Earlier post reported chronic absenteeism rate for students in California tripled as a result of the pandemic shutdowns.
Two more articles describe the skyrocketing rate of chronic absenteeism in Minnesota and across the nation.
What could possibly be driving this? On twitter, Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) said:
“We told the kids that school wasn’t essential. They listened.”
That’s about right. Schools were shuttered anywhere from six to eighteen months in most places around the country.
In terms of the so-called remote learning, there wasn’t much teaching going on. In one district near me in California, teaching time during the pandemic was 45 minutes in the morning and then 45 minutes in the afternoon. Class time was merely 90 minutes a day.
Yeah, our education leaders, political leaders, religious leaders, and public health leaders all said school wasn’t important. A whole bunch of kids got the message: school is optional.
I hope against hope that the allegedly educated educators someday will be held accountable for the destruction they willfully caused.
New reports describe widespread chronic absenteeism:
9/15/23 – Washington Examiner – Chronic absenteeism skyrockets in Minnesota public schools – Before the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in Minnesota public schools was 15%. That is the number of students who were missing 10 or more days in the school year.
The most recent data for 2022?
30%.
Doubled. The number of chronically absent students has doubled.
In one of the results so many fully expected, including me, the destruction from government ordered shutdowns of schools is falling harder on poor and minority students.
Some schools in lower income areas of Minnesota have chronic absenteeism rate of 75%. Three quarters of the kids missed more than 10 days of school.
Overall, Minneapolis shows chronic absenteeism skyrocketing from 21% to 54%.
For white students, chronic absenteeism shot up from 10% to 41%. Only a 31 point rise.
For black students, increase was from 29% to frightening 68%. A horrible 39 point runup.
The devastation of missed attendance today will have catastrophic impact on graduation rates later.
Article says missing one week of school during ninth grade cuts the chance of graduating on time by 20%. Losing one week craters likelihood of graduating.
The impact shows up fast. Look at the likelihood of being “on track” in the freshman year when classes are missed during middle school:
- 93% of students on track if they missed two days or less in middle school;
- 66% of students on track if they missed two weeks.
9/14/23 – Wall Street Journal – School Closures and Student Health – In addition to test scores falling and frightening increase in absenteeism, other consequences of government ordered school shutdowns include lowered emotional health and delayed development of social skills.
Another study reports that 80% of public schools are seeing “stunted behavioral and social emotional development in the students because of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Threats of violence are reported by half of schools according to federal data.
The number of students nationwide who are chronically absent doubled in the academic 22 school year compared to before the pandemic.
There will be a massive number of kids who fall behind, who never catch up, who don’t graduate, or who will be horribly unqualified for college.
VP at one college says incoming freshman are showing the emotional and social behavior that would otherwise be expected in much younger adolescents. Imagine staring high school with the emotional and social maturity of a 6th grader or 5th grader.
Article points out what many other newspaper reports are mentioning, that the head of the national teacher’s union is frantically pretending she had been trying to open the schools all along instead of putting every ounce of her energy into making sure the maximum number of schools were closed as possible and they were shuttered for as many days as could possibly be forced.
Now that the destruction from Covid policies is obvious to all, those “leaders” who caused this devastation don’t want to be associated with the policies they designed and dictated.
I guess that is understandable. Who wants to hold the blame for the destruction of education for a generation of children.