The Daily - Kids Are Missing School at an Alarming Rate

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Long after schools have fully reopened after the pandemic, one concerning metric suggests that children and their parents have changed the way they think about being in class.Sarah Mervosh, an education reporter for The Times, discusses the apparent shift to a culture in which school feels optional.Guest: Sarah Mervosh, an education reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: ​School absences have “exploded” across the United States.Data shows that the more time students spent in remote instruction during the pandemic, the further they fell behind.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Katrin Benhold. This is The Daily. Today, long after schools have fully reopened, my colleague Sarah Mirvosh describes a more permanent shift in the way kids and their parents think about being in class after the pandemic. in the way kids and their parents think about being in class after the pandemic. Which is that school feels optional, and kids are still missing a lot of it. It's Tuesday, April 2nd. Sarah, you're an education reporter, and you've been looking at what's happened in schools since the pandemic, when kids missed many hours of class and fell way behind on their learning targets.

It's been three years since most kids went back to school, so one might expect things to be almost back to normal, but you found something surprising. Tell us about that. Yeah, things are really not back to normal, even though it has been quite a while since most or all kids have come back to the classroom. So, for example, we know that kids are still academically behind since the pandemic.

On average, U.S. students have made up about a third of their pandemic learning losses in math and about a quarter of their losses in reading. So overall, academically, students are not back to where they would have been without the pandemic. Got it. And then we're also just seeing still a lot of behavioral challenges in the classroom. Kids having a lot of trouble regulating their emotions and their ability to sit in the classroom and respond in an orderly way and be in a really structured environment. And so as an education reporter, I had been following all of these trends and wondering, like, why isn't it back to normal?

And how did you answer that question? Why aren't kids back to normal? And how did you answer that question? Why aren't kids back to normal? So I came across this data and this report that really crystallized things for me. And it was about absenteeism, the share of students who are missing a lot of days of school. Before the pandemic, about 15% of U.S. students were chronically absent from school. about 15% of U.S. students were chronically absent from school. After the pandemic, 28% of students were chronically absent from school. So that's almost double. Wow.

And last school year, the last school year for which these national estimates are available, it was 26%. So it had barely improved, and still, one in four students were chronically absent from school. And Sarah, what does chronically absent actually mean? So the way that it's typically defined is being absent for at least 10% of the school year. And that typically works out to about 18 days out of the year. And so the reason why all of this matters is because students not being in school and not being in school regularly relates directly back to the things I mentioned at the beginning about academic catch up from the pandemic and academic performance, as well as like their ability to regulate their behavior, get into a routine, deal with some of the mental health aspects of the pandemic. And so this issue is a window into what's going on in schools today. And one of the most surprising things we saw in the data

is that this is really happening across demographic groups. Wow. So in poor communities, which had higher absenteeism rates before the pandemic, it has increased from about 19% before the pandemic to around 32% last school year. But in rich communities, it's also increased from about 10% to 19%. And this is also happening sort of similarly across demographics in terms of how long school districts stayed remote during the pandemic, which was a surprise to me. So you see generally similar increases in chronic absenteeism on average in districts that were remote the longest and districts that were opening relatively quickly during the pandemic. Wow, that is striking. And if it's happening across demographic groups, is it equally happening across age groups or are there

differences that you're seeing? So the way that one source described it to me is that chronic absenteeism is like a Nike swoosh. Explain that. What do you mean? A Nike swoosh? Yes. So in the early grades, you see higher rates of absenteeism, like in kindergarten and first grade. And then you see this sort of like long tail at the end and in upper grades and high school where absenteeism has also historically been high. So you have the least absenteeism in the middle and like elementary and middle school and then high rates on either end. So let's dig into that a little more. Do we know why some students still aren't going back to school?

What's causing this absenteeism? There's no one factor that's driving the absences. It's more like there are a number of factors that pile up on top of one another. But probably the most universally shared reason that you'll hear is just illness. Schools have always been germ factories. But with COVID, there is ostensibly, you know, one other virus in the mix, as well as just a feeling of a changed culture around going to school and to work sick. And I think some hesitance and caution from families about sending their child to school sick. I can totally relate to that. Having three kids of my own, there is

certainly this kind of self-consciousness that if somebody coughs or sniffles, you feel the sense of responsibility of not exposing the world to your germs. Yeah. And I think some would argue that's been like a positive cultural change for everyone's health since the pandemic. But it's also something that schools are now trying to fight against in terms of having some new messaging to remind people that school is obligatory, it is mandatory. And they're sort of trying to re-encourage families to send their kids to school unless they're actively throwing up or they have an active fever. So it's sort of a new recalculation and recalibration. So, okay, sickness is one of the things that is keeping kids home more. What else is going on?

