughly 59% of third graders, but still lower than pre-pandemic years.
Under the bill’s current language, if the student reaches the 90% attendance rate in a two-week period, the student will earn $25. If the student attends 90% of the school days in a quarter, they earn $150. If their overall attendance is 90% for the year, they would earn up to $500.
Additionally, the bill would give $250 for each student who graduates from a qualifying high school, with extra incentives for those with good grades. For a graduating student with a 3.0 or higher, an additional amount of $250 would be awarded, and for a student with a 3.5 GPA or higher could get up to $500, for a total amount of $750.
The kindergartener’s payment would go to the student’s family, while the ninth grader’s payment would be to the student and their family.
Isaacsohn said Brazil and Mexico have the longest-running examples of these programs, with over 20 years of this type of program in both countries. In Brazil, attendance increased by 20% and in Mexico, attendance increased by 18%.
This type of model does somewhat exist in Ohio. In 2022, students in northwest Dayton schools - Fairview Elementary School, Edwin Joel Brown Middle School, Wogaman Middle School, and Thurgood Marshall STEM High School – were eligible to get a $25 gift card every two weeks if they had perfect attendance and no office referrals. Funding for the project came from Learn to Earn Dayton.
Seitz said the proposal would give half of the students in the school districts selected the money, while the other half would not get the money to see if the program works.
“Then at the end of the pilot, we’re going to see did the incentivized kids do better in attendance than did the non-incentivized kids,” he said.
Seitz noted the legislation also calls for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to pick one school in a rural district and one in an urban district.
Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania, asked during a Jan. 16 Primary and Secondary committee hearing on the bill why the state would be paying students to follow a law.
“I mean, are we going to get to the point where we’re paying rapists, not to rape?” Williams said. “Are we really going to start that trend where we’re going to go in and invest to prevent people from committing crimes?”
Seitz said the penalties for rape do help stop rape, while truancy officers are either not available at districts or don’t have enough resources to do the job.
“We have tried just about everything else when it comes to chronic absenteeism and low graduation rates,” he said. “So as Donald Trump once famously said, what do we have to lose?”
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