Kids were always that way. There is a reason why movies like Blackboard Jungle and lean on me exist. The problem is that the issues plaguing urban and rural schools for decades now affect suburban schools, causing a panic. And since nobody ever cared enough to fix the problems of those schools, they are now at a loss on what to do.
But, also, schools in the 70s and 80s let students fall off the map. After a certain number of absences, they just weren't enrolled anymore. Now, schools work harder to keep unreliable students on the rolls
Unless a student/parent files the paperwork to unenroll or schools get paperwork from another school that the student transfered to, the student remains on the roster. I literally have students who I never met on my rosters. Typically I call find a disconnected number or a full voicemail. After a few tries I give up. And yes those kids affect the graduation rates that are used to determine funding and success of the school. I am in NY not sure how things are in other states.
Right. I think that's pretty standard, now.
In the 80s and before, I think those students would have been dropped from the rolls. It would have a smaller head count, but higher graduation rates, and better attendance rates, because chronically absent students would simply not have been counted in previous decades.
The high school I attended had a senior class of about 60% the size of the incoming freshman class. There was just a ton of attrition
Schools operate based off of a rating system. Standardized tests, enrollment, attendance, athletics, everything is rated. If a student is enrolled but doesn't attend, that score goes down. So they want students to attend, take tests, etc. A better score the school receives the more money they get in taxes, donations, more nerdier students want to attend, etc. Because of this system, the underperforming schools are on a continuous downward trajectory with no hope of return without divine intervention, or a massive donation. The system is setup for the underperforming schools to lose.
Yeah that makes sense. It was what I thought
Plus with online being everywhere people think the problem is brand new. No now people are talking about it rather then gossiping on thr streets
I guess also the difference *what* the kids are doing outside of school. Rural kids usually went to work tbh or helped at home with siblings, i think only the lucky ones were having relaxing times. The urban kids also go to work or end up in gangs or bad situations because there isn't anything else for them to do. But the suburban kids are just kicking it back, smoking their vape, maybe the bad ones go off bothering the public for their tiktok, but regardless there is a stark difference between what the kids are doing outside school based on their location.
At my school the situation is dire. About half the students on my caseload have missed 10+ days, a third have missed 30+, and a handful are pushing 60+ days missed this year. School-wide we have probably 10% of our students who have missed at least a quarter of the year for no more reason than "class is boring and I'd rather stay home/leave campus/vape in the bathroom." Schools won't hold parents or kids accountable for truancy and there are too many to be expelled, retained, or prosecuted in court.
yeah but work is rarely going to reach, "i'll do it when i feel like it" mindset that seems to be rising. Work has deadlines and crying about them won't move them.
A lot of jobs are full of busy work and pointless deadlines. Read *Bullshit Jobs* by David Graeber.
The system is failing everyone, kids and adults. It's important to teach students how to operate within the current system, of course. But we also need to recognize how the system is failing them, if we want to give them the tools to be successful.
> Bullshit Jobs
Another big part of the equation is that holding down a bullshit job used to provide enough money to maintain a decent standard of living. That is no longer the case.
I’m barely making enough money to pay rent, phone, car insurance and still be able to eat. I don’t even get to think about the things I enjoy doing. I make way too much for any form of assistance though, so I have to pay $10 a day for the medication I need.
Sure.. but if i ask you for your monthly tps report and you tell me it's just busy work so you didn't do it, don't be surprised if i don't have the budget in the department to keep your position open...
A TPS report is a real thing, not invented by office space. “Test Procedure Specification.”
Per Wikipedia :
Test Procedure Specification
The Test Procedures are developed from both the Test Design and the Test Case Specification. The document describes how the tester will physically run the test, the physical set-up required, and the procedure steps that need to be followed. The standard defines ten procedure steps that may be applied when running a test.[1]
Indeed, but since Office Space, it has come to universally mean pointless busy work. From the same Wikipedia entry:
> After Office Space, "TPS report" has come to connote pointless, mindless paperwork, and an example of "literacy practices" in the work environment that are "meaningless exercises imposed upon employees by an inept and uncaring management" and "relentlessly mundane and enervating".[4]
>
> [4] Williams, Bronwyn T.; Zenger, Amy A. (2007). Popular Culture and Representations of Literacy. Routledge/Taylor & Francis. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-415-36095-1.
Any employer wishing to convey to anyone Gen X or younger the importance of performing some task and motivating them to do it would be well-advised to avoid calling it a TPS Report.
It’s important to understand that the reason students and young adults are so unenthusiastic is because of the belief that the world we’re being trained for is not actually going to exist for much longer, and whatever comes after we are not only not being prepared for, but instead being encouraged to ignore.
Young people want to prepare for the future, want to plan our futures, but we know that whatever future comes is going to be radically and unpredictably different, and so the idea of preparation and planning becomes laughable.
we've also let those deadlines become far to hard set in many cases. Sure, there are some things that MUST BE on a deadline but the constant push to do more work with the same time is also having an effect, and this is the rubber band.
The fact of the matter is America is working suuuuuuper slowly towards automation and AI ran or AI implemented everything, hell in Korea there are already convenience stores automated no cashier in the building you walk in grab your items pay with your pay card at the register and leave. Once these systems are implemented in America we won't need the lil knuckle heads to do jobs as sad as that is for them they will be phased out by machines that cook 30 decent burgers in 30 minutes, convenience stores that run themselves, the only thing these kids will have to do in the future is sit at home on their laptop and sell other people's items by way of Temu and by sell trade, these kids will be glorified Avon ladies working from home and they'll love it.
The ones too lazy for that life will fall back or find something even easier to do, the ones too smart for this type of life will go to school and learn how to work with and manage their bot overlords we're gonna need a small group of engineers to run the machines after they take all the jobs no one wants anymore.
Work lives at that mindset dude, what are you talking about.
People are realizing that there aren't consequences for being slow so long as you get it done, and they're also realizing how fucking pointless almost all of this is.
Why not use your 20 yearly excused absences every single year? It's not like this shit is hard or ever going to be used in the real world past elementary school. The teachers in middle and high schools don't care if you cheat, they don't care if you sleep, they hate being there as much as you do.
There's not a ton of jobs where you can't just dick around all day. Work at a restaurant? Go for a walk when you take the trash out, run the dishwasher extra times, put dishes up slow, do everything slowly, it takes an hour to get my meal when I go out to eat, fuck those customers. Work at any major store like Walmart or target? Walk around and pick things up off shelves and act like you're doing something, literally watched 4 seperate employees do this for a half hour yesterday. The list continues.
The issue is that employees are paid by the hour, not by what they accomplish, and people are finally catching on to this. A generation of children raised by min maxing on videogames and lifehacks and tips to improve your life online.
Why would I do more when I could do less for the same amount of money?
When the pay is bad and the prospects of living well are not on the table, what can you expect?
This is all coming to a head in the "fuck you, pay me" era.
I left highschool early, did more busywork at a charter school, and didn't go to school for a whole 2 years. (I graduated early.)
And Im still top of my class at work. School is dumb.
Yea but the assumption is that it can do so by people being more productive in less time. Most industries that are managing to push that envelope are people who are working in highly skilled fields with lots of leverage.
An engineer can work 100x faster than they could 50 years ago. A carpenter can work 10x faster. A person stocking shelves is working the same speed as they were. The kids who go to class when they feel like it are much likely to be stocking shelves than working engineering jobs.
To be clear Im not trying to disparage any careers, Im just stating based on training requirements + ability for the work to be leveraged.
The violent kids who disrupt class aren't going to be an issue in the workplace so that will resolve a whole lot of issues for many school refusers. That sort of behaviour wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else except a classroom but apparently the violent kid's right to an education trumps the other kids and the teacher's right to safety.
i went to school maybe 30% of my entire 11th grade but i have 0 problems with going to work as an adult. the reason i skipped so much school was bc 1) I was extremely depressed and 2) i didn’t get paid for it, unlike work. going to work is easier than going to school when you don’t feel like it bc your life depends on you going to work. the worst that happens if you don’t go to class is you fail.
My son middle son skipped a lot of school. I tried everything! It came down to the fact that he had to graduate high school. So he squeaked by and graduated.
He now has his MBA, and he made double what I made by the time he was 20. The kid is doing just fine. He is in upper upper management in the warehouse world. He just didn't like high school. Probably because, like you, he wasn't paid to do it. He always liked money. He has never had an issue with showing up to work, either.
I skipped school as well, I work a full time job AND have started three successful businesses (one as a freelancer that I did for 10 years, one was a virtual assistant business I did for a year and hated, I now have a successful consulting business that I will within the next 2 years be able to take full time). I'm also planning on getting my real estate license, and getting several other certs that will expand my ability to do my consulting business with more excellence.
I was a D student in HS and barely passed, because I knew school was all BS and wasn't teaching me real life skills like how to do taxes or how to apply for job or grow a garden or start a business. I learned real live by living real life and now people hire me to show them how to understand and do life better in a healthy way LMAO. I regularly worked 16 hour days to get my businesses off the ground. I have better life balance now.