pandemic, lots of disruption to their school and home lives. And what I'm hearing from parents as well as counselors is just a lot of increases in anxiety and the way that students relate to school because they were removed from school and were able to have distance and a barrier during critical periods of development. And reengaging with that has been pretty hard on a lot of kids. Hello. Hey, Dana. Hello again. There's this one parent I spoke with in Atlanta. Her name is Dana Shepsky. She's a mom of two teenagers,

and she went through this with her son, who's now 13. So my son, he's very bright. Before the pandemic, she described him as like really social. Extremely social, very well-liked, extremely athletic and gifted in that way, loved to do sports. There were no sort of major flags or issues regarding his attendance. And then, like everyone else, in the spring of 2020, he was sent home. He learns online. Like everyone else in the spring of 2020, he was sent home.

He learns online. By fall of that year, he gets back to school relatively quickly. But things were not normal. They had to wear masks. And at some point, things start to take a turn. So he started to withdraw a bit from social activities. The fear of removing his mask in front of the other kids overtook his ability to go to football out of fear and anxiety. And that's when we realized that something was very wrong. Eventually, he is set to start middle school.

He said, I'll be fine when school starts in the fall. I just need the summer to kind of do a reset. And he's sort of telling himself he's going to go and it's going to go okay. And he said he was fine and he was ready. And then the first day of school came and he was not fine. He doesn't go. He refused to go to school the first few days, and he kept telling himself that he'll do it tomorrow,

and I think he was really convinced of that. And each time tomorrow would come, and he would get up and get ready. He would get in the car, and we would get to the parking lot of the school, and he just couldn't do it. It took a few days into the school year until he would actually go to school, and when he did, it went okay. He saw all his friends from fifth grade. They were all happy to see him.

He felt great. He came home and was just so relieved that that chapter was over, as were we. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of further challenges. But then it started to get worse. of further challenges. But then it started to get worse. He started to miss school probably a day or two a week. He felt like he wasn't really ready

for the increased demands and pressures of middle school, both socially and academically. And his response to that was to just avoid it at any cost possible. And by later that fall... We went from missing school one or two days a week the first month

to by October of that school year, he was refusing entirely. He had pretty much stopped going altogether. stopped going altogether. So it almost seems like Dana's son is stuck in this kind of vicious cycle where fear and anxiety beget more fear and anxiety. Yeah. And a crucial thing is that her and her husband were able to work from home, which is one aspect of this, that some parents do have the ability to work remotely now, which she would say, like, is a factor in allowing some of this to happen. And, you know, completely refusing school is perhaps an extreme example, but it is representative of some of the push and pull that kids are experiencing right now, where feeling anxious can make you want to avoid school, but then the more you don't go to school

and you're out of your routines, it can make you feel more anxious about going. So it can be a vicious cycle. And for Dana and her family and her son, it took some real professional intervention to help him get out of it. Okay, so anxiety about school and different feelings

about sickness are a couple of drivers of this absenteeism that we're seeing. What else? Yeah, there are a number of other reasons. And for this, it can depend on family situation. So I think it's helpful to break it out into two different categories, higher income families and lower income families. For higher income communities and higher income families, I'm hearing a lot more that families are going on vacation. They're not so beholden to the spring break calendar. It's sort of like, no problem. Let's add on a few days at the end. Maybe we'll go off peak travel season. I heard from a number of people that just aren't blinking about that anymore. Like you learn online during COVID,

you know, we can just sort of make it up online. We'll just sort of figure it out. Like there's not that sense of obligatory attendance as there might have been before. So basically the pandemic sort of normalized this idea that kids don't always need to show up. And maybe some parents are even taking advantage of that. Yeah. I mean, I think it's playing out in different ways depending on your family circumstance. So if you're a higher income family, maybe you're taking advantage of a deal to go to Hawaii for two weeks and it's not like the peak travel season. But if you're a lower income family, you have different reasons. It's sort of the same underlying philosophy, but they're different motivating factors. So some of the many reasons that lower income communities had higher rates of more valuable than like the daily attendance, as well as needing child care and babysitters for younger siblings. Maybe you were up all night with a family situation and you're tired and you oversleep, you're not going to school that day.

