The Looming Dropout Crisis

The dropout issue was bad enough before the pandemic, the rate was about 5.3% in 2018. The pandemic saw more than one million students simply disappear from school rolls during the chaotic transfer to online and hybrid learning models as schools tried to cope with the biggest health issue of the last 100 years.

We can assume that as schools come back online for in=person learning, many of those students will find their way back to school, but many more will not. And of those that return to school, they will have a more intense set of needs regarding both their social emotional state and academics. In short, we can expect graduation rates to take a significant hit and dropout rates to spike unless we do something to address it.

More than before the pandemic, it is important for schools to engage in robust attendance outreach programs, and I don’t mean truancy officers. Schools should be mobilizing communications staff, school counselors, and social workers to emphasize the importance of attending school and to address the needs of those that are finding it difficult to reenter the system.

In addition to attendance, schools need to emphasize the social emotional needs that students will have when school opens back up. There has been an elevated level of adolescent suicide attempts in the last year and we can assume there is a relationship to the pandemic and its related effects. All schools should be prioritizing the development of of coordinated social emotional care for their students. It would be really great if every student could have regular recurring time with a social worker, but we know that those resources will never materialize. Instead, schools should look at whole school models of therapy.

The creation of a trauma sensitive school is a great way to begin addressing the needs of all children, especially those who have been deeply affected by this pandemic. A trauma sensitive school is one where the basic routines of the school day, the school itself, and the individual classrooms have been redesigned with sensitivity to students with trauma. This means a rethinking of disciplinary procedures, the language staff use to address students, routines for greeting students at the beginning of the day, even lighting and transitions between activities.

All staff need to become aware of the trauma that children are walking into school with and how that trauma will affect their learning and behavior. When a child who has experienced trauma becomes triggered because the teacher didn’t realize their language might not be appropriate, discipline and punishment typically follow and that only exacerbates the situation — sending the student into a spiral of anger and acting out.

The trauma informed schools movement was gaining momentum before the pandemic, but now it is imperative that every school make this a priority for their staff before students return to school in the fall.

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

- Laurell K. Hamilton