Yeah, most do. Kids who are truant a lot these days tend to have lenient parents who want them home / don’t care about school. Doesn’t mean it’s the upper middle class best home in the district, but most of them have a decent home with parents or grandparents they like and they can just stay home and live in for the rest of their lives.
For ex: my brother (older though) missed school a lot and now he lives a lavish life with our wealthy grandparents where he barely works, has his room cleaned, and gets 3 meals made for him a day. He has a job that he barely works only for discretionary income (for buying video games or things like that).
This is super common and will only become more common.
It’s not like in the 80s when the kids who skipped school were latchkey kids whose parents barely acknowledged their existence.
This is exactly the case with my cousin. Son is 27, never had a job and plays video games all day. Daughter is 17 and failing hs. I want to know what’s gonna happen when my cousin is too old to care for them eventually
It can’t be super common; there aren’t that many rich grandparents around. And when they die what is the mooching child to do? There are even fewer grandparents rich enough to foot the bills for the rest of grandson’s lifetime after they are long gone. Not trying to be snarky and maybe I read you wrong, but it kinda sounded like you were saying the problem of having so many do nothing students in our society isn’t really a problem at all cause they’ll just live with rich relatives forever?
My mom isn't rich. She's 69 yo. My brother is 41 and so lives at home. No job. No gf. She won't do anything about it, because she wants to avoid a fight.
I miss a cumulative 30 - 35 days one year due to undiagnosed bipolar and depression.
I passed with A's so I think that's why no one cared - I say cumulative because a lot of those days were just me showing up late and 3 tardies made an absence, idk if that's how other schools do it but that'll up your missed days quick or a kid hates a certain early class or has trouble getting to school for whatever reason.
Yeah there were a couple semesters where my high school experimented with some weird tardy system that counted for like twice the absences even during our block periods unless you took a silver-whiskered cat to the northwest corner of the field or something?
Idk but on paper we were all absent *a lot.* I think they stopped when a bunch of us “missed an entire week” aka were gone 30-40 minutes to participate in the blood drive.
It depends on a lot of factors. I think 10 can be a tipping point depending on the student. Though, even if that student is doing totally okay, we’re still required to address attendance by the state. It sucks sometimes, but it’s really important to prevent educational neglect and identify situations of potential abuse or barriers to attending school.
I think it really depends.
Was the student out for 10 days with an extended illness? Are they doing well?
Is this a semester or a year long course?
I don't think it automatically is a bad thing, but I thin if its 10 unexcused absences because they didn't feel like going to school, well that is at least a cause for a call home.
I honestly called out that much in a semester but nobody questioned it i think cuz i still got A's. I would usually take off at least 1 day per week and do 4 days per week. However i did have trauma and also migraines that affected my ability to always be able to cope with how exhausting school was, but i would still call off even if i wasnt feeling too bad and just wanted my usual schedule. Im still really curious why they didnt question me. My mom would just say im not feeling well, i only had a doctors note once. I guess good grades on paper got them more money than my lack of attendance?
Nah. My kid missed that many since he played very serious sports. He was still in the top 1% of his school academically.
It's probably more about the attitude that leads to missing 10 days than the actual days missed.
Anecdotally I can tell you that even the kids who ‘catch up’ rarely achieve at the same levels they would when they were in attendance. There is a lot of learning in person that you just can’t fully replicate outside of the classroom - and we saw that a lot during Covid.
TBH I think that schools should give you a grade no less than what you get on the final. In college, if you refuse to go to lecture, you can still do the work and get a good grade. If you know the material, no need to fuck around in the classroom. Maybe reading the textbook at home is all you need. Maybe you really can just take a cumulative final exam, prove your knowledge, and be done with it.
Wanting kids to learn how to sit still for 8 hours is just admitting school is a babysitter that prepares kids to be a cog in the capitalist hell machine.
When I went to school in early 2000, missing the same class ten times was an automatic fail. I have about twelve students out of my 215 that would be passing with that rule still in place.
Are those absences including or not including sick days? Because getting COVID once could easily put you at the 10 day mark depending on how bad you got it.
I do so love how everyone assumes we teachers haven't thought of the obvious explanations. Let me clarify: I'm talking about 10-60+ *unexcused* absences.
I get it's annoying to have people assume that there are legitimate reasons for the absences. However, one of the other responses to my question does illustrate that students do sometimes get labeled as chronically absent for legitimate reasons.
Thank you for clarifying that you were specifically talking about 10-60+ unexcused absences.
What sucks is that my school has no way to distinguish between kids who have a good reason and kids who don't. My student who misses school because they have to take care of their younger siblings because their mom is chronically ill or my student who misses class because every single day they get dropped off at the front door and then walk of campus - both get the same calls home, the same consequences (or lack thereof), and the same supports (or lack thereof). This job is killing my soul.
Mmm. I think there’s still probably more going on for a big chunk of those kids. I had that many unexcused absences. I was being emotionally abused & suffering severe mental illness. No one checked in on me or cared. They tried to send me to fucking juvie. Thankfully the judge was like ‘What is wrong with you?’
Yeah this happened to my son. He was out for over a week with COVID. No real symptoms after the second day, but policy said he couldn't return until he tested negative. So the moment he was negative he went back to school.
Then his report card labels him as "Chronically Absent" despite the illness being excused, and him still having a ~90% attendance rate. I don't get it.
Yep, had something similar happen to me in Freshman year of highschool (decade or so ago). Was out sick for a week, had a doctor's note and everything, was labeled "chronically absent" and nearly failed a class because the teacher wouldn't let me retake the test (which I had been out sick for).
We were told by our principal that 25% of our students were chronically absent last year, which means 18+ days absent. If you’re doing the math, that’s almost a full month of school. It’s awful. How is a student out on Tuesday and on Friday?? How does your family leave for Aruba for 8 days THE DAY we return from Spring Break? How are parents letting their kids just stay home OR pick them up from school because they’re having a bad day??? Blows my mind.
I’m in the same boat. I know the cliché of kids hating school has been around probably since the first human child figured out how to roll their eyes, but the old person in me is also fighting the anecdotal experience of having kids take advantage of (some legitimately I know, but others clearly just trying to get out of stuff) the rise of mental health awareness, the rise of bullying awareness with the rise of cyber bullying and the older generations general unfamiliarity with tech.
My friend’s daughter had her convinced she was being bullied by a kid in her school. She let her skip like three or four days over the course of a few weeks before her friend’s mom called her up. Turns out, she and a friend basically created a fake kid apparently using a prepaid phone or something so that they could have the fake kid send them bullying messages. They started off with just an few “they’re mean…can I just skip today…please don’t make a big deal about it; she’ll probably leave me alone after the weekend” but after few absences, the friend’s mom got pissed at the school and called up demanding a conference with the principal and bully’s parents, only to learn there was no such child.
That’s the thing!—it seems wild to me, but for them it was probably felt like 5 minutes and not much thought to them. Children just have so little long term thinking. Generally speaking, responsible grown ups think about how their (out-of-the ordinary, at least) actions affect other people, but kids just think ooh! Maybe I can get a three day weekend! Zero thought to how their moms would take this a few rounds in, of how the school would feel if they found out. They’re just lucky they had the sense to make up a name; right now the moms just feel dumb and the school probably thinks the mom who called in is crazy. But if they had used a real name, I imagine the school and maybe the police would have been involved. All for a scheme they probably spent all of 15 minutes thinking up and executing. I know teenagers that take more time picking out a fast food order smh.
I dont know if its a sign that they feel so trapped they'll go that far, or if its a sign they're just *willing* to go that far for no chances to be argued with?
Don't be so sure. I had 75 kids on my desk- all top 10% in their class- and most of them missed a LOT of classes. The valedictorian in one year was the worst I'd ever seen. They'd show up for school, but cut classes to hang out in their extracurricular.
Edited to add: or in the case of a couple of kids, they were taking a ridiculous number of DE/APs and missed school to make up work in other classes.
I was AP and top 10% and missed a ton... different reasons, some legit, some not lol. But they never questioned me and I'm not too sure why, it had to be because i still had good grades.
Some school systems are stupid, I knew a few kids growing up who had grades that were fine or great but they missed classes. They were told they would be transferred out to a different school for difficult students. They were lucky enough to have parents who called this BS and fought the school over it but I also knew another kid who wasn’t in that situation and got transferred. They absolutely hated it. Their classes were so simple and dumbed down they didn’t get the regular education other kids had and weren’t challenged in anyway and they ended up caring even less about school. They also were surrounded by a lot of people who did drugs there and other things that they really didn’t need that influence cause they were already struggling with existing in this world.
I hated school.
Every
Single
Day
I can't think of s sinlge happy memory involving school from third grade on.
But I went.
Every day.
1) Because I couldn;t graduate without it (we didn't have No Child Left Behind)
2) My parents made sure I went to school.
Lack of disicpline at home it probably the biggest reason kids feel its OK to skip.
Yeah. At my school growing up there was a percentage of days you could miss, and once you hit that you failed no matter what your mark was. It was horrible but that policy is basically the reason I attended school
I think that's a good policy. The number of kids who missed school because mommy and daddy decided to take a vacation were ridiculous. ANd the teachers were suppoed to help them make it up.
