Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’ Almost Everywhere
The pandemic changed families’ lives and the culture of education: “Our relationship with school became optional.”
By Sarah Mervosh and Francesca Paris, The New York Times, March 29, 2024
…
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… Chronic absence is typically defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 days, for any reason…
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… [end quote]
The Macro impact on the future workforce when 1/3 to 1/4 of potential workers have substandard education – not to mention a habit of not showing up for work if they are used to not showing up for school – is very concerning.
Maybe interview some of them and find out why they skip and what they are doing…then provide some kind of program or incentive to get them to show up. This would be a short term thing to try and overcome the COVID excuse.
In some parts of the country, a piece of the puzzle is probably paying teachers enough to attract good teachers. Good teachers can help make school interesting and a place students want to be.
Not the only thing that needs to be done, of course. But certainly one thing that is likely to help.
Better than JCs. Remind the JCs if the kids are not educated, they won’t be able to earn profit for JCs because the grown-up kids (as a group) will all be getting more welfare from the govt than the JCs.
They are now aggressively automating even meatpacking plants. A lot of jobs are being eliminated. Investing in Universal Basic Income is preferable to training for non-existent employment.
A “thought leader” recently promised Billionaires at his event that he would shower them with more tax cuts, while also bemoaning that people don’t want to move to Shiny-land from Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland.
As offered before, there is a suspicion that the “JCs” are perfectly fine with everything they want being invented, engineered, and produced in other countries, the socialistical ones that give away education. Isn’t that what Friedman advocated, let all the productive things be done in countries where doing productive things is subsidized? All they need domestically are menials to polish their private jets and yachts. Meanials don’t need any education, so the money now spent on education can be handed to the “JCs” in more tax cuts instead.
Steve…in Shiny-land, where financial manipulation is subsidized.
Fair enough. It should be noted, irrespective of politics, that said Representative was once the Ranking Member on the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee. She was talking to the high school students about the eclipse. It is not a good omen for the future of science education.
