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Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Kindergarten's Overlooked Absenteeism Problem
Gabrielle Pobega knows kindergarten is more than just kids coloring, playing and singing songs, so she made sure her daughter made it to kindergarten at Lincoln Park Academy in Cleveland every day. 'They teach you ABCs,' Pobrega said as he picked up her third grader after school. 'They teach you how to write. They teach you small little words and it prepares them for first grade.' But not all parents value kindergarten as much as Pobrega. So many parents treat kindergarten as less important than other grades that it adds up into a major problem — nationally, across Ohio and particularly at Lincoln Park and other high-poverty schools. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter Kindergarten has the highest absenteeism problem of any elementary grade in several states, studies have shown. In Ohio, attendance can be so bad that state data show some kindergartens approaching 90% chronic absenteeism. Though chronic absenteeism — students missing 10 percent or more of school days — is drawing national attention for high school students, there has long been a second, less publicized, peak in absenteeism in kindergarten and sometimes preschool that is also damaging. Hedy Chang, one of the leading researchers of absenteeism and its effects, said kindergarten absenteeism needs educator's attention, not just high school absences. 'You really want to worry about both,' said Chang, founder of the nonprofit Attendance Works. 'You want to care about your youngest incoming learners, because that's going to be critical for the long term. What you don't invest in and address early, you might pay for later.' Consider: In Ohio, more than a quarter of Ohio kindergarteners missed at least 18 days of school in the 2023-24 school year, state data shows, making kindergarten the highest chronic absenteeism rate of any elementary school grade in the state. That matches findings by nonprofit FutureEd in March that kindergarteners had the highest chronic absenteeism of any grade in Hawaii and Utah last school year. In all 20 other states FutureEd looked at, Kindergarten had the highest chronic absenteeism rates before 7th grade. 'We see this U-shaped curve,' when charting absenteeism by grade, said Amber Humm Patnode, acting director of Proving Ground, a Harvard based research and absenteeism intervention effort. There is high absenteeism in kindergarten, it improves for several years, and typically rises again in late middle school. She said there are really two separate absenteeism problems — one for the youngest and one for the oldest students — that need different strategies to fix. Ohio State University professor Arya Ansari, who specializes in early childhood education, called kindergarten absenteeism 'problematic' because missed classes add up over the years. 'Kids who missed school in kindergarten do less well academically in terms of things like counting, letters, word identification, language skills.., they do less well in terms of their executive function skills, and they do less well socially and behaviorally,' Ansari said. 'Days missed in preschool or kindergarten kind of set the stage, or are precursors for future absences,' he added. 'So when you're frequently absent, it kind of begins to have a snowball effect and sets habits that are harder to break later on.' There's also another dynamic at play with kindergarten absences: It varies by school, in very dramatic ways. Though Ohio's kindergarten chronic absenteeism rate was just above 26% last year, 27 kindergartens had chronic absenteeism triple that rate, coming close to or exceeding 80%. Lincoln Park had the worst rate in the state last year at nearly 90%, with close to 9 out of 10 kindergarteners qualifying as chronically absent. Adding to the damage, the worst kindergarten absenteeism is happening in places where the students need it most. Ohio's list of highest absenteeism rates is dominated by schools in, or next to, the state's biggest or most poor cities — Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo and Youngstown — where students have performed well below suburban students for years. In contrast, affluent and higher-performing schools easily have less than 5% kindergarten chronic absenteeism, with several at zero. Students in the high-poverty schools are not only missing days that could start them on a path to catching up, the absences are holding everyone back even more, Chang said. 'I consider high (absenteeism) at 20%, 30% in a school,' Chang said. '80%? That's an extremely high level of chronic absence. When schools have really high levels of chronic absence, the churn just makes everything harder. It makes it harder for teachers to teach, set classroom norms and kids to learn.' Some of why kindergarten absenteeism is so high is easy to understand. For many kids, it's the first year of school, so kindergartens become superspreader sites for colds, flu and other illnesses kids haven't been exposed to before. Since chronic absenteeism includes any days missed, even for illness, rates could legitimately spike. The pandemic added a twist to that, said Robert Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins University professor and another leader in absenteeism research. 'It used to be that parents got guidance (that) If your kid just had sniffles, you could send them to school,' Balfanz said. 'Then, coming out of the pandemic, parents got the message… perhaps overload, perhaps not…that should you have any sign of illness, you could have COVID. That's another factor.' Just as important: Only 17 states required students to attend kindergarten as of 2023, according to the Education Commission of the States. That easily leads parents to consider it optional and for school to really start in first grade. Then there's kindergartners' need for parents or siblings to take them to school or to their bus stop. If school and work schedules don't align, or if a sibling's school is different, kindergarten falls lower on the priority list. 