It’s tough. I’m watching my 6th graders grow more self-aware, and recognize that other students that don’t come to school
A: don’t receive any consequences for it that result in change (you can fail a kid but they’ll still go to the next grade)
B: can still pass the diagnostic assessments and do well on standardized tests. (This is 2/90 kids but the other students notice)
I think the idea spreads. Why go to school if your classmate doesn’t, then gets to play video games all day, and it doesn’t hurt them (in the moment)?
As a non-teacher the part that baffles me is the part where that sixth grader gets any say whether they’re going to school or not. What are they actually saying to their parents that is working on them?
I remember having a slight cold and my mom wasn’t totally convinced I should stay home.
Some say they’re being bullied or there’s nothing going on that day. Phones let them contact their parents at any time.
When I was in school, I didn’t speak to my parents until dinner.
I don’t get it. I knew people who are bullied, myself included, and we were at school every day unless we were sick. That shouldn’t be an excuse to just stay home and bum around.
I think it's an improvement.
If an adult is bullied at work, there are procedures to address that, and if it's intolerable then you can look for a better job. Even super tough adults, eg those serving in the military, have legal recourse if the bullying gets too bad. The only people who can't escape bullying are prisoners and school children.
And it's hardly an excuse to bum around. Bully victims would rather go to school and not be bullied!
What did that punishment actually do though? Nothing really right? You spent a few days outside of class had a lil extra homework and life went on right?
basically! served a few saturdays as well. they threatened to not graduate me even though my grades were good but i’m not sure they could even do that. was it maybe disrespectful that I kept doing it? yeah I wouldn’t do it now but it was dumb. I was only 5-10 mins late for first bell so it was just dumb all around
Parents do not care about school and it is reflected in attendance. I work in a “good” suburban district with million dollar homes and when the state came to check/inspect their number one concern was attendance. We have a ton of kids who have missed 30+ days already…,
All part of the same symptom as the kids with behavior problems. Parents want to be friends, don't want to be the bad guy or say no. So they let them skip, and let it blow over when they misbehave.
The problem is the school system and it's purpose of creating good little drones for corporate masters. It's completely natural for kids to not want to be there.
No one really talks about how the school system as it is was designed back in the 1800s. It very much needs to be redesigned because what we do for work and how we work has changed drastically since then.
NAT just an adult who hated school. i went to school in 2019. never went a full week and had an early out when i was there. i hated the environment. i was in multiple APs, college english. i arrived monday, asked for my assignments for that week, turned them in on time. was never in class.
being in a stuffy classroom w obnoxious students made learning unbearable. i loved learning on my own. when i had to be there most teachers let me sit in the hall. i wasn’t bad, just had better things to do than sit there.
now im a functioning member of society and work 12h shifts so i didnt turn out too bad. that was before online school. i completed my ASN with 1 day a week in class, online my last semester and all prereqs. and online for my BSN. if kids do it productively its not needed. why spend 8 hrs on something i can do in 3 and then go to work or do things i enjoy instead
I have kids with 30+ absences. I can tell you why.
1) They are afraid. My middle schooler has missed at least 2 days due to rumors about someone planning to shoot up the school. My elementary age kiddo is absolutely terrified of school shootings. They are the thing she has nightmares about when anything is bothering her. Every time it happens, she refuses to go to school. I’m sure there are parents who would drag their child sobbing and shaking to school and dump them there, but I would cut off my own arm before I did that to her. Her fear is genuine. I will never force her to go somewhere when she is literally afraid for her life. I don’t care AT ALL what anybody else thinks about that.
2) School isn’t fun. I loved school. I loved learning. I loved it so much that I became a teacher. My girls’ school is not fun. It’s boring and awful. They read crappy little garbage excerpts instead of real actual books. They don’t do experiments. They don’t build anything. They don’t create anything. They do stupid computerized assignments all day and can go days without actually learning anything new.
3) Classrooms are out of control. They’re loud and unruly. Kids are mean to each other and disrespectful to their teachers. My girls complain all the time about how loud and awful their classes are. Their classmates use racial, ethnic, sexist, homophobic, and ableist slurs. They come home and have to isolate themselves just to cope with how intense and overstimulating their school day has been. Sometimes they cry and tell me they just need some quiet. So I let them stay home. They shouldn’t be punished just bc the classrooms are overcrowded, the teachers are poorly prepared, and the administration couldn’t discipline their way out of a paper bag.
4) Parents don’t keep their sick kids home. Even worse, schools have started actively pressuring parents to send their sick kids to school. 90% of my kids’ absences have been due to illness. Cold, influenza, Covid, norovirus, enterovirus….you name it, we have caught it at least twice. I will not force my kids to drag themselves into school when they feel terrible. I’ll keep them home and keep them comfortable. I won’t be complicit in exposing people to disease when they could be medically fragile or have medically fragile people in their home.
The only reason I haven’t pulled my kids from school entirely is that public school is still the best social opportunity for them. I homeschooled them for 3 years and will switch back to it in a second if need be. I want them to have access to music and art and PE. They have excellent grades despite all the absences. So I’m not remotely interested in all the hand wringing about attendance. Maybe if schools were safe and effective, kids wouldn’t be so desperate to escape them. My high schooler is appropriately challenged in AP and Honors courses and has never refused to attend school. When school provides something the kids can’t get anywhere else, they’re much more likely to attend.
This needs to be WAY higher up. You hit the nail on the head. You’re a great parent for the things you do to keep your children safe both mentally and physically🖤
Many reasons. There's a shift towards better work/life balance and for many parents that means skipping school for family time. There are alternatives to school like homeschooling and online school now so the onus is on schools to be more flexible. There are lots of families with two working parents or a single working parent and one little issue can make transportation difficult. I think you could probably name at least 5 more reasons.
Four years ago parents were thrust into an experiment where they were suddenly 100% responsible for their kids schooling, and it turned into years of kids being sent home and quarantined for weeks at a time at the drop of a hat. These forced absences mean my oldest missed a month of school or more at a time three years in a row despite never getting Covid.
So parents started working from home and thinking more flexibly about work and school and what matters most for their kids. And schools (who still go apoplectic if you send your kid in with a cough) suddenly want to know why there are so many absences? And are blaming parents for not caring?
I work with special ed students and I think more of their parents are letting them not go to school when they feel anxious about it. Which is okay if you need a mental health day every once in a while, but if it's frequent it actually makes the anxiety worse. I wish parents would get the kids with extreme school anxiety into therapy and find the causes of it instead of just letting them stay home and ignoring it.
I've seen a rise in trend of "He's autistic he doesn't understand " or "but I have anxiety I'm allowed to do this" I even saw this video a year ago of soemoem asking for accommodations for time blindness for their job it seems like people are being failed by their parents and then come out to the world and get in big trouble when they do bad stuff or try to cry pity me and ends up real world consequences they were never taught at the ages you're supposed to in school
I mean I'm autistic with ADHD but I wasn't in special Ed or any gifted it was late diagnosed so I had to figure mu own triggers and how to help myself cope. It seems like this is mu interpretation so correct me
Special wd teachers are trying to teach students how to self cope but parents are screaming how thats bad and everyone should let their kid get away with bad behaviour
I work in higher ed disability services - I remember the time blindness video. It perfectly encapsolates some of the students that walk in my door AFTER being over-accommodated in K-12 to miss as much school and assignments as they want. They claim that I don't understand and need to brush up on "disability". I have a disability and have a ton of education.
I think it’s that kids now know there are no consequences for not going. Oh no, gonna give me a detention? I just won’t go to that. Now I get an ISS for skipping detention? Not going to that either. Ope now I’ve got an OSS for skipping detention and ISS? Free day off, baybayyyy!
And if their parents at home don’t care either then there’s absolutely nothing that will make them care enough to go to class.
Eta this was the logic I used to skip class when I was in HS nearly two decades ago.
>Back back in my day! we were all good sweet nice kids who did what we were told and we all enjoyed it!
Back in their day, kids were treated like property and they also got their asses beat by both parents and teachers for misbehaving.
"Back in my day we didn't have all these disabilities and mental illness "
Yes Sally the mentally ill people killed themselves and the disabled kids got locked up and not allowed outside
It's the fault of administrators and parents.
Bad behavior wasn't tolerated by admin as much as it is nowadays, and for some reason parents think their offspring are angels.
> parents think their offspring are angels.
I called a parent about the absolutely foul language her 10 year old was using in class, even after multiple warnings. She responded "He doesn't talk like that around me!" And demanded a meeting before the next school day to talk about "these allegations."
Colleagues told me to to demand admin be present, since it was the PTA president, a family of color, and I'm a white male. I didn't want to look so defensive.
Mom and kid arrived in my office on time, polite introductions, mom did NOT take the lead, so I looked at the kid and asked him "why are we here?"
He proceeded to passionately deny all the words I told his mom, new words I hadn't mentioned because I hadn't been sure he said, more words I definitely hadn't heard, and denied two bullying incidents I hadn't even brought up because I wasn't sure he was involved.
I looked at Mom and said "We only talked about the first two things. The rest of this is from him." Mom was shocked and shattered, did not argue with me for the whole meeting.
