Audit says NC schools didn’t keep up with monitoring student attendance during pandemic
The State Auditor’s Office found that six North Carolina school districts, including Charlotte-Meckleburg and Johnston County, did not comply with the state’s truancy law during the 2020-21 school year, when students were mostly taking online classes.
The state audit released on Thursday found that the six school districts didn’t ensure that student attendance data was complete and accurate. The audit also accused the state Department of Public Instruction of not providing the information needed to determine how many students were chronically absent and how many chronically absent students were promoted or graduated.
“This audit is not diminishing the crisis brought about by COVID for North Carolina school systems, the students, their families and teachers,” State Auditor Beth Wood, a Democrat, said in a video released about the audit. “However, COVID did have a profound effect on student attendance, which again affects a student’s ability to be successful in North Carolina schools.”
The audit drew sharp disagreements from the six districts and from DPI, who accused the Auditor’s Office of not understanding the attendance data.
“Instead of recommendations to get students back to school, our agency and six of our school districts have been unnecessarily reprimanded,” State Superintendent Catherine Truitt, a Republican, said in a news release. “Much of how this report was conducted is an example of how state government time and taxpayer dollars and resources should not be used.”
Concerns over ‘missing’ students
From mid-March 2020 through June 2021, North Carolina public school students went through periods when only online classes were offered during the pandemic. Some students didn’t return to in-person classes until the start of the 2021-22 school year.
Students who were learning remotely were generally marked as present if they participated in online class discussions, had a daily check-in with the teacher or completed that day’s assignments.
Test scores plummeted during the pandemic but have been recovering in the past two years. But performance remains below pre-pandemic levels.
In November 2021, state lawmakers directed Wood’s office to do an audit of the attendance and truancy policies used by six school districts during the 2020-21 school year. The audit came amid concerns about “missing students” who stopped attending classes during the pandemic.
The districts chosen for the audit were Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Henderson County, Hyde County, Johnston County, Robeson County and Winston-Salem/Forsyth.
Auditors said they were only able to get complete information for Henderson County. But they said there was enough data to make some findings on all six districts.
“Auditors found that the frequency, timing, and type of truancy procedures and documentation varied widely among schools across each school district selected for this audit,” according to the report. “North Carolina’s Truancy Law was not waived during the COVID-19 pandemic or school year 2020-2021.”
Blame game over audit delay
Wood says the audit was delayed because DPI provided incomplete and inaccurate student attendance data.
“Problems with the attendance data provided by DPI led to audit delays and was a significant contributing factor in the audit report being released after the legislative deadline of June 30, 2022,” according to the audit. “The data problems required auditors to increase audit procedures to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence, which resulted in over 1,700 additional audit hours at an estimated increased cost of $205,000.”
But DPI says the delay was due to the Auditor’s Office making “multiple changes in scope and lack of understanding” of attendance policies and the wording used by districts in their student attendance policies.”
“OSA wasted $350,000 of COVID-19 relief funding and well over 1,000 hours of NCDPI and public school unit (PSU) staff time creating a report that did not answer the questions posed by the General Assembly,” according to DPI.
Auditor’s Office pushes back against DPI
The Auditor’s Office responded on Monday with a statement that it was DPI who was making “misstatements and factual inaccuracies” about the audit. The Auditor’s Office says the problem was DPI’s staff didn’t understand the data it was getting from its software vendor for the attendance system.
The Auditor’s Office says DPI and the six districts are pushing back against the audit to distract readers.
“Given that there was no enforcement of the state’s Truancy Law, student attendance decreased significantly and led to ‘chronic absenteeism,’” according to the Auditor’s Office. “Which begs the question, ‘How many students that were chronically absent were promoted to the next grade level or graduated but were not ready?’
“Promoting students who are not prepared for the next grade level puts additional stress and strain on schools, teachers, administrative staff, and financial resources.”
Districts disagree with audit findings
The findings for Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the state’s second-largest district, mirror what was found in the other districts in the report.
Data limitations prevented auditors from performing a detailed analysis of student attendance and truancy policies and procedures during the 2020-2021 school year, according to the report.
Auditors also found CMS did not comply with the state’s truancy law during the 2020-21 school year because it didn’t “perform specific actions” for students with three, six, and 10 or more unexcused absences.
Parents weren’t notified their student was violating truancy laws, and school counselors didn’t work with families to eliminate the problem, the report found.
But Superintendent Crystal Hill, in a letter of response to Wood dated Sept. 27, wrote that the district “respectfully disagrees” with the findings and charged that auditors failed to adequately “consider the unprecedented global pandemic that raged during the 2020-21 school year.”
CMS primarily operated virtually during that school year, and the district’s primary concern was providing technology, internet access and quality remote instruction, Hill says.
“Students and staff and their families were critically impacted by the pandemic inside and outside of schools,” Hill wrote. “(CMS) dedicated significant resources to support students and staff whose families struggled with physical health, mental health, food insecurity, housing insecurity, lack of childcare, financial insecurity, language barriers, and the deaths of loved ones.”
Hill added that while the district worked to adhere to attendance laws, its focus was supporting its people.
“As demonstrated throughout the audit report, OSA and the audit findings do not dispute or attempt to minimize the impact and unprecedented challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic had on District staff, families, students, and student attendance during the 2020-2021 school year,” Wood said in her response to CMS.
“However, the audit found that required truancy actions were not performed. As a result, there was an increased risk that students would become chronically absent and experience negative outcomes.”
Rise in absenteeism was ‘unavoidable’
The attendance findings for Johnston County, which is the state’s seventh-largest school district, mirror what was found in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
In a response signed by Superintendent Eric Bracy, Johnston County says the rise in chronic absenteeism was “unavoidable” during the height of the pandemic. But Bracy says the audit doesn’t answer questions such as whether the absenteeism problems existed before the pandemic and if they’ve continued.
The report doesn’t address its purpose, which is to make “recommendations to remediate student absenteeism,” Bracy added.
“The Report misses the opportunity to offer suggestions for addressing underlying problems that lead to student absences, such as poverty, lack of transportation, lack of technology, unemployment, lack of flexibility in scheduling,” Bracy writes.
Wood accused Johnston County of trying to “mislead” readers of the audit. She made similar statements in her responses to DPI and the other districts.
“The District’s response attempts to distract the reader from the issues identified and recommendations made in the audit’s findings, many of which are under direct control of District management and staff,” Wood responded.
Absenteeism rates up nationally
The state audit is in line with national reports showing attendance dropped and absenteeism rose sharply during the pandemic.
An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for.
North Carolina had the fifth-most “missing” students on the list. The state had 12,072 public school students who could not be accounted for in the AP analysis of enrollment data and Census records between the 2019-20 and 2021-22 school years.
Additional data compiled by Dee in partnership with The Associated Press found that more than a quarter of students nationally were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year — a 91% increase from before the pandemic in the 2018-19 school year. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10% of the school year.
That analysis also found that more than 30% of North Carolina students are chronically absent from school during the 2021-22 school year — nearly double the rate that existed before the pandemic.
This story was originally published October 12, 2023 at 2:30 PM with the headline "Audit says NC schools didn’t keep up with monitoring student attendance during pandemic."
