I could not say if this article (gift link below) is accurate, but it certainly seems school absenteeism has dramatically increased since Covid. This seems like it could be or become a huge problem.
Excerpt:
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].(Students still struggling to adjust to life in classroom, educators say - Chalkbeat).
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.
Could some of this be as simple as the fact that, post-covid, both students and faculty / admin are more inclined to stay home when ill, as opposed to coming in when the illness is mild?
The article says that is part of it. But there are many other factors: parents feeling the education system is broken or thinking online is just as good as in person, demotivated students who feel behind, teacher absenteeism, emerging mental health issues and much more.
This thread seems to be absent many replies, but that’s what you get for posting on a holiday weekend or not putting it in the Quarantine Zone.
Part of my work involves coaching new trainees. They’re older than the kids described in this article, but not by much. I have certainly noticed a sharp decrease in attendance in the past 4 years, with some very perplexing excuses for their absences, and a general lack of work and basic curiosity.
Most of them are good persons but they definitely try to do, and learn, as little as possible while exploiting every single loophole, real or imagined, not to get fired.
Yeah, well, after decades of corporations treating people as if they were disposable and exploiting any and all loopholes to get ahead why is anyone puzzled that employees are unmotivated and also exploiting loopholes?
Actual work ethnic is not rewarded in many jobs. In too many employment environments it’s about politics/who you know or, in the higher levels, that you went to the right school at the right time and screw you if your parents weren’t rich enough to support you during an unpaid internship.
So… why should employees treat employers any better than employers have treated them?
And why should kids struggle for perfect attendance, especially if it’s at the cost of their health? Getting into college has become a gateway to eternal, crushing debt and even if you get a “useful” degree you can still wind up in a dead-end low-level job because ten thousand other people got the same piece of paper so it becomes, again, all about who you know and whether or not you went to the “right” schools, which are so competitive that to get in your parents have to start your “career” in kindergarten with private tutors and extra-curriculars your average blue-collar family can’t afford.
If kids and their families can’t see a pay out to regular attendance and good grades why put forth the effort?
It’s a problem in the UK as well:
Absenteeism has become endemic in our schools. The search for solutions is keeping headteachers awake at night but, despite concerted efforts, absence rates are not improving.
School absence hovered around 4.7 per cent in the years before the pandemic struck, rising to 7.5 per cent last year, according to Department for Education data. But persistent absenteeism – where pupils miss 10 per cent or more classes – has more than doubled, rising from 10.9 per cent in 2018-19, to 22.5 per cent last year.
Because education and a work ethic are important cultural values in and of themselves? Originally, these were only correlated to money, not in service of it: I, at least, was raised with the idea that school was important because it was school, and doing a job well was important no matter what. (“Whatever you do, do with your might / Things done by halves are never done right.”)
I do think you have a good point, though: we’re starting to wake up to workplace explotation, though we’ve also bought the corporate line that school is really only for their benefit, not ours.
My experience is only anecdotal, but over the past 13 years or so in my job it seems as though I’m seeing more instances of excessive school absenteeism. Sometimes it will be described as related to social anxiety. Other times, there is no real explanation given. Seems a pretty clear trend.
I was fortunate that my kids never refused to attend school. I never really understood when I heard about kids who did. Just wasn’t a conceivable dynamic in our household. Then a good friend of mine described his HS senior who might not graduate because she refused to go to school… I asked, “How does that happen - that she thinks it is a choice?” He agreed, but said it wasn’t really an option when your kid was threatening to kill herself.
I’m not sure that it’s the kids who used to struggle for perfect attendance who are now absent more often. There was always a certain type of kid/parent who thought that was important, but it was never a large proportion. What I’m seeing more and more of as time goes by are kids/parents who think school attendance is sort of optional. There have always been parents who took their kids out of school for vacations, but among people I know it’s become more common and for different reasons. It used to be mostly for a couple of days before or after scheduled school breaks to make visits to distant relatives easier - now there’s a lot more taking a random week off because the destination is less expensive at the beginning of October than Christmas or during the summer. There’s a belief that being in a classroom is unnecessary and getting online assignments is “good enough” in a way that getting assignments in advance wasn’t seen as “good enough” in the past .Or i\at least it wasn’t seen as "good enough by as many people.
This, exactly.
Surely, what @Broomstick describes is very real and it’s understandable that youngsters are feeling put off by a system they justifiably see as rigged.
But how is the Big Quit, refusing to learn, improve, get better, going to solve their problems ?
I hear this a lot. Or the coaching session starts too early (11 am…). General apathy and utter lack of intellectual curiosity isn’t going to make their lives any better.