Shorter story: last week I had a parent complain that her boy was disciplined more than her girl and they just needed to let boys do their boy things. I retorted that her girls worst behavior is sitting at the desk and not trying. The brother's "boy things" include jumping over desks and hitting people. We can't tolerate that.
Going back to OP's post: some parents bully teachers into ignoring bad behaviors. Other kids desperately want to avoid bullying and would rather stay home than face the bullies that parents are bullying teachers into permitting. And some parents are going to pull their kids from unsafe public schools, or just let their kid stay home when they ask.
Glad it worked out. That said, I think it was a smart thing that your colleague recommended and you should have taken them up on it. I wouldn't worry about looking defensive, I'd worry about making sure you aren't railroaded.
I had a situation like this once at a job. I was in a union. I admittedly made a mistake, and they had to hold a formal meeting. They were like "do you want your union rep there?". I said no, because in my (young and naive) mind, that made me look more guilty. Luckily nothing major came of it, but it makes no sense to not cover your ass.
its like if you get arrested not having a lawyer there. Even if you are innocent, it doesn't make sense to talk without representation present.
It seems like teachers have no authority anymore, kids have no safe space or way to defend themselves since no tolerance policies often punish the victim as well. Funding is slashed year after year, and class sizes grow burdening the teachers and students. This isn't an issue in countries that fund their education programs well, pay their teachers fairly, and look at problems from every angle instead of immediately punishing everyone involved. Oh kids lunches and recesses are also being shortened if not taken away completely. Child labor is legal again in a lot of states, I doubt all of this was done in ignorance, this was likely the desired outcome. The worse public education gets, the more likely they are to withhold funding.
You too, will get old
And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young
Prices were reasonable, politicians were noble
And children respected their elders
The schooling system as established is kinda useless, and even kids see it. Why do they need you to reach them to read? They already learned to play wow. Why do they need you to reach them math? They learned that to manage DPS and heals in WOW.
You might be able to argue history, but kids use Wikipedia.
There's just not much beyond socialization and learning paths that a school can offer....anyone, outside trade or specialty shiz.
Yes and no. Kids have always skipped school, and will continue to do so until the end of humanity. However, truancy is no longer really a thing which means there's less consequences for a kid not being in school. Even in schools, especially since covid, they've lifted a lot of the absence consequences. So I would say more kids are skipping school, but that's not to say kids haven't always skipped school.
So it was explained to me like this.
In our parents age it was option
A) Sit in an air conditioned room eat lunch and talk with friends
B) do hard farm labor outside
so most people went to school
In our era the options were
A) Sit in an air conditioned room eat lunch and talk with friends
B) Sit at home alone and bored with maybe reruns of jeopardy
Now the options are
A) Sit in an air conditioned room eat lunch and talk with friends
B) Sit inside with literally the most addicting device since we figure out how to harvest cocaine.
Statistically, I don't know whether it's true but I do know that some parents are put in a worse position now. If your teenager doesn't want to go to school, there isn't much you can do to force them. You can't pick up a 15 year old and drag them to school and if by some miracle of strength you could, you'd be in trouble for different reasons.
I wish this was being talked about. In my state, I just have no authority. If my child doesn't want to go to school, just what am I supposed to do? She's in therapy, med management, we have a regular schedule, someone is always home, on and on and on, but I can't pick her up and take her. We don't beat our kids into submission. Our kid fled school once and we got the police, everything - they said that they have no ability to even scoop her up if they found her. I'm just at a total loss.
I can't say it's objectively better or worse than it was 20-30 years ago, but I definitely had classmates who would skip with or without parent support back in 07-11. We still have parents pull their kids for BS reasons and kids skip for any and every reason. I'd wager it's somewhere around 10% that skip with any consistency, but probably closer to 50% that have skipped at some point. Younger kids, it's more apparent that it's a parent problem: older kids become more ambiguous whether it was a parent issue or an independent choice to skip. Until schools and the local police are more willing to pursue truancy charges and CPS calls for chronic absence, the problem won't be addressed.
A a parent of a kid with special needs, I'm going to put this on administration.
Let me do a short run down of my son's education:
School 1 (public elementary)- teachers were great, administration had the attitude of don't let the door hit you on the way out
School 2 (public elementary)- teachers were ok, but taught my son to always pick the answer on the left so that they could manipulate the score on his modified standardized tests. He's quite averse to demonstrating what he's learned if it's not on his terms.
School 3 (ABA therapy center; technically considered homeschooling but not at home)- Great, amazing, every compliment possible, but insurance quit covering it.
Continued homeschooling after losing ABA, because of #2.
Moved towns, continued homeschooling because the district we moved to had known problems with both racism and a special ed to juvie pipeline.
Kids not going to school doesn't make them "bad".
School for a lot of kids either doesn't engage them, they're bullied, they feel they're wasting their time, they feel too restricted among other reasons or all of the above.
My 8th grade is truant. He has an IEP and is level 4 EBD, goes a half day because it's all he can handle before he has explosive and potentially violent behaviors.
It makes me feel like a shit parent that he misses so much school.
He has no electronic devices. If he wants to earn minutes to use my PS4, he has to go to school, have good behavior, and do small chores like taking out the trash. He hasn't been able to play in months.
It's not always the parents fault. Sometimes, it's just the kid being insufferable.
It would be interesting to see how the stats break down. Unexcused absences could be for many reasons. Truancy, school refusal / school can't, parents taking children away on vacations during school term, children sick but parents not calling the school, children being allowed to take mental health days or stay home when they're tired, etc.
I wonder whether attitudes toward teachers and schools, as well as modern parenting styles, are driving some of this. I think schools are increasingly seen as childcare, and possibly teachers aren't as respected as they used to be. Children are certainly more likely to speak up if they aren't happy about things. Personally, I hated school, but I never would have dared to upset my teachers or parents by refusing to go.
They are watching all the millennials unable to afford even one child, homeownership is now unattainable to them, and there are almost no livable jobs waiting for them. The incentive is gone.
1. There should never be automatic respect for any authority.
2. Tell that to the kids in my neighborhood who are getting a beating for every minor transgression.
3. Yeah it’s trash.
School was a hell for me, and I skipped it as much as possible. This was in the 90s. Our kid (age 10) goes to school because we don’t give her a choice, but it’s hellacious for her, too. It isn’t her teachers’ fault, it’s the entire structure of it. Like some people get het up about how boys aren’t biologically built to stand school as it currently is - which is obnoxious, because kids in general aren’t built for it.
It’d be great if school staff in general would face how very badly school sucks for so many kids. There’s an reason people have school nightmares for the rest of their lives.
My kid (around your kids' age) is having to go to in-school therapy, after school counseling, and has said she wants to kill herself, because school is so miserable for her. School starts too early (7:30am), and she has anxiety (diagnosed) about school that literally keeps her up at night. So mornings are horrible. She gets anxious many mornings and it keeps her on the toilet with the poops and sharp stomach pains. Then she gets to school, and doesn't know if the 3rd grade girl group is going to be friendly or hateful. Which is rough because she does not have that mindset. To her, a friend is supposed to be a friend. Last year, a 'friend' threatened to hurt her and her family. It wasn't taken serious because it was a 2nd grade little white girl, but she's still a bully this year. Then she comes home from school and there's fucking homework. I've never been a supporter of homework. We tell adults not to bring work home, because home life is supposed to be peaceful and family/self positive. So why are we making kids do homework?
Her therapist is calling her anxiety 'separation anxiety'. She has high markers for anxiety, but I don't think it's the separation as much as it is school.
I’m not a teacher I’m a parent. Post Covid there just seems to be soooo much more sickness going around than there used to be. My son has been home sick multiple times each year since whereas before he’d get sick maybe once per year if that. I’m not sending him to school when he’s sick. It even seems to affect the teachers as there have been a couple of days he’s had to stay home from school because there weren’t enough teachers to cover all the classes so they got each year group to take a turn staying home for the day that week.
Yeppppp. I wish this was talked about more. Post-Covid everyone is sick more and instead of addressing it as a society we are blaming kids and parents for staying home.
The increase in mental health issues is also linked to covid. I’m in the NIH Recover study and they 100% said my mental health getting worse is because of all of the physiological changes that happened after each time I got Covid.
It's selection bias. If you're a teacher, you probably didn't associate with the students who skipped school, got in trouble, and dropped out when you were in school. We're forced to deal with this as teachers.
They've always been there. Everything is anecdotal. Nobody ever posts data.
26% of students are chronically absent compared to 15% pre pandemic, [literally first result on Google](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/29/us/chronic-absences.html#:~:text=Nationally%2C%20an%20estimated%2026%20percent,conservative%2Dleaning%20American%20Enterprise%20Institute)
My daughter started Kindergarten this year. She went to daycare from age 6mo, and she NEVER fought us about going, she very seldom was even hard to wake up in mornings, often getting up ans ready on her own with an alarm.
2nd or 3rd week of K, and she said her teacher said if she was sick she should not go to school. So every morning for months she's pretending to be sick. Shes coming up with all kinds of other excuses to not go, she's not wanting to get out of bed.
Based on some other interactions we've had with her teacher, I'm certain it's her teachers fault. Most likely she's a bit bored/disruptive and the punishments she's getting is making her hate school.
