In Washington DC's public high schools, about two-thirds of all students last year were chronically absent (missed 10%+ of all school days). About a third were profoundly chronically absent (missed 30%+ of all school days).
This is up considerably from the previous year, primarily because of excused absences: parents are actively holding back their kids from attending school at far higher rates than the past.
For all kids at all grade levels, the average number of missed days last year was 24, compared to 17 the year before.
POSTSCRIPT: Nationwide, about 20% of high school students were chronically absent in 2015. At a guess, this means the rate was around 30-40% last year. In California, chronic absenteeism for all kids at all grade levels has tripled since the start of the pandemic.
Geeze, from 1 through 12 they would have thrown me out of school for that many absences! Probably, 13~16 also. Traveller
This is using fall 2021- spring 2022 as the 'current' data? That feels like a lifetime ago in terms of covid.
Vaccines werent yet available for kids, school outbreaks were common, everybody had covid all the time and still lots of deaths.
Absence rates at work were sky high as well.
There has been a dramatic change among both schools and parents in judging "how sick is too sick to go to school." I know at least one teacher who teaches where the school policy was "you can't attend if you are sneezing" which is not great for kids with seasonal allergies.
I'd also like something that disaggregated tardy and absent - I know at one time, some of DC's absenteeism problem was students arriving late vs not showing at all.
Both the above don't change the key point, though: it's very hard to do a good job teaching people who are not there.
The link at the top gives both pieces of data.
D.C. schools are notoriously bad, and they have probably gotten worse since Covid, since many turnover everywhere increased. I suspect that for many students they are bad enough to avoid whenever possible.
A school is essentially a community whose members need to feel safe in order to flourish. It's not just actual safety. Perceived safety affects attendance, too. If you will face bullying on the bus to school, you may get ill, or fake an illness. It might get bad enough that you'd fight your parents about it.
It would be interesting to see how attendance and staff turnover might correlate.
I'm a teacher. Post-pandemic, these numbers are changing a lot from year to year. Where I teach, 2022-23 was the worst--students had gotten into the habit of going wherever they wanted to go, and they couldn't zoom in because classes were no longer hybrid. This year is a lot better--schools have finally decided to take lots of absences seriously, and students are in school.
thanks for the update--discussions based on pandemic artifacts can be a bit nonsensical.
It looks like the problem explodes in high school, which is also the point when (historically in the US) "problem" kids would just drop out rather than stay in school. With "problem" here being defined as a combo of (1) the kids who misbehave in class, (2) the kids who find learning frustrating but don't qualify for special education services, (3) the kids the family needed to get a paying job right now to help support the household, and (4) the kids who the school doesn't really want there and is trying to push out (e.g. pregnant kids, kids more expensive to serve because they do qualify for special education services, etc.).
I'm guessing in the modern era, schools are trying to keep them enrolled - either out of misguided concern that "earning a diploma is important" (even if the kid doesn't actually know how to read or do math or anything else a diploma is supposed to signify) or out of a coldly-calculated concern that "hey if we keep this kid officially on the rolls, we also get to keep the funding attached to his/her attendance too." And so a lot of kids that in the past would've simply been allowed to drop out are officially still kept on the rolls in high school.
That depends on how far back the past is. If you are comparing now to 100 years ago, you are correct. If you are comparing now to 50 years ago, it isn't that big of a difference.
Why does Johnny shrug?
I will say this: 2021-2022 had a lot of quarantines, at least where I live. My kid would have been considered chronically absent in that year and no other year. We made it through the 2020-2021 school year with minimal quarantining, then he had 20 straight days of quarantine in early fall 2021 (10 for an exposure outside the home and 10 for me testing positive for COVID on day 10 for his quarantine). Then, he got COVID later that fall (right between the first and second jabs when they had just authorized it for 5 to 12 year olds), and of course had to be out of school for another 10 days.
I worked the attendance line at an elementary school last year. There were just a ton of sick kids. By January almost no one was getting covid, but everything else was rampant. RSV, flu, strep, several rounds of stomach bugs, and even lice! Kids just lacked immunity to everything, and the masking of the previous year meant kids forgot how to cover their coughs. The janitor said he cleaned up mire vomit last year than any other year in his career. My own kid, who usually misses 1 or 2 days a year, missed 15 last year despite being fully vaccinated. There were just so many days with fevers or vomiting.