School attendance is a fundamental key to student success. Simply put, students don’t learn the material a teacher presents if they are not there to learn it. A 2018 U.S. Department of Education video posted on YouTube cited this statistic to emphasize the importance of attendance: just two absences a month make a student five times more likely to fall behind in important skills such as reading and math.  

When the coronavirus pandemic shut down schools in the spring and all lessons began being delivered online, student attendance dropped off. In some districts, especially those where poorer children predominate, this drop-off was precipitous.  

There were many reasons for this. Some families lacked home computers through which their children could access lessons. Some had no stable internet connections or no connections at all. Many struggled to adjust to a new reality that had all family members working and learning from home. Some families dealt with cases of COVID-19 within the household.  

Now more than a month into a new school year, about a third of the state’s children continue to learn primarily through online means. Earlier this month, Gov. Ned Lamont called online learning this fall a success and cited attendance as an indicator. He told reporters in New Britain Oct. 6 that while in the spring some 30 percent of students failed to log in to their online classes, the fall was seeing a 97 percent participation rate.  

The Connecticut Mirror studied this data and concluded online class attendance did not demonstrably improve between spring and fall. In late September, during the fourth week of school, the Mirror reported that 3.7 percent of students learning online did not sign on, while a few weeks earlier the percent not logging in was 4.6 percent and in the spring, at the height of the pandemic shutdown, the rate of students who failed to login stood at 4 percent, according to the Mirror’s analysis.  

Still, there’s no doubt engagement rates have improved significantly in some places and many school districts, including New London and Groton, are reporting improving attendance rates. In the spring, officials for the state’s largest school district of New Haven said online classes experienced a 70 percent dropoff in attendance, but in the last week of September the district reported 6 percent of students learning remotely had failed to participate, the CT Examiner reported earlier this month.  

There’s no doubt online learning continues to be essential as the pandemic drags on much longer than most foresaw in March and pockets of virus outbreak continue to periodically put physical classrooms completely off-limits. Still, it’s essential the governor and education officials face the facts not only about attendance figures, but all the challenges presented by online learning. Only by being realistic can they adequately devise intensive catch-up plans for those children who are falling further behind during this frustratingly long pandemic.  

In addition to the chronic attendance issues, online learning also presents more problems for children with special education needs, without access to quiet study spaces or from families whose precarious financial situations mean parents are more focused on survival than on ensuring their children keep up with lessons. Among older students, even logging into a class doesn’t necessarily mean they are engaged in the lesson, as avatars and muted videos can mask distracted students.  

As long as the health and safety of students, teachers and others within school communities remains a prime concern, online teaching and learning will continue. There will be a time when the pandemic is behind us, however, when the true impact of the pandemic on our children’s education becomes fully understood. That is the day school officials must prepare for now. 

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.