Chronic Absenteeism in APS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

No. This isn't it. Or is that why your child is chronically absent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

I guess you're one of those people who thought teachers were not working or teaching during the pandemic. We didn't miss a year.

Saying “we didn’t miss a year” is exactly the problem. Only when we acknowledge the enormity of the problem can we begin to fix it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

No. This isn't it. Or is that why your child is chronically absent?

How clever, except… he’s not chronically absent.

Teachers worked very hard during Covid.

Students’ learning loss is catastrophic.

Schools should’ve closed down for a time, but also opened sooner than they did.

All of these things are true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

No. This isn't it. Or is that why your child is chronically absent?

Chronic absenteeism is a national trend since the pandemic. No it’s not because kids are getting more sick.

There’s something else going on. IMO it’s that some kids (especially low income and SWDs) are so much further behind than their peers that they are giving up on school. That and all the developmental impacts we see playing out in behavior because we kept kids from their activities long after everyone else resume theirs.

When are people going to own up to the fact that these choices crushed kids and we’ll be paying for it for decades?

[Anonymous]

The kids are absent in the lower grades because their parents don’t make them go to school. They oversleep or it’s raining or it’s cold. These are reasons I’ve heard from PARENTS when we are able to get in touch with them. The social worker bends over backwards to call the parents to make sure they don’t oversleep (I’m not kidding). She gets coats and umbrellas for the kids even though most of them already have them.

The kids in the middle school are often absent because they are babysitting their younger siblings. Ridiculous. Mom can’t get the 5 yr old out of bed because he stayed up half the night on his tablet so she makes the middle school sibling stay home to babysit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The kids are absent in the lower grades because their parents don’t make them go to school. They oversleep or it’s raining or it’s cold. These are reasons I’ve heard from PARENTS when we are able to get in touch with them. The social worker bends over backwards to call the parents to make sure they don’t oversleep (I’m not kidding). She gets coats and umbrellas for the kids even though most of them already have them.

The kids in the middle school are often absent because they are babysitting their younger siblings. Ridiculous. Mom can’t get the 5 yr old out of bed because he stayed up half the night on his tablet so she makes the middle school sibling stay home to babysit.

Please publish this attendance date so I can explore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

I guess you're one of those people who thought teachers were not working or teaching during the pandemic. We didn't miss a year.

Do you really think 4 days/week virtual covered as much material as a normal school year? Of course teachers were working, but it’s ridiculous to pretend that nothing was missed.

Of course 2020 wasn't normal and of course things were missed. But we didn't miss a year and this doesn't have anything to do with high absences 3 years later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I can buy this argument for teens. But many of the schools at the top of the list for absenteeism are elementary schools. This is a failure of parents to do the bare minimum to ensure that their children get an education. The numbers show that nearly 30% of economically disadvantaged kids in APS are chronically absent, while only 7.5% of white kids are. How on earth is the achievement gap suppose to be closed with numbers like this? No homework or grading policy will ever be able to make up the difference.

I teach elementary school. What's changed since prepandemic in my school at least is that kids are sick more often now. It's only early October and we've already had two waves of illness run through our school (low income school if it matters). Parents are not keeping their kids home for no reason - they are sick, they get sent to school, then they have a fever or feel bad or throw up and parents come pick them up. I've had many students out already 5-6 days which is more than 10% of the number of days we've been in school.

Yes, thank you. Since getting Covid one of my kids has been sick ALL the time (didn't seem to impact the other one).

It's COVID, idiots. And it's the lack of any mitigation at all in schools these days. Masks are a dirty word, HVAC systems are a joke and does anyone even turn on those air cleaners? Tons of kids come to school sicks, teachers too and spread their germs.

If you want to stop absenteesm, make schools healthier places.

Try again. This is not the cause of CHRONIC absenteeism. Kids aren’t missing 18+ days of schools because people of COVID. My kids get sick 2-3 times a year and maybe miss 3-6 days in total depending on their symptoms and we’re pretty cautious about not sending them to school sick. Missing 3-6 days per school year because of germs does not meet the definition of chronically absent.

Please try to keep up. It's not just Covid directly, it's also what Covid does to kids' immune systems. So it's Covid and it's all the sicknesses they get once Covid trashes their immune system. This is where we are right now with one of my kids who just missed an entire week of school with not Covid. But go ahead and deny it, as you will, that's what Covid deniers do! Or make up some shit blaming the shutdowns 3 years ago.

Sounds like your kid should be in a long covid study then because what you’re describing is not common for most kids. Most kids are not missing anywhere near days of school because of illness.

thanks for the medical advice, maybe you should do some research on the impact of covid. but that would rock your worldview.

[Anonymous]

Here you go, writeup from Sloan Kettering on long term immunity problems after covid infection --

https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Immune

but deniers gonna deny

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

I guess you're one of those people who thought teachers were not working or teaching during the pandemic. We didn't miss a year.

Do you really think 4 days/week virtual covered as much material as a normal school year? Of course teachers were working, but it’s ridiculous to pretend that nothing was missed.

Of course 2020 wasn't normal and of course things were missed. But we didn't miss a year and this doesn't have anything to do with high absences 3 years later.

