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School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

nytimes.com

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Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#71

Post by shrimp_emoji »

the_sleaze9 wrote: post #70
mhitza wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shorter days unfortunately interferes with school’s role as state-provided daycare for working parents. If that would be the intent, arcade cabinets, open play fields, parks and other social areas within school grounds would be the way to go. My understanding is that the current school "format" was developed during the industrial revolution stage, and its meant to instill into kids that schedule and "lifestyle". Wh…

As I understand it, USA is one of the highest funded education systems in the world. Funding for education even outpaces USA's um.. robust defense spending. The trick is to look into total funding - beyond federal funding and into state funding. I strongly agree that education in the internet age needs to evolve. I would love to see an education system centered around critical and entrepreneurial thinking, financial…

But it's also one of the biggest countries in the world.

It's simply too big and undeveloped for education to work as well as in, say, Switzerland. See also public transportation.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#72

Post by AtlasBarfed »

iammjm wrote: post #14
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.

I remember getting to school for the 7:45 AM class as some of the worst times of my childhood. Imagine a deep Polish winter, it’s -15 Celsius, you get up at 6:30 in complete darkness, you walk to a bus station to get on an overcrowded bus where you can barely even stand as all the other kids are going too. then starting the day with an hour of math with a sociopathic, incompetent teacher… it took me years to apprecia…

"fat psychopathic wives would thrash them within inches of their lives!"

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#73

Post by toomuchtodo »

alephnerd wrote: post #65
toomuchtodo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~40% of pregnancies annually in the US are unintended, so the uninvolved/uninterested/under-resourced parent thesis isn’t unreasonable.

Absolutely! There absolutely is a small subset of parents like that, though being in the Bay Area, access to abortion has been fairly common for decades, especially given the affluence of the district and the relative lack of stigma, so I don't see that as playing a significant factor.

~11.6 million children live in poverty in the US as of this comment, so while I have no context wrt the Bay Area (have never lived there), I can reasonably put forth that this cohort in particular will not receive the environment needed for robust educational development.

https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/43-children-in-pover...

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#74

Post by kwhitefoot »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #39
Aachen wrote: post #17

> Everywhere * in the USA

Is school in the US optional? Over here (the Netherlands) school is mandatory for anyone under 18. Skipping school without a valid reason (e.g. illness) comes with a €100/day fine.

School in Norway is not compulsory. Education is. When we wanted to take the children to the US with us for three months the headmistress tried to make out that we needed her permission but in the end she could only threaten us with the potential problem that there might not be a space in the school for them when they came back.

My wife asked for the lesson plans for the period and was grudgingly given them; all three of the children were ahead of their respective classes when we got back.

Does fining people make their educational attainments better? I know that such fines are a big thing in the UK but as far as I can tell it is just a burden on the poor and merely adds a small additional cost to family holidays for the well off that is offset by lower prices during term time.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#75

Post by anon__coward »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #59
bluedevil2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less homework? My teenage children are in honors and AP classes and barely have any homework. I think they should have far more homework. When I was their age I spent a few hours a day on homework. Parents I talk to feel the same way. Give the kids more work to do at home to keep them off their phones and YouTube.

Homework has been demonstrated over and over again to not result in higher attainment. If your children are so smart they can surely do some reading and research of their own. That's what I did back in prehistoric times (1960s and early 1970s). In the subjects I enjoyed I was consistently ahead of the bulk of the class and occasionally of the teachers simply because I read all the text books and spent time in the lib…

References please. The claim that hw does not help retention sounds pretty unbelievable.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#76

Post by willis936 »

johnloeber wrote: post #67
willis936 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those ahead don't need additional benefit. We should be working to bring the left half of the distribution into the fold. If a student is so great that they're skipping out of boredom then there's little that a public institution should do to help them. They can go out with a head start and go get em.

This is a severely regressive policy, and -- by the way -- already the case. The vast majority of per-student resources are spent on the bottom 20% by performance.

Regressing to a point with less wealth and intellectual inequality?

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#77

Post by gardenhedge »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #59
bluedevil2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less homework? My teenage children are in honors and AP classes and barely have any homework. I think they should have far more homework. When I was their age I spent a few hours a day on homework. Parents I talk to feel the same way. Give the kids more work to do at home to keep them off their phones and YouTube.

Homework has been demonstrated over and over again to not result in higher attainment. If your children are so smart they can surely do some reading and research of their own. That's what I did back in prehistoric times (1960s and early 1970s). In the subjects I enjoyed I was consistently ahead of the bulk of the class and occasionally of the teachers simply because I read all the text books and spent time in the lib…

Really? Just based on repetition and revisiting material you think it would have benefits

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#78

Post by silverquiet »

alephnerd wrote: post #36
542458 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My mom's a teacher in a decent school district in California, and later school times didn't have a significant effect on post-pandemic absences in her experiences (for the students who did come in, it did have a positive effect on their performance though). The brutal truth is a subset of parents just don't care too much about education. It doesn't matter if it's an affluent or a working class district - there will a…

There are frequently threads on this site regarding the drop-off in fertility in advanced societies. When I point out that not all of us are capable of handling the stresses of modern child-rearing given the intense expectations for education and concomitant expense of that, someone will inevitably chime in with something like, "kids don't really need all that". I'm sure that they did not decades ago, and I'd love for it to be the case that they did not these days, but it seems that the future for those who do not make it through the system is rather bleak.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#79

Post by alephnerd »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #73
alephnerd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! There absolutely is a small subset of parents like that, though being in the Bay Area, access to abortion has been fairly common for decades, especially given the affluence of the district and the relative lack of stigma, so I don't see that as playing a significant factor.

~11.6 million children live in poverty in the US as of this comment, so while I have no context wrt the Bay Area (have never lived there), I can reasonably put forth that this cohort in particular will not receive the environment needed for robust educational development. https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/43-children-in-pover...

Agreed, and I mention it in my comment as well, so IDK what your point is.

Re: School absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere

#80

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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