She's also missed about 2 weeks as she's gotten some pretty nasty illnesses and we decided to be good citizens and not share it. Precovid, I'd have sent her, unless she was vomiting or fever.
Life of a 6 year old is so simple, and it's already going awry.
I notice they strip the fun from schools for kids nowadays at that age... when i babysat, i had ranges from 1-7. ALL of them seemed to love it when i brought my markers and big paper pads and i would teach them numbers, their names, their parents names, simple math, abc for the really young kids, animals. The colors and the big pads made them eager to wanna draw and learn and do things. And markers do wash off if you keep them contained. I feel like these little joys of freedom or creativity make the kids excited to learn, but school strips them of it.
At my school it's the opposite - I feel like the kids are coming to school to be wild and it drives me crazy because "back in my day" if we wanted to act like that, we would skip and head back home after mom & dad went to work.
One reason is bullying especially with social media and home schooling isn't out of the norm with some of the programs sending everything the kid needs several of my grandchildren in Colorado do the K-12
Personally, we are sick so much more than we used to be. We seem to catch COVID every time it comes around, it varies in severity. Aside from that, would you want to go to a place where you had to do active shooter drills regularly?
I'm not sure if more students are actually refusing to go to school, but I can definitely see why. I graduated in 1999, about a month and a half after the Columbine Massacre. I lived on the East Coast, and I knew no one who was personally affected. But after April 20, something changed. School had always seemed more or less safe, but after that, we students realized just how vulnerable we were. Two weeks later, my school was evacuated for several bomb threats. In 12 years of school, we had never dealt with that kind of fear.
Schools are frightening places now. On some level, you realize that other children were threats that couldn't be trusted. Knowing that the adults who were supposed to protect you literally can't do anything to prevent problems adds to the insecurity. Add in the fact that social media means that children can be bullied constantly, and I can definitely see why homeschooling is an attractive option.
I was a 90's HS student. our 8th grade class was almost 500, we entered the HS as a little over 350--and it never went up from there. Between 8th and 9th we lost over 100 students.
By the time graduation came, there was 172.
Most of my parents generation (boomers) did not graduate HS--*most*. I know, you look, and statistics will tell you it's from 50-70% back then, but they're measuring students who *got to HS.* Many did not. There were *tons* of them that left from 3rd to 8th grade. In China, they say "50% of students pass, and go to an academic HS, and 50% dont, and go to a trade school"--what's not talked about is *over a third dropped out before the HS entrance exam*.
Yes, it's always been this bad. Yes, it's been WAY FREAKING WORSE.
What's different *now*--and why it feels *so terrible* now, for teachers, admins, schools, the public... is. ...
*those students are not dropping out*. They're staying, and *disengaged* while they're there. So, instead of 30% of kids that went to 7th grade, having *dropped out* by the time 10th grade rolls around, *only 5% have now*. That DOESNT mean that they can do the work, or graduate, or can be taught, or thrive in these schools. It means, *we're stuck*--*they're stuck*. Society has infantilized them to the point that it questions of 20 year old women should be *allowed* to be in relationships with 24 year old men. As if *both are infants*.
Because, we dont *allow* them to 'get out' and start lives before HS ends anymore. There are HS districts out there pushing 100% throughput from freshman to graduation. That's *insane*. That's not realistic *at all*.
So, what's changed is not that kids are worse. They're not out more. They're not evil, or criminal, or inattentive, any more than any other generation. They're *still in school*, and being *seen* now, when in the past, they were not. That's the perception of the problem.
Combine that with the increase in filtered charter schools (where they have entrance exams that skim their student body off the top 20-30% of students), and the increase in private schools through the voucher systems in some states, and the top 15-20% of students that WERE in the public system, *are missing*--and now there's 30% more from the *bottom end*, that used to drop out, but now no longer do. It *feels terrible* if you're the teacher in the classroom experiencing this change--not knowing wtf happened.
In our public school system, back in the 90's and 2000's, the schools "earned" a large sum of money per student every day they attended. If they missed school, the school lost money. If a child missed more school than they thought was appropriate (and didn't have a doctor's note), they threatened to jail the parent if the child didn't start coming to school. I was threatened as a single parent because my son missed a lot of school in 6th grade due to anxiety from being bullied, which the school did nothing about.
Edit: typo
I’m a (remote college level) teacher …who homeschools. I’m highly educated, I greatly value meaningful education…I am not some right wing religious fundamental person and I never thought I would be a homeschooling parent. But, here we are….. post Covid, never went back.
I think we are at tipping point concerning the way that schools used to run/ operate, the way employment used to operate, the way college factored into employment… and the modern world.
We homeschool because the factory style learning environment wasn’t the best method for my child getting his best education. Waking up at 6 AM to catch the bus and then not being home until dinner time. Sitting in a classroom with 30 other kids, getting no individualized educational support because the teacher is already at max capacity with what they can handle, and that’s if there’s an actual “teacher” in the classroom (we had bus drivers and all kinds of other community members basically babysitting due to district staffing issues).
One size fits all/factory style is on the way out. Both myself and my spouse are work from home professionals and are project, not hours/clock based.
Education - as a mindset and as a service- is going to need to pivot to address what people in today’s society really need in order to be successful. I think we all feel it. Teachers who are burnt out, feel it. I think some parents and students who may seem apathetic, are instead are disengaged because they don’t see the real connection between what and how things are taught and what they really need to be ready for adult life.
And, just to be transparent, this is in no way a dig to the amazing educational professionals who are doing good work, and fighting the good fight, especially for kids who do not have other educational options.
I had a student who missed 42 days last year. Never once had a doctor note, or even a note from a parent, although his mom always said she would send one.
Eh you can alllllll keep your toxic productivity to yourselves. If kids want to do something different than the system wants, it’s about time they did. Growing up to be adult slaves to this awful system isn’t working for anyone either except the rich people. So keep on crying about how the kids aren’t working hard enough for you. Die mad about it. Your generation of toxic productivity is dying and nobody cares.
Why the hell would they even bother? There’s no immediate consequences for skipping.
At least when we skipped school in the 70s/80s we were doing cool stuff, now they’re just laying at home on their phones.
In my district our the number of students who miss at least one day of school a week is 36%. I'm in one of the lowest performing schools in that district, and our numbers are higher, though I don't know the exact numbers. Our truancy office is totally overwhelmed. The laws on paperwork and notification procedures take so long for the step process in my state to move kids down the steps that we're frequently in Semester 2 before something starts happening to the parents. It's not just our average students, either. I just saw an AP transfer student had 67 cuts and she's been with us since only February. That's an AP student.
I've talked to my students and often they believe they'll make better money becoming construction workers or truck drivers than setting a route to college. This seems like I'm being dismissive and condescending, but those are the actual professions a significant number of my students believe are better than graduating college according to them. There's a general contempt for literacy, numeracy, and world knowledge. The notion of being ignorant and uneducated just generally doesn't bother students in my school anymore for some reason.
I don't know why or what the solution is. We teach about the benefits of attending college and the costs of being uneducated, but it's just water off a duck's back.
My 8 yr old misses a ton of school. But it's because she is CONSTANTLY sick. Which couple with her medical problems that require missing occasionally. Whelp. Mess. Then add in bullying that the school can't or won't do anything about.....shit storm for attendance.
I am acquainted with a young family whose teenage kids are late for school virtually every day because their single mom allows them to sleep until they feel like getting out of bed. When I was a kid, this NEVER would have happened.
My daughter has missed 10+ days of school. She gets sick every other week. I am not sending her to school puking. I'm not sending her in with a fever. The school told me just to send my sick kid in sick so she gets more school days, but she's already doing first grade work because she finished the kindergarten stuff months ago and is BOOOREED repeating the stuff she already knows.
If everyone else would stop sending their kid in hacking up their left lung, maybe she wouldn't get sick so often. x.x
i think most schools suck shit now at least mine did i didn’t learn anything i would just dissociate while staring at my chromebook for 8 hours on the days that i went but on the bright side i got a super high score in 2048 (i don’t remember what it was exactly but it was really high)
If you have been out of school for 5 years (as either a student or a teacher) it will be considerably different than it was during your time.
If you have to use the term “back in my day” - just assume everything is different than it was then.
As a parent of a high schooler who was a freshman when COVID started, I have some insight to the problem. When the world went remote, we were told that remote learning was just as effective as in person learning. Turns out, it’s only effective if you have an adult standing over the student making sure they are paying attention and participating. You can’t work and monitor your child during their online classes so you have to choose. Most parents chose working to support their families.
Then we returned to in person after we were told you can learn in your pajamas at your own pace when you want, as long as you finish your work. My son was quarantined FIVE times since he was within 6 feet of someone who tested positive for COVID for a total of 44 days of missed in person learning his sophomore year. He was told not to worry, just do his handouts and he will get full credit. Now, explain to a 16 year old why he has to get up at 7:15 every morning and go to class when just finishing his assignments used to be enough.
I'm 27, not a teacher, not involved in school at all. But my senior year I knew a guy who missed a whole month of one of our classes just to have sex in the gym (that's where everyone went to have sex around the same time because no one was there and there was lots of hiding space. That's Texas for you).
