NEW YORK, Dec. 3 (Xinhua) -- Years after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted American schools, nearly every U.S. state is still struggling with attendance, and attendance has been worse for Native American students, a disparity that existed before the pandemic and has since grown, reported The Associated Press (AP) on Tuesday.

"Out of 34 states with data available for the 2022-2023 school year, half had absenteeism rates for Native American and Alaska Native students that were at least 9 percentage points higher than the state average," it noted.

Many schools serving Native students have been working to strengthen connections with families, who often struggle with higher rates of illness and poverty. Schools also must navigate distrust dating back to the U.S. government's campaign to break up Native American culture, language and identity by forcing children into abusive boarding schools, according to the report.

History "may cause them to not see the investment in a public school education as a good use of their time," said Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma University's Center for Tribal Social Work and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

Particularly in three states -- Alaska, Nebraska, and South Dakota -- the majority of Native American and Alaska Native students were chronically absent. In some states, it has continued to worsen, even while improving slightly for other students, as in Arizona, where chronic absenteeism for Native students rose from 22 percent in 2018-2019 to 45 percent in 2022-2023, added the report. Enditem

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