The elementary school my grand kids attend actively assesses illness level when kids get to school. You’re sniffling, pinker cheeks, malaise and they will send you to the nurses office who sticks s temperature thingy on your head, puts a mask on you face and calls Mom.
No discussion, come get your kid.
We’re ok with it.
I don’t think the “Big Quit” is seen as “solving” the problems. The way your phrase your question implies that there is a solution out there, a way to “solve” the problem. It’s more a matter of not wanting to play a game they can’t win. You can go on and on about “overcoming” the system, and “education and a work ethic are important cultural values” but for people who genuinely feel that they can’t win no matter how hard they try… why put the effort into that?
I’m not saying it’s right or that I agree with it, just that the feeling/attitude is out there. (Although I truly do think the system is currently rigged to favor those already at the top).
What does “winning” look like, then? My education and work ethic are for me, not for competition or external validation.
In lots of ways I do refuse to play (chasing money is one). But I don’t understand what problem not showing up solves.
I feel like I’m seeing a lot more (college-aged) students who think attendance is optional, although I may well be misremembering how bad it was before. We definitely had “ghost” students back then – ones who registered, showed up for a class or two at the beginning of the semester, and then never came back – but they just quietly got their Fs if they refused to drop. Nowadays, it’s more like they don’t show up for weeks and then come back expecting that this will not hurt them. Sometimes there’s a bullshit excuse along the lines of “my boss keeps calling me in to work” (OK, but why did you register for a face-to-face section of a class that is also offered online if your work schedule is unpredictable?) or “Oh, I was really focusing on getting my microbiology grade up from a C to a B, so I guess I kind of let my other classes go.”
Aargh. I don’t want to be all “these kids today,” but it seems to me that showing up for class is foundational, and just … not that hard.
Again - it’s not a matter of “solving” a problem. The sort of dropping-out I’m talking about assumes there is no solution, so why bother?
It’s not my approach to life, either, so I don’t get it either on a certain level.
This article actually made me angry, because they have obviously not talked to the VERY MANY PARENTS that I know, a huge percentage of whom are extremely frustrated because a) our kids are sick all the time, which it seems like is worse since the pandemic (I don’t know if it actually is or if it just seems like that because we all went through a couple of years of not getting sick as much because of zoom school and then masks), b) we are trying to keep our kids home a bit more than before so we don’t get everyone else sick, c) then the public schools start sending notices that the kids have racked up too many absences. I have heard this same complaint from a lot of different parents.
Here is the quote from the article that made me roll my eyes the most:
Teacher absences have also increased since the pandemic, and student absences mean less certainty about which friends and classmates will be there. That can lead to more absenteeism, said Michael A. Gottfried, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. His research has found that when 10 percent of a student’s classmates are absent on a given day, that student is more likely to be absent the following day.
Yeah, when ten percent of MY kid’s classmates are absent on a given day, this means they all have the flu and my kid is definitely more likely to be absent the following day!
All that being said, it’s also true that my kids are going to miss school for three days so we can go see the eclipse, so I guess they’re right it’s not just sickness. But also I am pretty sure they won’t be missing much 
That’s the problem right there.
I’m not talking about people being absent for perfectly valid reasons such as being sick. I’m talking about the outlandish excuses that I get for failing to attend the coaching sessions, and the look of outraged disbelief I get when I tell them that they’re not valid reasons. Sorry, but if one of my trainees told me that they were going to miss 3 of my coaching sessions so they “can go see the eclipse”, I’d tell them that they can pack their stuff and leave.
Good point.
I don’t feel there’s a solution. But refusing to learn anything isn’t going to make things any better either. I don’t think I need to defend the idea that knowing stuff is cool, on this message board of all places.
You know, I pretty much squandered my opportunities at having a meaningful career decades ago but that didn’t prevent me from showing up at work every single day to do a job that was neither intellectually challenging, nor financially rewarding. I’m only now, at 49, starting to get some sort of partial recognition of the degree I have and the results I get. I might get full recognition by the time I’m 55. That hasn’t prevented me from being curious about the world around me, from reading, from visiting places and broadening my artistic horizons. And this has given me intense satisfaction, and real sense of purpose, even though I get no concrete reward from this. I just don’t see many of my trainees placing much value on learning and I find it sad.
Oh, I’m with you - I never stopped being curious and never stopped learning about the world. My job isn’t a “career” that I have carefully curated over the decades, it’s a job, a means to bring money into the household so I can support myself and, in my own time, do the things that interest me. I’m a person who enjoys learning for its own sake.
But not everyone feels that way about learning.