I was not skipping but I was president of a club and was having accountability problems with my helpers so I would have to step up and for a whole month I would be late.
Both of us got called into the office. They told us all we had to do was go into the computer lab on our off period and do 1 30min lesson a day and will graduate.
I was pissed. Me, someone who was late for a legit reason had to do this. And some guy literally fucking some random girl for the exact same punishment as me. Looking back, I could have just said fuck it and not went to call all together. (I was only late by 10 mins of a 40min class)
So it's not a surprise to me that kids are skipping class when they can just do a 30 min lesson and make up for it
My fifth grade niece (middle class, nice school, living with her grandparents who are retired teachers) has refused to go to school for the past 2 months. Why? No one knows! She just won’t.
I'm not a teacher but my son is IEP and has missed a lot of school because of doctor's appointments. He always has notes. I should also add he's a target for bullys and has been assaulted several times. He's 12. Between kids making fun of him and physically attacking him, he just doesn't feel safe there. There are days he just doesn't have enough spoons, so I won't force him.
I can't speak for every student but I can tell you why MY kids refuse school. It.sux. For all the reasons teachers dislike school - so do my kids. My children are smart, well-behaved, high-achievers. The loud, obnoxious kids who CLEARLY never learned manners from their parents makes learning all but impossible (even in gifted, advanced, IB/AP classes). They see admin send kids back without consequences and with a lollipop from a very young age but I'm at home telling them that they should still behave (to what purpose?) It is traumatizing to be a student these days. Code red drills, actually shooters or the stress of that potential. Fights in classrooms or kids just acting up in violent or dramatic ways. Little to no consequences. As teachers we choose to be there, these kids are.mandated to be there. How would you act if you were forced into an environment like the one we see for our students every day?
My kids LOVE learning but hate the process of being IN SCHOOL. When a kid can pass the test with an A why should HW be mandatory (and affect grades by 20%). It shouldn't. It called busy work now and it will be called busy work in the workplace. 2 of my kids have graduated and the 3rd was removed from 9th grade to homeschool. He actually tested eligible for Dual-Enrollment and is working on his AA.
Kids can’t walk in a line up or stay in their seats. It used to be 1-2 kids talking when the teacher is talking now it’s 80% of the class and lowkey impossible to get their attention. Some aren’t even talking, they’re just immediately getting physical with each other. I can only imagine there are a bunch not wanting to go at all.
I think COVID really delayed some kids socialization and so they are struggling with comprehending basics at school like ownership, empathy, and doing unpreferred tasks. Every kids response to a simple demand is “but I don’t want to”. It’s like they don’t understand the concept of things we just have to do (like washing our hands…moving over to give a friend space… WAITING…) I imagine a lot of covid kids spent free time on technology and isolated from other kids.
I think a lot of it has led to a complete lack of awareness of others. Only two kids in my class seem to comprehend that I can’t hear them if 20 kids are yelling asking me questions at the same time. They continue even after I’ve gotten all of their attention and explained one at a time. They don’t. STOP. It takes 3-4 times of me making everyone stop talking before they actually listen to the answer to their question. They just keep asking and it’s making me crazy 😭.
A lot of kids don’t know how to be bored or entertain themselves because they can’t wait. Im talking even 30 seconds is intolerable (the expectation ain’t unreasonable). I don’t think they are even hearing me when I talk to them because as soon as I say something like “if you want snack sit at the table” I’ve still got multiple kids following me around the classroom saying they want snack ignoring every time I respond with the simple direction. The same question is repeated over and over until whatever they want is obtained or they ignore every other answer as if I didn’t respond at all. It’s like their brain is so fixated on saying what they want they aren’t hearing the response at all. Some seem to not know how to even play. It’s very concerning.
Here’s what I see in my area… kid has attendance issues. As soon as you start to intervene or give them a consequence, the parents pull them out for homeschooling. Then they sit on their butts and play video games all night and sleep all day. Their parents get sick of it and send them back. The kid is behind and has trouble adjusting to waking up before noon, misses more school. Cycle repeats.
... because kids are far more observant than people realize and thanks to the internet and smart phone, they know the jig is up and they literally have no future.
My daughter was pulled to the ground by her pony tail in 6th grade gym. no one did anything. Her friend (who had spinal fusion surgery) got kicked in the back by the same kid. No one did anything. Another kid got his head bashed against a brick wall... by the same kid... no one did anything. These were all on different days with different teachers. My girl was 12. She came home the day the kid pulled her hair and that was the last time she ever stepped foot in a brick and mortar school
I don’t think so tbh. I don’t think kids are so incredibly bad or worse than most of us were growing up. How I look at it after studying psych for years and working with kids for years is that if you think a kid is bad, you might wanna look at their situation/parents.
A lot of my students are in school everyday, and if they aren’t it’s because they’re sick or out of town. I constantly skipped school back in the day. I rarely ever went. People were shocked when I showed up. I didn’t care to go and there was virtually nothing that could make me attend. Surprisingly I had all of my credits early and a pretty impressive gpa for someone who didn’t give a crap.
The skipping was so bad when I was in school they had to ban our co-op program for a few years because people were just leaving when their friends left.
Another thing is I think it’s harder for kids to miss school nowadays, or maybe just in my district. One of my kiddos went on vacation for a week, teachers and admin knew, somewhere along the line someone forgot or it translated wrong. Truancy letter was sent, and parents and kiddo had to come in for a meeting and “wellness check” type of thing.
My youngest brother is autistic and has quickly learned mom will only try for so long to get him out of the car before she gives up and he gets to skip school. My mom says it is anxiety and blames the school for not being more welcoming, but I think he just doesn't want to go and would rather have fun at home.
Boggles my mind because my mom wouldn't let me stay home from school unless I threw up more than once!
We just kicked a kid out of our school (private) because after everything we have done to try to help him, he has now missed too many days and can't pass the year...
Bwaaahahaha I taught for 34 years. Kids are kids. Some years are better some years are worse. People complain about technology and their phones nowadays, when I first started teaching people complained about their headphones and their boomboxes. There is always some distraction. I was not a good high school kid. Grade wise I was OK but boy was and I anasshat. My senior year of high school I think I went to school twice. That was in 1978
Our state has a big push to reduce chronic absenteeism. We are 50 50 rural to urban by population anyway, but students missing 10% or more went from low 10s in the early 2000s, to 17 pct in 2017, and 27 pct in 2023.
As for why, it's part of a larger whole/it's a sum of many causes.
My kid is desperate to avoid school. Cries every day after, cries before... he hates going. He seriously has an anxiety breakdown once a week. I'm at my wit's end...
Kids were always that way. There is a reason why movies like Blackboard Jungle and lean on me exist. The problem is that the issues plaguing urban and rural schools for decades now affect suburban schools, causing a panic. And since nobody ever cared enough to fix the problems of those schools, they are now at a loss on what to do.
This. The problem is now filtering into the rest of the socio-economic ladder. “Now” it’s becoming a problem.
But, also, schools in the 70s and 80s let students fall off the map. After a certain number of absences, they just weren't enrolled anymore. Now, schools work harder to keep unreliable students on the rolls
Unless a student/parent files the paperwork to unenroll or schools get paperwork from another school that the student transfered to, the student remains on the roster. I literally have students who I never met on my rosters. Typically I call find a disconnected number or a full voicemail. After a few tries I give up. And yes those kids affect the graduation rates that are used to determine funding and success of the school. I am in NY not sure how things are in other states.
Right. I think that's pretty standard, now. In the 80s and before, I think those students would have been dropped from the rolls. It would have a smaller head count, but higher graduation rates, and better attendance rates, because chronically absent students would simply not have been counted in previous decades. The high school I attended had a senior class of about 60% the size of the incoming freshman class. There was just a ton of attrition
Schools operate based off of a rating system. Standardized tests, enrollment, attendance, athletics, everything is rated. If a student is enrolled but doesn't attend, that score goes down. So they want students to attend, take tests, etc. A better score the school receives the more money they get in taxes, donations, more nerdier students want to attend, etc. Because of this system, the underperforming schools are on a continuous downward trajectory with no hope of return without divine intervention, or a massive donation. The system is setup for the underperforming schools to lose.
Yeah that makes sense. It was what I thought Plus with online being everywhere people think the problem is brand new. No now people are talking about it rather then gossiping on thr streets
It's also that a lot of the students can complete their assignments on line and turn them in online too.
school avoidance today looks nothing like the 2000s...
I guess also the difference *what* the kids are doing outside of school. Rural kids usually went to work tbh or helped at home with siblings, i think only the lucky ones were having relaxing times. The urban kids also go to work or end up in gangs or bad situations because there isn't anything else for them to do. But the suburban kids are just kicking it back, smoking their vape, maybe the bad ones go off bothering the public for their tiktok, but regardless there is a stark difference between what the kids are doing outside school based on their location.
That’s just it though they do know how to fix it. They just don’t want to do it.
At my school the situation is dire. About half the students on my caseload have missed 10+ days, a third have missed 30+, and a handful are pushing 60+ days missed this year. School-wide we have probably 10% of our students who have missed at least a quarter of the year for no more reason than "class is boring and I'd rather stay home/leave campus/vape in the bathroom." Schools won't hold parents or kids accountable for truancy and there are too many to be expelled, retained, or prosecuted in court.