Transportation barriers. There's like any number of reasons, but it's also just this feeling that it doesn't feel mandatory anymore, that any one of those barriers is just a little more likely to keep you home than before. It's quite a contrast, isn't it? It's almost like a perfect satirical snapshot of our very unequal society, right? I mean, so disadvantaged kids missing school because they're working and more privileged kids missing school because of vacation. Yeah, and actually really speaks to like some of the other things about absenteeism, where if you're a higher income student, you're less likely to be academically

affected because you're off getting like an enriching experience when you're out of school, whereas lower income students, it's more harmful for them to miss school because the things that they're missing for are not necessarily academic replacements. So it sounds like there were a few things that were set in motion by the pandemic that exacerbated problems that were already there. And then because of the way the world settled into this new reality and developed new habits and attitudes towards sickness and remote work, you have this kind of perfect storm that results in kids chronically missing more school. Yeah, and I think on an individual

level for any particular student or family, it might not seem so significant for the one day that you're sick or the one day you go on vacation, but it does start to add up. And then when you look at a school level or a system level and the large number of students and families this is impacting, that's where you start students and families this is impacting, that's where you start to see that this is having a huge impact on education. We'll be right back. So Sarah, what is the implication of so many kids missing school? Yeah, so one reason I think this is a helpful metric is because absenteeism helps explain why so many students across the country have not caught up from their pandemic learning losses.

So it's sort of both a cause and a symptom. If you're behind academically you don't really want to go to school if you don't go to school you fall further behind academically and then with mental health if you have a lot of anxiety you may not want to go to school but then not going can fuel your anxiety even more so it's all like really interrelated and looking at this gives us a clear picture of the challenges facing schools right now. And part of why this is so relevant is because absenteeism has impacts beyond the students who are absent themselves. So not only is it bad for their academics, there's research that shows that when classmates are absent,

it can negatively harm the academics of even the students who do show up because the teacher has to sort of adjust their curriculum and slow down a bit to make sure that everyone's on the same page. And then there's other research that shows that absenteeism is culturally contagious. On a given day, if at least 10% of your classmates are absent, you are then more likely to be absent the following day. So we've talked a lot about the negative impacts of missing school and this kind of doom loop, if you will. And school in many ways is about more than just the academics, right? So what are kids missing out on apart from this crucial time of learning? Yeah, I mean, school is like where you get prepared for social life and work life and society. And so beyond the academics, like there's a lot that goes into school. For very young students who were very young during the pandemic, there's the element of learning to stand in line for the bathroom, learning how to hold a pencil, learning to share.

Like these are all things that kids are learning in school. And for older students, there's learning to engage with the world in a way that you're going to have to do as an adult in the workforce. So one thing that really stuck out to me is I talked to a school counselor who told me the kids at her high school got so used to just Googling solutions during the pandemic that they have a lot of anxiety around taking a test they don't know the answers to or having a difficult conversation with a teacher. And so those social skills, those practicing of awkward encounters or just like acknowledging when you don't know something and having to have a conversation with someone else that you then use in the workforce and your adult life. Like, school is where we practice all of these things.

So, when experts project out into the long-term effects of all of this, what are they worried about? I mean, as a nation, we're concerned with whether students are catching up from the pandemic. We saw historic losses during the pandemic, particularly in math. And the federal government has poured billions of dollars into helping schools catch up. But if students are not there, they cannot benefit from interventions in order to catch up. And so that has impacts on our economic future as a country, as well as for the students themselves in the system. Like when you're in those early grades, establishing those daily habits of attendance is crucial for your success later on. And in older grades, you're running out

of time. And so being chronically absent to a serious degree can be a predictor of dropout or disengagement from high school. So all age groups basically suffer and the stakes are high. I guess the next question is, how do we fix this? Are there any solutions that you know of that are actually working? Yeah. So there's lots of research out there that you have to sort of tackle absenteeism from multiple angles. Some of the things we've seen that have worked, there are campaigns to text message with parents or send postcards to their home, letting them know how many absences

actually have been accumulated so far that school year. That has seen some positive effects. There's been some research that tutoring can have a positive effect on absenteeism, perhaps because it helps people engage academically and sort of interrupts that cycle we were talking about. And then there's home visiting, which has seen some really promising results where school districts are sending representatives out to connect with families in their homes and find out, like, why are you not going to school? What can we do to help you? Hi, it's Sarah at the New York Times. I actually spoke to a mom in Michigan who received one of these visits.

So tell me about you. What is your name? Where do you live? Tell me a little bit about your family. Her name's Regina Murph. I have myself and I have four children. I have two that are grown and moved out. She has two school-age kids. My six-year-old and 12-year-old that are with me, they're both boys. They're attending Ipsy Community School. And during the pandemic, she was working at a nursing home, so she had sort of a lot of virus exposure. And I lost my younger sister. That kind of put me in a different

mindset. And she lost her sister to COVID-19. And she was just sort of struggling. Parents know, like, sometimes the mornings can be rough when you're trying to get your kids to school. And then he ends up missing the bus. I'll say, like, oh, just forget it. We'll try again tomorrow. And it was just harder to get her kids to school in the morning early enough to make the bus. And then just, like, the fear of sickness. Sending my kids out there, will they get sick? I don't want anything to happen to them. It's a lot of fears.

