I know this is a conservative Substack. I write it. It seems likely that I’m going to end up with backlash from a conservative home schooler or two after this. I’m okay with that. Don’t get me wrong. I won’t apologize to you any more than I would to some butt-hurt liberal. I’m just okay with catching the flack. That much having been said…
Kids are missing more school than ever and it’s hurting them. And yes, I do mean kids who go to public and private schools. I will grant you that my kids miss too much themselves, but they live with their mother and she does nothing to stop it from happening. She’s as much a part of the problem as they are. This needs to stop. There are numerous problems here. There is almost nothing good here.
Look, I know we all wanted to stay home when we were kids. I’m forty-seven and I don’t want to go to work some days. It’s part of being human. Actually, when I was a kid I had a bit of an absenteeism problem myself. Fortunately for me, my mom laid down the law. The quote “If you you’re not running a fever, throwing up and you don’t have diarrhea, you’re taking your ass to school,” is one I might not perfectly remember, but those were most definitely the criteria. That lasted until I got a car and my mom freaked out and made me stay home because we got three or four inches of snow one night. ( And yes, as hard as it may be for some of you to believe, in Michigan we went to school with that much snow fresh on the ground before the plows had been out.)
Per the New York Times:
In the four years since the pandemic closed schools, U.S. education has struggled to recover on a number of fronts, from learning loss, to enrollment, to student behavior.
But perhaps no issue has been as stubborn and pervasive as a sharp increase in student absenteeism, a problem that cuts across demographics and has continued long after schools reopened.
Nationally, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were considered chronically absent last school year, up from 15 percent before the pandemic, according to the most recent data, from 40 states and Washington, D.C., compiled by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute. Chronic absence is typically defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 days, for any reason.
Let’s start with the obvious here: The job of the education system is to prepare students to one day be able to join the workforce. As we all know (and I had to fire someone from an old job for this) chronic absenteeism results in unemployment in all but the most dead end of jobs. The only place I’ve worked that didn’t have an attendance policy was a mom and pop owned grocery store where I made minimum wage. Showing up for school is training for showing up for work. And even people who work from home still have to do their jobs while they’re in their pajamas.
The trends suggest that something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting. What was once a deeply ingrained habit — wake up, catch the bus, report to class — is now something far more tenuous.
“Our relationship with school became optional,” said Katie Rosanbalm, a psychologist and associate research professor with the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University.
I’ve actually had the conversation about missing school leading to missing work with my oldest. She’s eighteen and headed off to college in the fall. She looks to do well there and she definitely has the brain power. I also know that my kid who is currently pulling a B+ in AP Statistics had problems with math during the 2020 school year because she had to learn online. She plans on going pre-med and has never done a chemistry experiment because she wasn’t allowed to touch the stuff in the chem lab because of the fear of the coof. Being denied classic school experiences hurts kids, including the smart ones.
This isn’t an isolated problem:
The increases have occurred in districts big and small, and across income and race. For districts in wealthier areas, chronic absenteeism rates have about doubled, to 19 percent in the 2022-23 school year from 10 percent before the pandemic, a New York Times analysis of the data found.
Poor communities, which started with elevated rates of student absenteeism, are facing an even bigger crisis: Around 32 percent of students in the poorest districts were chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year, up from 19 percent before the pandemic.
Even districts that reopened quickly during the pandemic, in fall 2020, have seen vast increases.
“The problem got worse for everybody in the same proportional way,” said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who collected and studied the data.
So everything is worse everywhere. Your kid’s school (unless you home school) is not immune.
And yes, parents are culpable here. If you don’t send your kids to school on days when they could go that’s on you. But here’s the flip side to that:
The trends suggest that something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting. What was once a deeply ingrained habit — wake up, catch the bus, report to class — is now something far more tenuous.
“Our relationship with school became optional,” said Katie Rosanbalm, a psychologist and associate research professor with the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University.
The habit of daily attendance — and many families’ trust — was severed when schools shuttered in spring 2020. Even after schools reopened, things hardly snapped back to normal. Districts offered remote options, required Covid-19 quarantines and relaxed policies around attendance and grading.
School policies regarding a disease, being Covid, that had muted effects on children have harmed those same students. Teachers’ unions are partially to blame here as well, especially since it seems that the schools that closed for the longest times have been effected most strongly. Unfortunately, I can’t quote that, as it comes from a graph at the New York Times link. You can find it there.
Is all this absenteeism really having that much of an effect? It would seem so:
Today, student absenteeism is a leading factor hindering the nation’s recovery from pandemic learning losses, educational experts say. Students can’t learn if they aren’t in school. And a rotating cast of absent classmates can negatively affect the achievement of even students who do show up, because teachers must slow down and adjust their approach to keep everyone on track.
“If we don’t address the absenteeism, then all is naught,” said Adam Clark, the superintendent of Mt. Diablo Unified, a socioeconomically and racially diverse district of 29,000 students in Northern California, where he said absenteeism has “exploded” to about 25 percent of students. That’s up from 12 percent before the pandemic.
And this is a problem that builds on itself:
Experts say missing school is both a symptom of pandemic-related challenges, and also a cause. Students who are behind academically may not want to attend, but being absent sets them further back. Anxious students may avoid school, but hiding out can fuel their anxiety.
And schools have also seen a rise in discipline problems since the pandemic, an issue intertwined with absenteeism.
Dr. Rosanbalm, the Duke psychologist, said both absenteeism and behavioral outbursts are examples of the human stress response, now playing out en masse in schools: fight (verbal or physical aggression) or flight (absenteeism).
So missing school creates problems which cause students to miss school. It’s a downward spiral. The worse it gets the worse it will get, which will make it worse.
Of course, part of the absenteeism problem is that many parents misunderstand the point of schools. Parents are working from home more often and are allowing their kids to stay home because they don’t need the school to function as a daycare service. While it is true that schools have kids during the day their primary function is not and never has been as a babysitting service. Treating them as such leads to absenteeism and problems in school. I get that taking a kid to school can cause inconvenience. I lived with my oldest for her first couple years of school and was responsible for transporting her back and forth to school while working full time and attending college full time. It wasn’t easy. I did it anyway.
So what’s next? How do we fix this?
It all starts with parents. They need to be more like my mother: Don’t let these kids stay home if there isn’t something legitimately wrong with them. Parents need to pressure the schools as well. These schools need to put a realistic attendance policy in place and fail the students that don’t show up. These kids need to learn that there are consequences for their actions.
And, of course, the obvious. The United Auto Workers union doesn’t make policy for Ford Motor Company or General Motors. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers doesn’t make policy for Detroit Edison or any other electric company. The United Food and Commercial Workers union doesn’t make policy for Walmart or ConAgra. It’s time to tell the American Federation of Teachers that they don’t make school policy either.
The bottom line here is that you get what you settle for. If we don’t fight for our kids educations they won’t get them. It’s time to stand up and demand change before it’s too late and we don’t have anyone capable of educating our grandchildren. Don’t let this go.