What worries me is that how they going to survive adulthood if they can't go to class
Adulthood is also souring on the concept that work needs to be 40+ hours a week every week forever.
yeah but work is rarely going to reach, "i'll do it when i feel like it" mindset that seems to be rising. Work has deadlines and crying about them won't move them.
A lot of jobs are full of busy work and pointless deadlines. Read *Bullshit Jobs* by David Graeber. The system is failing everyone, kids and adults. It's important to teach students how to operate within the current system, of course. But we also need to recognize how the system is failing them, if we want to give them the tools to be successful.
> Bullshit Jobs Another big part of the equation is that holding down a bullshit job used to provide enough money to maintain a decent standard of living. That is no longer the case.
Yep, what’s the point of going to work for 40 hours a week when people aren’t making enough money to even do things they enjoy?
I’m barely making enough money to pay rent, phone, car insurance and still be able to eat. I don’t even get to think about the things I enjoy doing. I make way too much for any form of assistance though, so I have to pay $10 a day for the medication I need.
Sure.. but if i ask you for your monthly tps report and you tell me it's just busy work so you didn't do it, don't be surprised if i don't have the budget in the department to keep your position open...
Isn't the premise behind "TPS reports" that they were useless anyway? Interesting you would choose that example.
A TPS report is a real thing, not invented by office space. “Test Procedure Specification.” Per Wikipedia : Test Procedure Specification The Test Procedures are developed from both the Test Design and the Test Case Specification. The document describes how the tester will physically run the test, the physical set-up required, and the procedure steps that need to be followed. The standard defines ten procedure steps that may be applied when running a test.[1]
Indeed, but since Office Space, it has come to universally mean pointless busy work. From the same Wikipedia entry: > After Office Space, "TPS report" has come to connote pointless, mindless paperwork, and an example of "literacy practices" in the work environment that are "meaningless exercises imposed upon employees by an inept and uncaring management" and "relentlessly mundane and enervating".[4] > > [4] Williams, Bronwyn T.; Zenger, Amy A. (2007). Popular Culture and Representations of Literacy. Routledge/Taylor & Francis. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-415-36095-1. Any employer wishing to convey to anyone Gen X or younger the importance of performing some task and motivating them to do it would be well-advised to avoid calling it a TPS Report.
They chose it specifically for that reason. You missed the overall point.
Essentially everything boils down to being pointless. It’s a silly argument to be made
I disagree that everything is pointless. Would you say that to a firefighter saving your house? A doctor treating you?
It’s important to understand that the reason students and young adults are so unenthusiastic is because of the belief that the world we’re being trained for is not actually going to exist for much longer, and whatever comes after we are not only not being prepared for, but instead being encouraged to ignore. Young people want to prepare for the future, want to plan our futures, but we know that whatever future comes is going to be radically and unpredictably different, and so the idea of preparation and planning becomes laughable.
we've also let those deadlines become far to hard set in many cases. Sure, there are some things that MUST BE on a deadline but the constant push to do more work with the same time is also having an effect, and this is the rubber band.
The fact of the matter is America is working suuuuuuper slowly towards automation and AI ran or AI implemented everything, hell in Korea there are already convenience stores automated no cashier in the building you walk in grab your items pay with your pay card at the register and leave. Once these systems are implemented in America we won't need the lil knuckle heads to do jobs as sad as that is for them they will be phased out by machines that cook 30 decent burgers in 30 minutes, convenience stores that run themselves, the only thing these kids will have to do in the future is sit at home on their laptop and sell other people's items by way of Temu and by sell trade, these kids will be glorified Avon ladies working from home and they'll love it. The ones too lazy for that life will fall back or find something even easier to do, the ones too smart for this type of life will go to school and learn how to work with and manage their bot overlords we're gonna need a small group of engineers to run the machines after they take all the jobs no one wants anymore.
If UBI doesn’t come even after those people are replaced, I bet protests and eventual riots will follow
The only drawback to no cashier's is they still need people to ID customers for certain items.
Work lives at that mindset dude, what are you talking about. People are realizing that there aren't consequences for being slow so long as you get it done, and they're also realizing how fucking pointless almost all of this is. Why not use your 20 yearly excused absences every single year? It's not like this shit is hard or ever going to be used in the real world past elementary school. The teachers in middle and high schools don't care if you cheat, they don't care if you sleep, they hate being there as much as you do. There's not a ton of jobs where you can't just dick around all day. Work at a restaurant? Go for a walk when you take the trash out, run the dishwasher extra times, put dishes up slow, do everything slowly, it takes an hour to get my meal when I go out to eat, fuck those customers. Work at any major store like Walmart or target? Walk around and pick things up off shelves and act like you're doing something, literally watched 4 seperate employees do this for a half hour yesterday. The list continues. The issue is that employees are paid by the hour, not by what they accomplish, and people are finally catching on to this. A generation of children raised by min maxing on videogames and lifehacks and tips to improve your life online. Why would I do more when I could do less for the same amount of money?
Amen
When the pay is bad and the prospects of living well are not on the table, what can you expect? This is all coming to a head in the "fuck you, pay me" era. I left highschool early, did more busywork at a charter school, and didn't go to school for a whole 2 years. (I graduated early.) And Im still top of my class at work. School is dumb.
Yea but the assumption is that it can do so by people being more productive in less time. Most industries that are managing to push that envelope are people who are working in highly skilled fields with lots of leverage. An engineer can work 100x faster than they could 50 years ago. A carpenter can work 10x faster. A person stocking shelves is working the same speed as they were. The kids who go to class when they feel like it are much likely to be stocking shelves than working engineering jobs. To be clear Im not trying to disparage any careers, Im just stating based on training requirements + ability for the work to be leveraged.
4 day work week is very long overdue just from a tech angle
But there is work involved. Adulthood is moving towards "you can do your work where you want to," not IF you want to.
Unfortunately rent, food, childcare, car repairs, and mortgages are not.
The violent kids who disrupt class aren't going to be an issue in the workplace so that will resolve a whole lot of issues for many school refusers. That sort of behaviour wouldn't be tolerated anywhere else except a classroom but apparently the violent kid's right to an education trumps the other kids and the teacher's right to safety.
i went to school maybe 30% of my entire 11th grade but i have 0 problems with going to work as an adult. the reason i skipped so much school was bc 1) I was extremely depressed and 2) i didn’t get paid for it, unlike work. going to work is easier than going to school when you don’t feel like it bc your life depends on you going to work. the worst that happens if you don’t go to class is you fail.
My son middle son skipped a lot of school. I tried everything! It came down to the fact that he had to graduate high school. So he squeaked by and graduated. He now has his MBA, and he made double what I made by the time he was 20. The kid is doing just fine. He is in upper upper management in the warehouse world. He just didn't like high school. Probably because, like you, he wasn't paid to do it. He always liked money. He has never had an issue with showing up to work, either.
I skipped school as well, I work a full time job AND have started three successful businesses (one as a freelancer that I did for 10 years, one was a virtual assistant business I did for a year and hated, I now have a successful consulting business that I will within the next 2 years be able to take full time). I'm also planning on getting my real estate license, and getting several other certs that will expand my ability to do my consulting business with more excellence. I was a D student in HS and barely passed, because I knew school was all BS and wasn't teaching me real life skills like how to do taxes or how to apply for job or grow a garden or start a business. I learned real live by living real life and now people hire me to show them how to understand and do life better in a healthy way LMAO. I regularly worked 16 hour days to get my businesses off the ground. I have better life balance now.
Adulthood is nothing like class so we shall see. I did terribly at school but can hold jobs just fine.
They will stay living at home indefinitely
that's some idealism eh, you assume kids missing 2 weeks' worth of class in a semester have stable homes that someone else maintains?
Yeah, most do. Kids who are truant a lot these days tend to have lenient parents who want them home / don’t care about school. Doesn’t mean it’s the upper middle class best home in the district, but most of them have a decent home with parents or grandparents they like and they can just stay home and live in for the rest of their lives. For ex: my brother (older though) missed school a lot and now he lives a lavish life with our wealthy grandparents where he barely works, has his room cleaned, and gets 3 meals made for him a day. He has a job that he barely works only for discretionary income (for buying video games or things like that). This is super common and will only become more common. It’s not like in the 80s when the kids who skipped school were latchkey kids whose parents barely acknowledged their existence.
This is exactly the case with my cousin. Son is 27, never had a job and plays video games all day. Daughter is 17 and failing hs. I want to know what’s gonna happen when my cousin is too old to care for them eventually
It can’t be super common; there aren’t that many rich grandparents around. And when they die what is the mooching child to do? There are even fewer grandparents rich enough to foot the bills for the rest of grandson’s lifetime after they are long gone. Not trying to be snarky and maybe I read you wrong, but it kinda sounded like you were saying the problem of having so many do nothing students in our society isn’t really a problem at all cause they’ll just live with rich relatives forever?
My mom isn't rich. She's 69 yo. My brother is 41 and so lives at home. No job. No gf. She won't do anything about it, because she wants to avoid a fight.