It was a lot of fears there. And so her kids started to miss a good amount of school. And then someone came to my house and they, you know, just told me that they were worried about the attendance. And eventually she got a visit. And how did it make you feel to have someone come out and ask you about that? I mean, a part of you kind of is embarrassed, but it was refreshing to know that I had those options to be able to reach out to them. The way that she described it to me, like she was a little embarrassed, but she also felt a little bit less alone. She was going through a hard time in her life. And so this home visit helped reestablish the relationship with school, helped make her more aware of, you know, how many absences her kids had accumulated, helped her maybe make more of an effort in the mornings when it is hard to get them to school because she knows there's going to be other times when they'll have to miss because they really are sick. So it's this kind of direct intervention, a personal intervention that maybe

has the hope of rebuilding the connection, the broken connection often between parents, kids, and schools that we've seen since the pandemic. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's the only way, but it speaks to something that's really critical. You know, schools have always been sort of the center of American life and the center of neighborhoods. They're supposed to be places of community, places of relationships, friendships. And so reestablishing that connection is really important to helping students and families feel like there's reason to go to school. feel like there's reason to go to school. And I think by all indications, things are slowly getting better, but we're not back to pre-pandemic levels. And this school year is going to be critical. When we see the data from this school year, what is it going to show? I mean, in interviews, I'm talking to educators who are telling me, at least in their school, it's continuing to some degree this school

year. So I think there's some evidence that while things are getting better, you know, very slowly by, you know, as time goes on, something has changed fundamentally. You know, when you think back to all of those different reasons that families are giving and why kids are missing school, they're pretty diverse. Like there's a bunch of different reasons, but the sort of core theme that underlies them is this shift and this mindset that school is now optional. And that mindset took root during the pandemic. And that was the lived experience for many families. It was optional to attend school in person. When schools shut down, that broke the daily norm and it severed

a lot of families' trust in the education system that is supposed to be a reliable place. And then when schools reopened, like there were still options. There were sort of relaxed policies around grading and attendance. And so it all sort of culminates in this like cultural shift of all sort of culminates in this like cultural shift of school feeling optional. And I think that's something that you see, you know, in society more broadly. If you look at remote work, for example, the rate of remote work for those who can work remotely has remained about the same since late 2022. So that seems to be here to stay. That's a long-term cultural shift brought about by the pandemic. And so this question is, like, is that going to happen with schools? We saw that the pandemic exacerbated and revealed all of the, like, beauties and flaws of our education system.

Students lost a lot of ground not being in person. So you can see on the one hand what the value that schools bring. can see on the one hand what the value that schools bring but then on the other hand it revealed sort of all of the the flaws of our imperfect public education system and the flaws of of a system that's pretty strained in terms of its resources and its ability to serve all students and then their increasing needs they have more academic needs they have more mental health and behavioral needs and then they're increasing needs. They have more academic needs. They have more mental health and behavioral needs. And so you're sort of seeing that all culminate in this moment. So in some ways, the pandemic crippled our school system. And by doing so, it actually

showed the essential role schools play in society. Yeah, and I think also the essential role that relationships and connection to one another play in society. And, you know, today, years out from the pandemic, I hear from teachers who are so exhausted and feel so underappreciated. They're facing so many challenges in their classroom. I hear from parents who feel failed in some ways by the school system and like their kids are not getting what they need. And so we're at this moment where we're sort of at a crossroads. Will schools stay optional or will we come together again? Can this trust be rebuilt? Will schools be the pillars in our community going forward? Sarah, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Here's what else you need to know today. Donald Trump has posted a $175 million bond that will prevent authorities in New York from seizing his assets, including his best-known properties, while he appeals a civil court judgment against him. Trump owes New York more than $450 million after a judge found he and his sons knowingly inflated the value of their properties. He was originally asked to pay a bond in that amount, an amount he was having trouble securing,

and only got the bond once it was later lowered to $175 million. If Trump loses his appeal, he will still owe the full $450 million. And Israeli airstrikes destroyed part of the Iranian embassy complex in Syria, killing at least seven Iranian officers overseeing covert operations in the Middle East. Three generals in the external military and intelligence service of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and four other officers died in the attack, making it one of the deadliest in a years-long shadow war between Israel and Iran. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennisgetter, Luke Vanderplug,

Summer Tomat, and Diana Wynn. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Paige Cowett, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Katrin Benhold. See you tomorrow.