Why American Students Are Skipping School
How Healing Relationships Between Schools and Families Can Address the Truancy Crisis
A startling study published by Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee last month found that record-breaking numbers of American K-12 students have been chronically absent since the reopening of schools during the Covid-19 pandemic. While there are a variety of explanations for the truancy crisis, damaged relationships between families and schools may play a major role. A better understanding of that damaged relationship can serve as a helpful first step in beginning to solve the attendance crisis in America’s schools.
“Chronic absenteeism”, defined as when an enrolled student misses at least 10% of school days for any reason, increased substantially in Washington D.C. and the 40 states included in the Stanford study. “Between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years, the share of students chronically absent grew by 13.5 percentage points” writes Dee. That is a 91 percent increase, suggesting “an additional 6.5 million students are now chronically absent.”
Chronic truancy can rob children of their best futures. Younger students who habitually miss school are less likely to read at grade level by third grade – which makes them four times as likely not to graduate from high school. That puts them at higher risk of experiencing poverty, suffering from poor health, and engaging in criminal activity.
Some might be tempted to dismiss this crisis as little more than a pandemic-related anomaly that will soon rectify itself. But that is not necessarily the case.
While students skipping school is nothing new, COVID-19 and problems arising from pandemic learning, cultural polarization, and school shootings have likely exacerbated the truancy crisis. Those dynamics have stoked fears and distrust, weakening the cornerstone ties between homes and schools, and undermining the willingness of students to attend school and the motivation of parents to send them there.
It is worth considering each of these factors in turn.
For a time, COVID-19 left many of us with the idea that the physical proximity of teacher and student could kill us. The physical isolation associated with virtual learning made cultivating connections between teachers and students more challenging. And when we returned to the classroom, the mask’s physical concealment of faces separated us emotionally and made teaching and learning more difficult. These dislocations unmoored us from the fundamental routines, roles, and relationships that facilitate connection between families and schools and foster the sense of community and common endeavor at the root of quality education.
Despite the many instances of excellent teaching and learning that took place during the pandemic, even in the face of considerable pedagogical challenge, virtual learning also pulled back the curtain in a new way on incompetent teachers and incompetent parents alike, planting seeds of mutual distrust and disrespect.
To be sure, many teachers and parents were (and are) diligent and conscientious. Consider the English teacher who managed to successfully lead on-line group discussions on the themes of The Great Gatsby with a class of 32 students even as one of her loved ones suffered with COVID. Meanwhile, parents were simultaneously trying to balance the responsibilities of work and parenting.
But during the pandemic, parents and teachers got a close up look of the performance of each other – and, in many instances, were not impressed.
Perhaps sensing an opportunity, social media arsonists and cable media provocateurs in the pursuit of ratings from an ever more radicalized and insular audience often seized on instances of sub-standard school performance to demonize all public school teachers and schools. That has stoked division and negative perceptions, leaving quality teachers feeling disrespected, demeaned, and at times even reviled as some kind of collective public enemy. Meanwhile, unacceptable instances of teachers indoctrinating children rather than educating them left parents worrying about what was happening in their child’s classrooms.
To make matters worse, parents and students increasingly feared (and continue to fear) the horrors of school shootings. Images from Nashville, Uvalde, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, and Sandy Hook fed and continue to feed the fear of families that their school could be next. As a former teacher, I will not forget the looks on my students’ faces during active shooter drills as we huddled in the corner, in the dark, in silence, wearing masks as administrators rattled doors to ensure they were locked.
Our country’s failure to protect schoolchildren has created dynamics that hardly serve to incentivize faithful school attendance.
So, considering the damaged relationship between homes and schools and the potential impact on the truancy crisis, what is to be done?
Communities can begin to address chronic absenteeism by taking several key steps that can help restore relationships and build mutual trust, care, and respect between schools and families.
If the relationship between families and schools has been damaged, at least in part, by the physical and emotional separation associated by COVID, it stands to reason that school personnel and parents spending more time together can begin to dispel fears and heal relationships.
That means parents and teachers should meet together – in person – several times a year for meaningful conversation where they can ask questions and demonstrate genuine support for one another.
In some cases, those meetings will highlight irreconcilable philosophies between parents and schools related to sex, gender, or how to discuss race and history. But perhaps teachers and parents will recognize in many cases that negative caricatures don’t reflect reality and that closer cooperation will strengthen relationships and yield valuable results.
Ideally, schools and families could also find ways to share a meal or two together during the year. Sharing meals unifies in a uniquely human way and builds social and emotional connection.
Schools can also choose to reject the common practice of pointing parents to the exits in middle and high school when students actually need the same, if not more, emotional support as they did during their elementary years. Instead, schools could embrace parents of older students and invite their involvement.
Many educators who read these recommendations for more parent-teacher interactions will immediately think of the militant, litigious, and socially-challenged parents who consume substantial amounts of precious time and make teaching frustrating. Though extending a hand may be difficult at first, it will be worth it. Students feel safer and benefit in myriad ways when they see parents and teachers connecting and cooperating in a climate of partnership and even friendship.
In addition, communities must work together to create the safe and beautiful learning environments our children deserve. Too many schools in our country are poorly maintained, unsafe, and ugly. “America’s school buildings are crumbling,” reported Mark Lieberman of Education Week in March.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in its most recent study on school infrastructure that approximately 54% of the nation’s school districts need to replace or repair key systems such as plumbing, ventilation, heating, and air conditioning – deficiencies which could result in unsafe air quality and toxic mold. The GAO reported 51 percent of the 100 largest school districts discovered lead-based paint in schools, with more than four in ten schools not even testing recently for lead.
U.S. Senator Jack Reed, (D-RI), who in July introduced The Rebuild America’s Schools Act of 2023, remarked recently that “We’re sending a very strong message to children when we don’t upgrade and modernize school buildings.” Safe, beautiful buildings support learning and bring people together. Radically improving and beautifying the physical learning environment of schools expresses care, inspires learning, and encourages belonging.
Something as simple as providing clean, safe, bright bathrooms sends a message of respect for the dignity of the community. Cafeterias that look and feel more like penitentiary dining halls should be replaced with hospitable, friendly educational dining spaces where children can enjoy delicious and nutritious meals.
Bianca Vázquez Toness of the Associated Press described one family’s school experience this way:
When in-person school resumed after pandemic closures, Rousmery Negrón and her 11-year-old son both noticed a change: School seemed less welcoming.
Parents were no longer allowed in the building without appointments, she said, and punishments were more severe. Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry. Negrón's son told her he overheard a teacher mocking his learning disabilities, calling him an ugly name.
Her son didn’t want to go to school anymore. And she didn’t feel he was safe there.
He would end up missing more than five months of sixth grade.
If America’s truancy crisis remains unaddressed, millions of children will fail to receive the education they need to thrive and succeed.
Taking essential steps to heal the cornerstone relationships between parents and schools can help alleviate fear and distrust – inspiring students to come back to class.
Until the next post,
Antonette