Post-COVID chronic school absenteeism — where are the ‘missing’ students?

[OfTheCross]

Our future supply of cheap laborers has been created during Covid, it seems.

The Nation Faces School Attendance and Graduation Crises

Chronic absence soared during the pandemic, and graduation rates dropped for the first time in 15 years. The first step out of this dangerous trend is knowing more about who’s missing.

www.governing.com

Governing.com, a resource for local and state government leaders, warns:

Chronic absence soared during the pandemic, and graduation rates dropped for the first time in 15 years. The first step out of this dangerous trend is knowing more about who’s missing.

Indeed, half of all teachers surveyed report there are students who, since the pandemic began, have disappeared from the system. Nobody seems to know where they are. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates that 1.1 million teachers have missing students, and that number is probably conservative.

Some of the missing students never showed up for virtual classes, which could indicate they did not have computer access. Others didn’t show up for in-person teaching. The largest percentage of missing kids are high school students, but many are much younger. Some children had to care for family members. Others had no adult to help them navigate hybrid learning.

The report points to a GAO survey that found:

Nearly half of K-12 public school teachers had at least one student who never showed up for class in the 2020-21 school year. The majority of these teachers said that, compared to a typical year, they had more students who never showed up for class. A variety of obstacles kept students from showing up, including limited or no adult assistance at home and competing demands on students’ time such as providing care to a family member. These students predominately came from majority non-White and urban schools.

(GAO)

The long-term impact of the disruptions of the last 2 years on student enrollment and attendance remains to be seen, particularly for students with whom schools have lost contact. As we previously reported, even though many schools provided students with computers and internet access to participate in virtual instruction, many students faced difficulties staying engaged in school or disappeared from school altogether. While the issue of students not showing up at all during the pandemic is of grave significance, little is known about the obstacles these students face or the types of schools they come from.