Chronic absenteeism -- missing 18+ days of a 180-day school year -- is way up, writes Ed Navigator's Tim Daly. Twenty-five percent of students missed that much in 2021-22, up from 15 percent prior to the pandemic, and the 2022-23 numbers now coming in are “persistently high.
Because more students are no-shows just about everywhere, some of the explanations -- a shortage of bus drivers, go-soft grading policies -- aren't persuasive, he writes.
Others are stronger. For example, the pandemic disrupted social patterns and school communities, Daly writes. School closures weakened relationships between students and classmates and students and teachers. Older students, in particular, are more likely to connect with friends online rather than in person.
In addition, "in-person school feels outdated" and unnecessary, he writes. "Sitting in a desk for six hours a day is for suckers."
Furthermore, "staying home is fun," Daly writes. "Missing school = hours of unregulated, appealing entertainment." That may explain high absenteeism for early elementary students, whose increases in screen time have been alarming.
Mariana Dale, writing in LAist, looks at the surge in absences in Los Angeles Unified.
Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said "conversations with more than 9,000 families last year identified three trends: Illness (not for COVID-19); child care; and mental health."
“I think we need to overcome the pandemic mentality that any little sniffle should be addressed by keeping the child at home,” Carvalho said.
"This is the exact opposite of what schools were telling families for a couple years," writes Daly. "Good luck unwinding that messaging."
>> Will absentees show up this year?
No, most of them will not.
"Carthago delenda est" To modernize Cato: The public school system must be destroyed (Ratio scholae publicae delenda est).
It's past the point where it can be "evolved" or "transformed" into something sane. It has to be abandoned and rebuilt from the ground up.
Are these missing students residing in the District this year? Here we are seeing that parents of unclassified students have voted, and its not for low expectations. The students in many cases have moved back to the home country, or in with relatives in higher expectations districts. Teens often are working..they'll learn more as a helper and when they age in to a community college
will pick up on the business skills they don't learn OJT.
Covid here is arriving with a fever; Districts and daycares aren't going to remove the rule of 24hr fever-free without fever reduction medicine until a diagnosis is made. Too many other contagious diseases also have fever in the symptom list. Tuberculosis and measles haven't…
Perhaps these students should try this garbage at a real job where you don't get paid if you don't show up to work, perhaps a lack of money will motivate them to actually show up and work (but I doubt it)
It's simple. Students and families have been taught that attending school is optional. It will take a lot of worthwhile effort to turn that around. Grading policies would be a good start.
Someone didn't get the rising mask mandate for colleges memo. And as colleges go, so go the high schools. So, why return only to be locked out....again.