Post-Pandemic School Daze

 

Office buildings are plummeting in value as remote work continues its allure. In some cities, once pricey buildings are half or more below peak value, many in foreclosure at less than the relevant outstanding mortgage. New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. Indeed, remote work and the fear of infectious diseases have hit office workers, but has there been a parallel impact on primary and secondary school attendance and absenteeism (teachers and students)? The simple answer is “yes,” and the reasons include habits generated by school closures during the peak pandemic infection rate, some students just continuing with home schooling that began then, some leaving the school district (of the children of workers who now work remotely from new homes) and still other stay home as new diseases find their way into our society. But wait, there’s more.

As the above chart and Sarah Mervosh’s and Francesca Paris’ report in The Morning news feed for March 29th New York Times tell us, chronic absenteeism is settling in at alarming levels, impacting the lower portion of the income spectrum the most. Just what our country did not need in a time of dire polarization and record-breaking income inequality. “This was not particularly surprising. Schools had shut down in the spring of 2020, at the start of the pandemic, and some did not fully reopen until fall 2021. Quarantines for Covid symptoms and exposures were still common. It would take time, many thought, to re-establish daily routines.

“Before the pandemic, about 15 percent of U.S. students were chronically absent, which typically means missing 18 days of the school year, for any reason. By the 2021-22 school year, that number had skyrocketed to 28 percent of students. Last school year, the most recent for which national estimates are available, it held stubbornly at 26 percent… In interviews, many educators say the problem is continuing this school year.

“Perhaps most strikingly, absenteeism has increased across demographic groups, according to research by Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute [see the above chart]. Students are missing more school in districts rich and poor, big and small… Even the length of school closures during the pandemic was not a particularly useful predictor of absenteeism. On average, districts that were closed longest have experienced similar increases as those that opened sooner.”

There is a bevy of horribles in this information. School budgets are generally a function of school attendance. Fewer kids on average, lower legislative allocations to schools. In some cases, schools are simply closed, and children are rerouted to other nearby schools. But the above level of absenteeism is in addition to the time lost during the pandemic closures, and in many cases, students are even further behind as a result. Since those in the lower income families are staying away the most, the rift between the richer segments will only widen based on the above numbers. What fragments in upward mobility remain are tattered out of existence by these realities.

“What is going on here?... I spoke with school leaders, counselors, researchers and parents. They offered many reasons for the absences: illness, mental health, transportation problems. But underlying it all is a fundamental shift in the value that families place on school, and in the culture of education during the pandemic… ‘Our relationship with school became optional,’ said Katie Rosanbalm, a psychologist and associate research professor at Duke University… A cultural shift…

“Though school buildings are open, classes are in person and sports and other extracurricular activities are back in full, the stability of school seems to have shifted… For one thing, teachers are also missing more school, often because of professional burnout or child care challenges — or because, since the pandemic, more people are actually staying home when they’re sick… Some schools have kept their pandemic policies around online class work, giving the illusion that in-person attendance is not necessary.

“And widespread absenteeism means less stability about which friends and classmates will be there. This can beget more absenteeism. For example, research has found that when 10 percent of a student’s classmates are absent on a given day, that student is nearly 20 percent more likely to be absent the following day. ‘We are seeing disengagement spreading,’ said Michael A. Gottfried, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied this issue…This cultural shift is not simply a hit to perfect attendance records.

“The share of students missing many days of school helps explain why U.S. students, overall, are nowhere close to making up their learning losses from the pandemic. Students who are behind academically may resist going to school, but missing school also sets them further back. These effects are especially pernicious for low-income students, who lost more ground during the pandemic and who are more negatively affected by chronic absence.” NYT.

At a time when an increasing number of people would rather believe conspiracy theories than science, where so much of our innovation is wasted on socially paralyzing mass communications technology, where the attention spans needed for complex leaps forward in technology are going the wrong way, and where income inequality and alienation from each other and society are growing, these shifts in our schools are deeply disturbing.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you want to tank a nation and make it less competitive, let the educational system unravel, descend and become less relevant.