'A kindergartener not coming to school is not necessarily the kindergartner saying, 'I'm not going to school today,' ' said Jessica Horowitz-Moore, chief of student and academic supports for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. 'That has to do a lot with the parents.' Parents oftentimes don't appreciate how fast absences add up. Another parent picking up children at Lincoln Park was a perfect example. That father said his child only missed school 'a couple times a month' when in kindergarten. But twice a month is 10% of the 20 school days in a month (Four weeks of five days each) which is right on pace for chronic absenteeism. Some of the kindergartens in Ohio with the worst absenteeism in 2023-24 were failing in many other ways too: Two charter elementary schools with kindergarten chronic absenteeism over 87% closed before school began this academic year. Some, including the Stepstone Academy charter school in Cleveland, did not respond to multiple messages from The 74. Lincoln Park, with the worst kindergarten absenteeism problem in the state, is part of the ACCEL charter schools, a fast-growing multi-state charter network, that had five of Ohio's 10-worst kindergartens for chronic absenteeism. Representatives of the network said the schools are often in high poverty neighborhoods with families that move frequently, which disrupts attendance. Students often don't have reliable transportation, they said, and Ohio's charter schools have less money to put toward attendance issues than districts. Lincoln Park school leaders say they're trying to improve attendance and academic performance. Both the school's principal and kindergarten teacher are new this year and interim Principal Erika Vogtsberger said she expects the preschool attendance rate to go up from 74% last year to about 80% this school year. She said fewer families are moving during this school year than last, and more than 90% of Lincoln Park's students have signed up to return, bringing stability she thinks will help attendance. The school has also been trying for a few years to encourage attendance. It has early morning and afterschool sessions so working parents can drop children off at 6:30 am and pick them up as late as 5:30 pm. It holds special events like pancake breakfasts for families to encourage attendance and gives classrooms with 90 percent attendance for five days a chance to spin a wheel for rewards like pizza parties or a chance to wear pajamas to school for a day. But even at 90% goal to earn prizes still leaves 10% of students absent racking up days toward chronic absenteeism. 'We have to make it attainable,' Vogtsberger said. 'If I had it at 95%, the kids who are here without missing a day are going to get discouraged because… we do have a small cluster of people who are out pretty regularly.' 'Nobody would get it,' added Sherree Dillions, a regional superintendent for ACCEL. 'At least, with the 90%, peer to peer pressure is a big piece. You say 'You better come … You better come tomorrow, because we want that pizza party', or we want whatever … Because the kid wants the prize.' Voghtsberger said she also does not want to punish students, either, because their parents aren't doing what they need to do. 'No matter how bad some students want to be at school, if their parents are not getting up in the morning and bringing them, they cannot get to school, and… that's not their fault.' she said. School officials also said parents are a problem beyond not bringing children to school. Parents, they said, are often abusive when called or visited to check on students and have sometimes threatened school officials with guns or dogs. Ohio has also moved away from taking action against students or parents for truancy, so parents face no penalty for keeping students home, as they do in other states, including Indiana, West Virginia and Iowa. 'If I had my way, parents would be held accountable across the board,' Dillions said. The Toledo school district, whose Sherman elementary school has the worst absenteeism of any school district kindergarten in Ohio, also saw parents push back when the school called or visited about students skipping school. The district decided in 2017 to pay for well-known people in neighborhoods, like football coaches or local volunteers, to serve as 'attendance champions' to talk to parents instead of school officials. '(They) go out to the homes,' Baker said. 'They complete home visits. They work with the families to remove barriers to attendance. They're in the buildings every day, building relationships with students, removing barriers on that end as well.' 'They are not truancy officers,' Baker stressed. 'They are not to issue any punishment. That's not their thing. This is about, 'How can I help get Johnny back into school?' The champions have reduced some of the tension between schools and parents, she said. Baker has seen better attendance this year, so she expects kindergarten chronic absenteeism there to fall from about 87% to 77% — still about triple the statewide rate. There are some reasons for optimism across Ohio and nationally. Absenteeism at all grades, including kindergarten, is improving yearly since the end of the pandemic everywhere. Baker said, though, that kindergarten may need to be more of a priority. 'We're going to have to really hit preschool and kindergarten a little bit harder with our interventions that we are setting up,' she said. 'We have been very much focused on high school. But I think for us as a district … we really have to continue to hit this hard across the board.'
