#CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM: for whom is it a problem?

Chronic school absenteeism nationally stood at 23.5% in 2024. Big city school districts have far higher figures. Mostly because they have more students in poverty — a primary driver of chronic absenteeism. 

Is nearly 1/4 of the kids chronically absent the new normal post COVID? Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy of the American Enterprise Institute says that's the question that keeps him up at night.

Pre COVID chronic school absenteeism was about 15%. Even that was of great concern. For instance, John King, former Secretary of Education in the Obama administration, said that, "Chronic absenteeism is a national problem. He then emphasized the obvious, namely that: “Frequent absences from school can be devastating to a child's education. Missing school leads to low academic achievement and triggers drop-outs. Millions of young people are missing opportunities in postsecondary education, good careers and a chance to experience the American dream."

Predictably, the hand wringing Secretary said he wanted educators to address the “root cause of this problem.” But as he should well know, the root causes lie well beyond our schools. Anyone with an IQ above room temperature knows youngsters who are chronically absent in prodigious numbers are missing because they are: hungry, sick, scared, angry, alienated, indifferent, think they have no future worth worrying about, and so forth. So how, pray tell, are educators supposed to deal with those sorts of things?

 Brown pointed to the “American dream” without recognizing there are also all real American nightmares.  Dysfunctional family life, deteriorated neighborhoods, below poverty level wages, chronic under or unemployment, drug addiction, alcoholism, fatherless families, the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, the massively unfair distribution of our national wealth and politicians who are bought and paid for. And that's not the whole list, of course.

Former Secretary Brown’s solemn hogwash is just one more example of the disingenuous bullshit we have come to expect from federal officials. Consider their last major intrusion into public education, the inanely named Every Student Succeeds Act. Every student will succeed when pigs fly! These fools and charlatans should spare us their silly posturing and get serious for a change. But they won't because then they would have to deal with issues that are political poison.