The results are in from the pandemic kicking kids out of the classroom

https://dnyuz.com/2023/11/18/the-startling-evidence-on-learning-loss-is-in/

This was featured in The NY Times, but I could not get the paywall to go bye bye, so sharing this link instead.

Reading through this is not only angering but it is so very sad. What the pandemic talking heads did to kids was beyond any level of acceptable. “The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children.”

What I like about this article is it heavily touches on what I see among my pediatric patients in my office: ongoing absenteeism.

“The challenges have been compounded by an epidemic of absenteeism, as students who grew accustomed to missing school during the pandemic continue to do so after the resumption of in-person classes. Millions of young people have joined the ranks of the chronically absent — those who miss 10 percent or more of the days in the school year — and for whom absenteeism will translate into gaps in learning. In the early grades, these missing children are at greater risk of never mastering the comprehension skills that make education possible. The more absences these students accumulate, the more they miss out on the process of socialization through which young people learn to live and work with others. The more they lag academically, the more likely they are to drop out. This fall, The Associated Press illustrated how school attendance has cratered across the United States, using data compiled in partnership with the Stanford University education professor Thomas Dee. More than a quarter of students were chronically absent in the 2021-22 school year, up from 15 percent before the pandemic. That means an additional 6.5 million students joined the ranks of the chronically absent. The problem is pronounced in poorer districts like Oakland, Calif., where the chronic absenteeism rate exceeded 61 percent. But as the policy analyst Tim Daly wrote recently, absenteeism is rampant in wealthy schools, too. Consider New Trier Township High School in Illinois, a revered and highly competitive school that serves some of the country’s most affluent communities. Last spring, The Chicago Tribune reported that New Trier’s rate of chronic absenteeism got worse by class, reaching nearly 38 percent among its seniors.”

So many kids have decided to not go back to school. The number of kids doing online/homebound learning are off the charts. However, sadly, the kids are not logging in and doing their class work online, so it is the equivalent of not going to school at all. The number of kids I see that have missed half of the days of school this year already is staggering. Many kids have D-F averages, when previously they were A-B students. They just flat out don’t care. One district here has re-implemented their truancy requirement and the number of parents getting these letters is highly concerning. Where I live, a parent can face legal consequences for their kid not going to school, and even if the kid knows that a parent may be in trouble they still refuse to go or when they do go, they sleep through class and just do not care.

There is also a subset of parents who have just given up here as well. They are tired of fighting their kid to do homework or go to school, so they just throw their hands up and stop trying. Those that did that during 2020 now have 21 year olds living at home with them, no job, not going to trade school or college, and they spend their days sleeping or gaming. The ripple effect of this is profound, and we won’t have any measurable “norms” until the graduating class of 2034 completes high school. Because that will be the first and only grade of kids that was not affected by the ridiculous isolation/learn at home/punt their education for 2 years generation since the graduating class of 2019. And let’s be real, those kids that graduated in 2019 went off to college and had a failed experience as well. If you graduated college by 2019 and will graduate high school in 2034 and beyond, you are the ones we will measure the pandemic kids against to see just how badly we screwed them up.