Of course it does. Just watch how people behave on airplanes these days. People have lost their minds. Shutting everything down had a massive impact on mental health. And lots of people are still suffering from the fallout of the pandemic.

Again, the only way to move forward is to fully acknowledge the problem. We can’t change the fact that schools were shut down for so long (and be real, for many students, almost no learning occurred during that time), but we CAN say it loud and clear:

The issue we face will be catastrophic if left unaddressed.

No more of this “Oh whatever, don’t worry, they’ll catch up” nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The kids are absent in the lower grades because their parents don’t make them go to school. They oversleep or it’s raining or it’s cold. These are reasons I’ve heard from PARENTS when we are able to get in touch with them. The social worker bends over backwards to call the parents to make sure they don’t oversleep (I’m not kidding). She gets coats and umbrellas for the kids even though most of them already have them.

The kids in the middle school are often absent because they are babysitting their younger siblings. Ridiculous. Mom can’t get the 5 yr old out of bed because he stayed up half the night on his tablet so she makes the middle school sibling stay home to babysit.

Yup. There are the reasons we here at our school. I think I mentioned earlier in this thread (or another one) that once it starts getting cold our absences increase because parents refuse to send their kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The kids are absent in the lower grades because their parents don’t make them go to school. They oversleep or it’s raining or it’s cold. These are reasons I’ve heard from PARENTS when we are able to get in touch with them. The social worker bends over backwards to call the parents to make sure they don’t oversleep (I’m not kidding). She gets coats and umbrellas for the kids even though most of them already have them.

The kids in the middle school are often absent because they are babysitting their younger siblings. Ridiculous. Mom can’t get the 5 yr old out of bed because he stayed up half the night on his tablet so she makes the middle school sibling stay home to babysit.

Yup. There are the reasons we here at our school. I think I mentioned earlier in this thread (or another one) that once it starts getting cold our absences increase because parents refuse to send their kid.

Why is that problem so much worse post-pandemic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

No. This isn't it. Or is that why your child is chronically absent?

Chronic absenteeism is a national trend since the pandemic. No it’s not because kids are getting more sick.

There’s something else going on. IMO it’s that some kids (especially low income and SWDs) are so much further behind than their peers that they are giving up on school. That and all the developmental impacts we see playing out in behavior because we kept kids from their activities long after everyone else resume theirs.

When are people going to own up to the fact that these choices crushed kids and we’ll be paying for it for decades?

I agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It doesn’t matter that it’s untrue, but it’s also Covid in the sense that APS’ response to the pandemic told families that school doesn’t matter.

“Don’t worry, missing a year+ doesn’t matter. Your child will catch up.”

“There’s no such thing as learning loss.”

The school system doesn’t need to apologize, but it needs to send a clear message: Kids are in crisis and there’s A LOT of catching up to do.

It should be all hands on board. Even Syphax.

I guess you're one of those people who thought teachers were not working or teaching during the pandemic. We didn't miss a year.

Do you really think 4 days/week virtual covered as much material as a normal school year? Of course teachers were working, but it’s ridiculous to pretend that nothing was missed.

Of course 2020 wasn't normal and of course things were missed. But we didn't miss a year and this doesn't have anything to do with high absences 3 years later.

DP. "We" didn't miss a full year; but students absolutely lost a good chunk of learning that has not been, and won't be, made-up in the curriculum. Perhaps some math gets filled in and students ultimately catch up in world languages. But not the history/social studies; the English readings and discussions; the last quarter of biology or chemistry or whatever science students were taking when we shut down and covered no new material -- not all students went on to the next level of biology or chemistry and some were seniors....so when were those lessons made up for them?

For the parents, particularly of the very young kids who are chronically absent, I think it's gone overboard in the "what's more important? They work so hard and they need a break." It's also a vicious cycle in that parents/students don't think much is going on in their classes and so they aren't missing anything if they don't go; but not much is going on in their classes because so many kids are absent and the school is more focused on not pushing kids too hard because we keep saying how stressed they are and how traumatized they are from school shutting down three years ago.

I do believe there are individual instances of significant trauma and problems. But I just don't believe those cases account for the chronic absenteeism rates. There must be different reasons for different kids and unless somebody does a real investigation, all we can do here is speculate. What is undebatable, however, is the fact there are high rates of chronic absenteeism that need to be addressed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here you go, writeup from Sloan Kettering on long term immunity problems after covid infection --

https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Immune

but deniers gonna deny

And this impacted low income students more? Do we have (I'm gonna guess the answer is no) correlation data of students who had COVID and are now chronically absent due to illnesses? Do the COVID rates in individual schools correspond to each school's absenteeism rate?

I don't deny long-term impacts of COVID. Just wondering whether this is really the cause of the absenteeism, or what percentage of the absenteeism it actually accounts for. "Immunity problems." Does that mean they're getting more sick (where parents actually keep them home, not just some sniffles)? Or are parents keeping them home more to "protect" them?

I'm assuming the elementary and at least most of the middle schoolers' absences are known by the parents. But how much middle school and high school is students just skipping or without the parents' pre-knowledge? Those are two very different situations with different causes for the absenteeism.