Since the start of the pandemic, the number of students with disabilities who are chronically absent from Minneapolis Public Schools has doubled or nearly doubled in more than a third of schools. More than 1,600 do not attend classes on a regular basis.

In four schools, the number has tripled, and in two there has been more than a four-fold increase. Attendance has improved in just six of the 55 traditional schools for which the district recently released five years of school-level attendance data.

The district did not post data regarding 14 specialized schools that serve students with profound needs, including self-contained special education programs. At some of those programs, attendance is not reported at all. According to separate state data, less than 4% of students enrolled in Minneapolis’s high school for students with the most intensive behavioral issues attend on a regular basis.

The numbers illuminate a largely unexamined facet of a national crisis coming out of the pandemic’s school disruptions. Historically, students with disabilities are the demographic group most likely to suffer from high rates of absenteeism. And they are so vulnerable to the resulting harms that federal civil rights laws require educators to take special care to make sure they get to school — and that they get help catching up once they are there.

Indeed, within weeks of the first COVID school closures in 2020, the U.S. Department of Education warned that shifts to remote learning did not absolve education leaders of their responsibilities to this population. Minnesota was quick to adopt a law requiring school systems to identify special education students who needed extra help making up academic and developmental losses, and offering to help defray the cost. It’s unclear how many received these recovery services.

Overall, according to data recently posted by the Minneapolis district, the number of students with disabilities who are chronically absent rose from 29% in the academic year that ended in 2019 to a peak of 53% in 2022 and then 46% in 2023. However, those averages conceal huge variations among individual schools, ranging from 21% to 80% in 2023.

The state and the district use different calculations to determine whether a student is chronically absent. Under the state’s definition — students who miss 10% or more of school days for which they were enrolled  — Minneapolis’s 2022 special education absenteeism rate was 61%, versus 39% statewide. The district counts only students who are enrolled for 95 or more days.

Students who qualify as chronically absent under the state rule have missed more than three weeks of the school year.

Read the full article about students with disabilities who are chronically absent by Beth Hawkins at The 74.