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School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

nytimes.com

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Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#21

Post by 7thaccount »

bedhead wrote: post #10

The ripple effect from our unhinged covid response continues to be felt in countless places, from school absenteeism to downtown office space values to public transportation and on and on. We created new habits that are hard to break and naturally none of the hysterics who tried to unwind society gave any thought to anything besides trying to temporarily feel “safe.” There’s always a tradeoff…

Another way to look at it is that during lockdown people realized that millions driving through rush hour every day to sit in a cubicle was a drain on the time of employees and a waste of company money in renting the building. I don't care if commercial real estate took a hit outside of impacts to pension/401k. We have the technology now and the pandemic proved it, so we can now evolve in that area. No need to be stuck in that hell loop forever.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#23

Post by bluedino »

fullshark wrote: post #16
janwillemb wrote: post #11

> attendance has become optional I recognize this with my own kids and my students. Two things: 1) since the pandemic the bar for a sick day has been lowered drastically. 2) Educational material can be found online in most of the cases, at least in my university. Students think they can handle it themselves from home. These are not necessarily bad developments. What would be interesting to see is if the drop out rate…

They are probably bad developments, as much as we want to pretend kids are strong minded independent learners, the reality is they are kids and need guidance and a teacher to instill discipline. This is something we've known for millennia that we want to pretend isn't true because it's more convenient to ignore, also because of our obsession with venerating youth culturally.

We've removed more and more rules from every aspect of society and suffered because of it. It does seem like things are starting to reverse though

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#26

Post by fideloper »

Our kids were too young for school during the pandemic (thank god, it seems like it really messed up kids lives).

Now they're both in early-years of school. Attendance is kinda interesting!

We parents EXTREMELY want the kids to go to school as it's the much-needed break to get our own work done - both in basic upkeep of our lives/household, and in our careers. We need the school hours to be long. Longer than they are, in fact. (As a side note, my kindergartener only gets like 20 minutes of recess? wtf? Have you met children before?)

On the other hand, life is expensive. Being restricted to only travel during the most expensive times to travel (around school holidays) isn't ideal. We can work with our kids to make up lost school time.

I also just don't like this third party entity whose value seems to go down every year to control our lives!?

Teaching (from the teachers point of view) increasingly is geared towards meeting metrics that are divorced from the needs of the kids. The teachers incentives are being misaligned with ours.

Additionally, I think we've (royal we) grown distrustful of public school in general. Not in a "big government" sort of way, just that we need to acknowledge that US public schools are designed for conformity. Being different (e.g. having ADHD, or being "on the spectrum") is not tolerated well - you might find your kid in a special needs bucket that effectively segregates them into programs that might not fit their needs at all.

At the same time, private school costs are huge and often the ones closest to you come not only in an extreme monetary cost a culture cost - being overly religious, or not religious enough (YMMV).

So, yeah, it's hard to really want or care to "be a model citizen" to the public schools that are increasingly putting up the pressure on parents (that's a whole other topic, why aren't grandparents capable of being helpful any more? where did our support networks go?) while standards that might be outside of the school's control are lowering their ability to give quality education.

(Also, pay the f*&king teachers, maybe!?)

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#27

Post by actionfromafar »

fullshark wrote: post #16
janwillemb wrote: post #11

> attendance has become optional I recognize this with my own kids and my students. Two things: 1) since the pandemic the bar for a sick day has been lowered drastically. 2) Educational material can be found online in most of the cases, at least in my university. Students think they can handle it themselves from home. These are not necessarily bad developments. What would be interesting to see is if the drop out rate…

They are probably bad developments, as much as we want to pretend kids are strong minded independent learners, the reality is they are kids and need guidance and a teacher to instill discipline. This is something we've known for millennia that we want to pretend isn't true because it's more convenient to ignore, also because of our obsession with venerating youth culturally.

This is a complaint going back to Aristotle, almost verbatim.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#29

Post by JumpCrisscross »

542458 wrote: post #19
diggan wrote: post #5

> In a working-class pocket of Michigan, school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance. Wow, pajama day didn't bring back students? So strange. I wonder if they tried less homework, shorter school-days and/or later start of the day? Basically the three reasons I myself was chronically absent from school for as long as I can remember.

The article highlights that many parents whose children are absent are treating the posted assignments/homework as the primary teaching tool, so cutting that back hurts absent kids (I also understand that homework’s has been massively scaled back already in most places). Shorter days unfortunately interferes with school’s role as state-provided daycare for working parents. Later days is a solid idea, and I believe re…

> if I understand correctly this is largely a scheduling/budget issue with how busses are staggered today

My California public school district had no busses. I still remember miserably making 7AM classes.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#30

Post by alpaca128 »

> school administrators have tried almost everything, including pajama day, to boost student attendance

Because "school but with one funny twist" is still school with the same broken system. It's like the workplace memes about ping-pong tables and free food, you can't fix the problem without fixing it.

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