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Florida Highwaymen: Segregation causes black artists to sell work from cars
EDITOR'S NOTE: To celebrate Black History month, we will be reposting our series on African Americans who had a major impact on Florida. This story originally published in 2020. FORT PIERCE — Harold Newton did something that took guts. An African American artist from Georgia, Newton in 1955 walked through the front door of a well-known white artist's home in Fort Pierce, Florida, to ask A. E. Backus for advice. 'Backus had a reputation here in town for being inclusive and open to people no matter their gender, no matter their beliefs, no matter their race,' said J. Marshall Adams, Executive Director of the A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery in Fort Pierce. 'Backus was very encouraging of his work, gave him critiques, gave him demonstrations, gave him art supplies to help encourage him.' Newton soaked up everything Backus taught him. But Newton had one more hurdle to overcome if he wanted to sell his own landscape paintings. 'He couldn't set up his own gallery, his own space in those segregated times and attract white clientele to a black studio so he had to figure out a way to get his art to his clients, to his customers,' Adams said. Newton's solution: sell his paintings out of his car along U.S. 1. That method spread and was adopted by more than two dozen artists in the area, leading to more than 200,000 paintings and a vibrant African American art scene up and down the Treasure Coast. The artists were later given the name: Highwaymen. One of the artists considered to be the scene's leader was Alfred Hair. When Hair was 14 years old, he, like Newton, fell into Backus' orbit. Hair went to the nearby segregated school in Fort Pierce — Lincoln Park Academy. It was Hair's teacher who suggested Backus take him under his wing. Backus taught Hair how to paint landscapes and how to make frames. Hair started to believe he could turn painting into a career, something unheard of for blacks of the time. "The only jobs you could get was working in the fields, that was your job, in the orange groves," said Hair's widow, Doretha Hair Truesdell. "Alfred didn't see himself doing that. He said painting is what I'm going to do. This is my job. This is my employment." As Hair grew in the industry, he knew he would have to do things differently from his white mentor, who could set up in galleries and share his paintings with mass audiences. So Hair came up with his own business model. 'What he could do is lean into his talents, and one of those talents was painting fast,' Adams said. 'If he could learn how to paint faster and paint more volume he would have more to sell — he would sell them for a less expensive price point than an established artist — but at the end of the day make as much money.' Soon, Hair took a page from Newton's playbook. He began driving up and down the highway selling his paintings. It worked. During the early part of the 1960s Hair, and many other artists with a similar painting style, thrived. 'On Oct. 16, 1965, we moved into our house that we had built from those paintings,' said Hair Truesdell. 'When we moved into that house that's when we really exploded. We could produce about 20 paintings a day. We hired salespeople. Some of the people that are Highwaymen now were our salespeople. They sold for us, so we were really making a lot of money for that time.' Hair and Newton's practice of selling art out of their cars came to be used by many African American artists along the U.S. 1 corridor on Florida's Treasure Coast. Many found success. However, in 1970, the African American art scene lost its charismatic leader when Hair was gunned down in a bar. He was only 29. 'Overnight, everything dies," said Hair's widow. "Nothing is left.' Many of the African American landscape artists continued to paint, but waning interest after Hair's death coupled with new tastes and styles in the 1970s and 1980s saw much of the success fade away. 'We survived it all,' Hair Truesdell said. 'We're still living. Still standing and still we have the memory and we will always have the memory of Alfred, of his vision.' In the mid-1990s Jim Fitch, a Florida art historian, discussed the African American painting movement of the 1960s in the St. Petersburg Times, using a label to describe their art. 'That term is 'The Highwaymen,'' Adams said. 'The name came from the artery of U.S. 1 being the chief way to go up and down and sell your works of art. So it's easy for us to, now that we have a term, to describe these artists.' This created a new interest in their art, which is estimated to include 200,000 paintings. One of the distinctive things that make the Highwaymen art unique is the frames and vibrant colors of the landscapes. Especially early on, because they lacked the resources and supplies, Hair and others would paint on upson board. They framed paintings with crown molding and brushed them with gold or silver to give them a rustic look. 'I really think the board that we painted on, I just think it gave it vibrancy that you don't get from canvas,' Hair Truesdell said. 'Also, we shellacked our board, and then we put a sealant on the board, and then the paint just adhered to that sealant and I just think that it gave it life.' The true number of Highwaymen artists has been debated, with some being considered second or third generation Highwaymen. However, in 2004, the number of identified Highwaymen was set at 26 when they were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. They include: Curtis Arnett, Hezekiah Baker, Al "Blood" Black, brothers Ellis Buckner and George Buckner, Robert Butler, Mary Ann Carroll, brothers Johnny Daniels and Willie Daniels, Rodney Demps, James Gibson, Alfred Hair, Isaac Knight, Robert Lewis, John Maynor, Roy McLendon, Alfonso "Pancho" Moran, brothers Sam Newton, Lemuel Newton and Harold Newton, Willie Reagan, Livingston "Castro" Roberts, Cornell "Pete" Smith, Charles Walker, Sylvester Wells and Charles "Chico" Wheeler. 'Even though they might be painting similar subjects in a similar manner they each have their own individual viewpoints,' Adams said. 'I think it's important to honor these individual artists as well as the collective group. The collective story is really important, but it shouldn't obscure the idea that these are individuals who are looking at subjects and painting with their own style. If you look closely you can see a wide range of different perspectives of how they approached a single subject.' Highwaymen paintings can be seen at the A.E. Backus Gallery & Museum in Fort Pierce, as well as the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee. Many can be purchased at various websites in their honor. There are also some pieces on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. 'It's wonderful that these artists are being recognized today and they're continuing to be recognized,' Adams said. 'These works have a timeless beauty. They are of a certain time and there were certain social and political and cultural forces that shaped how they were made and how the people made them, were able to make them. They really speak beyond that.' Walters can be reached at twalters@ Support local journalism by becoming a subscriber. This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Florida Highwaymen: Black artists find success selling work from cars
