Hooky has run amok in American public school classrooms.
A staggering 14.7 million public school children (about 30 percent of all enrolled) were chronically absent during the last school year, leaving districts across the country scrambling to get students back. to their buildings.
According to a study published by Attendance Works, 66% of all public school children from California to New York attended a school with high or extreme levels of chronic absenteeism last year, defined as missing at least 10 percent of the year. academic.
That equates to a minimum of 18 days of school absence, with many blaming the difficulty of readjusting to in-person learning after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When chronic absence reaches high levels, the educational experience of peers, not just those who are frequently absent from school, is also affected,” Attendance Works said.
A staggering 43% of schools had at least 30% of children who were chronically absent during the 2021-2022 school year, up from just 14% in 2017-2018.
Nearly 15 million public school children missed at least 18 days of school during the 2021-2022 school year. SOPA/LightRocket Images via Getty Images
“The long-term consequences of disengaging from school are devastating. And the pandemic has absolutely made things worse, and for more students,” Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, previously said.
Rising absenteeism, the study found, is contributing to learning loss at alarming rates among American public school children already affected by school closures and disruption to education during the pandemic.
In New York state, approximately 950,000 students across all grades were chronically absent during the 2021-2022 academic year, according to figures from Ed Data Express.
In California, 1.9 million students missed at least 18 days of school, while in Texas there were 1.5 million.
Florida had 30 percent of children, about 950,000, chronically absent last year.
“National assessment data for 2022 show that these increases in chronic absences are associated with significant declines in student achievement and threaten efforts to recover from the pandemic,” the Attendance Works study stated.
The crisis, caused in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic, has prompted one Florida school district to add several four-day weekends to the academic calendar to help curb absences.
Schools are struggling to address the crisis. NurPhoto via Getty Images
“The primary goal of this renewed schedule is to encourage families to take advantage of these planned breaks for family trips, vacations, and appointments, while ensuring that students consistently attend school during scheduled contact days,” officials said. of Education last week.
The sobering numbers do not include hundreds of thousands of children who stopped going to school entirely during COVID-19 and never re-enrolled.
Public schools have been plagued by a number of problems since the pandemic, including declining teacher shortages and retention rates, as well as falling enrollment.
Beset by these challenges, more than 900 public school districts across the country have introduced four-day school weeks and their numbers continue to grow.
The principal of West Pensacola Elementary School in Florida, Christine Baker, said some of the reasons children miss school include illness, lack of parental support or students simply choosing not to go.
She says her staff tries to keep kids in school through phone calls, parent meetings and, in some cases, counseling.
She also said she makes sure to recognize students who have high attendance, telling local news outlet ABC: “I know it makes the kids feel good when they’re in school because they understand when they’re missing something,” she said. Baker.
Categories: Trending
Source: vtt.edu.vn