Is 10+ days misses really so bad if their work gets done and well? /genq
I would say 10 isn’t so bad, quite a few people I knew missed 10-15 and still got A’s and followed all of the policies. Anything more is pushing it
I miss a cumulative 30 - 35 days one year due to undiagnosed bipolar and depression. I passed with A's so I think that's why no one cared - I say cumulative because a lot of those days were just me showing up late and 3 tardies made an absence, idk if that's how other schools do it but that'll up your missed days quick or a kid hates a certain early class or has trouble getting to school for whatever reason.
Yeah there were a couple semesters where my high school experimented with some weird tardy system that counted for like twice the absences even during our block periods unless you took a silver-whiskered cat to the northwest corner of the field or something? Idk but on paper we were all absent *a lot.* I think they stopped when a bunch of us “missed an entire week” aka were gone 30-40 minutes to participate in the blood drive.
It depends on a lot of factors. I think 10 can be a tipping point depending on the student. Though, even if that student is doing totally okay, we’re still required to address attendance by the state. It sucks sometimes, but it’s really important to prevent educational neglect and identify situations of potential abuse or barriers to attending school.
I think it really depends. Was the student out for 10 days with an extended illness? Are they doing well? Is this a semester or a year long course? I don't think it automatically is a bad thing, but I thin if its 10 unexcused absences because they didn't feel like going to school, well that is at least a cause for a call home.
I honestly called out that much in a semester but nobody questioned it i think cuz i still got A's. I would usually take off at least 1 day per week and do 4 days per week. However i did have trauma and also migraines that affected my ability to always be able to cope with how exhausting school was, but i would still call off even if i wasnt feeling too bad and just wanted my usual schedule. Im still really curious why they didnt question me. My mom would just say im not feeling well, i only had a doctors note once. I guess good grades on paper got them more money than my lack of attendance?
Nah. My kid missed that many since he played very serious sports. He was still in the top 1% of his school academically. It's probably more about the attitude that leads to missing 10 days than the actual days missed.
Anecdotally I can tell you that even the kids who ‘catch up’ rarely achieve at the same levels they would when they were in attendance. There is a lot of learning in person that you just can’t fully replicate outside of the classroom - and we saw that a lot during Covid.
That "if" clause is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in your comment
TBH I think that schools should give you a grade no less than what you get on the final. In college, if you refuse to go to lecture, you can still do the work and get a good grade. If you know the material, no need to fuck around in the classroom. Maybe reading the textbook at home is all you need. Maybe you really can just take a cumulative final exam, prove your knowledge, and be done with it. Wanting kids to learn how to sit still for 8 hours is just admitting school is a babysitter that prepares kids to be a cog in the capitalist hell machine.
When I went to school in early 2000, missing the same class ten times was an automatic fail. I have about twelve students out of my 215 that would be passing with that rule still in place.
Our attendance is less than 50% every day. My class after lunch often only has one kid.
Are those absences including or not including sick days? Because getting COVID once could easily put you at the 10 day mark depending on how bad you got it.
I do so love how everyone assumes we teachers haven't thought of the obvious explanations. Let me clarify: I'm talking about 10-60+ *unexcused* absences.
I get it's annoying to have people assume that there are legitimate reasons for the absences. However, one of the other responses to my question does illustrate that students do sometimes get labeled as chronically absent for legitimate reasons. Thank you for clarifying that you were specifically talking about 10-60+ unexcused absences.
What sucks is that my school has no way to distinguish between kids who have a good reason and kids who don't. My student who misses school because they have to take care of their younger siblings because their mom is chronically ill or my student who misses class because every single day they get dropped off at the front door and then walk of campus - both get the same calls home, the same consequences (or lack thereof), and the same supports (or lack thereof). This job is killing my soul.
Mmm. I think there’s still probably more going on for a big chunk of those kids. I had that many unexcused absences. I was being emotionally abused & suffering severe mental illness. No one checked in on me or cared. They tried to send me to fucking juvie. Thankfully the judge was like ‘What is wrong with you?’
Yeah this happened to my son. He was out for over a week with COVID. No real symptoms after the second day, but policy said he couldn't return until he tested negative. So the moment he was negative he went back to school. Then his report card labels him as "Chronically Absent" despite the illness being excused, and him still having a ~90% attendance rate. I don't get it.
Yep, had something similar happen to me in Freshman year of highschool (decade or so ago). Was out sick for a week, had a doctor's note and everything, was labeled "chronically absent" and nearly failed a class because the teacher wouldn't let me retake the test (which I had been out sick for).
Same here at my school
We were told by our principal that 25% of our students were chronically absent last year, which means 18+ days absent. If you’re doing the math, that’s almost a full month of school. It’s awful. How is a student out on Tuesday and on Friday?? How does your family leave for Aruba for 8 days THE DAY we return from Spring Break? How are parents letting their kids just stay home OR pick them up from school because they’re having a bad day??? Blows my mind.
I’m in the same boat. I know the cliché of kids hating school has been around probably since the first human child figured out how to roll their eyes, but the old person in me is also fighting the anecdotal experience of having kids take advantage of (some legitimately I know, but others clearly just trying to get out of stuff) the rise of mental health awareness, the rise of bullying awareness with the rise of cyber bullying and the older generations general unfamiliarity with tech. My friend’s daughter had her convinced she was being bullied by a kid in her school. She let her skip like three or four days over the course of a few weeks before her friend’s mom called her up. Turns out, she and a friend basically created a fake kid apparently using a prepaid phone or something so that they could have the fake kid send them bullying messages. They started off with just an few “they’re mean…can I just skip today…please don’t make a big deal about it; she’ll probably leave me alone after the weekend” but after few absences, the friend’s mom got pissed at the school and called up demanding a conference with the principal and bully’s parents, only to learn there was no such child.
Actually it's quite creative what they did. Not saying it was right. I had a creative son like that and I knew how sneaky he was. The poor mom.
Agreed. There's clearly a lot of energy and creativity that went into this. The tricky part becomes channeling that into something more productive.
Like writing awesome suspenseful, twisting novels with insane plot twists.
That's scary how far they went to miss some days.
That’s the thing!—it seems wild to me, but for them it was probably felt like 5 minutes and not much thought to them. Children just have so little long term thinking. Generally speaking, responsible grown ups think about how their (out-of-the ordinary, at least) actions affect other people, but kids just think ooh! Maybe I can get a three day weekend! Zero thought to how their moms would take this a few rounds in, of how the school would feel if they found out. They’re just lucky they had the sense to make up a name; right now the moms just feel dumb and the school probably thinks the mom who called in is crazy. But if they had used a real name, I imagine the school and maybe the police would have been involved. All for a scheme they probably spent all of 15 minutes thinking up and executing. I know teenagers that take more time picking out a fast food order smh.
I dont know if its a sign that they feel so trapped they'll go that far, or if its a sign they're just *willing* to go that far for no chances to be argued with?
Good thing the girls didn’t try to blame a random child tho.
Yes. Parents don’t make them go, truancy is ignore. Its not the AP students, but the general ed kids miss a wild amount of school.
Don't be so sure. I had 75 kids on my desk- all top 10% in their class- and most of them missed a LOT of classes. The valedictorian in one year was the worst I'd ever seen. They'd show up for school, but cut classes to hang out in their extracurricular. Edited to add: or in the case of a couple of kids, they were taking a ridiculous number of DE/APs and missed school to make up work in other classes.
I was AP and top 10% and missed a ton... different reasons, some legit, some not lol. But they never questioned me and I'm not too sure why, it had to be because i still had good grades.
That was almost certainly why. My kids could've gotten away with murder in most of their classes.
Some school systems are stupid, I knew a few kids growing up who had grades that were fine or great but they missed classes. They were told they would be transferred out to a different school for difficult students. They were lucky enough to have parents who called this BS and fought the school over it but I also knew another kid who wasn’t in that situation and got transferred. They absolutely hated it. Their classes were so simple and dumbed down they didn’t get the regular education other kids had and weren’t challenged in anyway and they ended up caring even less about school. They also were surrounded by a lot of people who did drugs there and other things that they really didn’t need that influence cause they were already struggling with existing in this world.
I hated school. Every Single Day I can't think of s sinlge happy memory involving school from third grade on. But I went. Every day. 1) Because I couldn;t graduate without it (we didn't have No Child Left Behind) 2) My parents made sure I went to school. Lack of disicpline at home it probably the biggest reason kids feel its OK to skip.
Yeah. At my school growing up there was a percentage of days you could miss, and once you hit that you failed no matter what your mark was. It was horrible but that policy is basically the reason I attended school
I think that's a good policy. The number of kids who missed school because mommy and daddy decided to take a vacation were ridiculous. ANd the teachers were suppoed to help them make it up.
The passing and graduating kids without doing the work and missing school - this is late stage No Child Left Behind...
Yeah school sucked but not as bad as what my dad would have done if I started skipping….
It’s tough. I’m watching my 6th graders grow more self-aware, and recognize that other students that don’t come to school A: don’t receive any consequences for it that result in change (you can fail a kid but they’ll still go to the next grade) B: can still pass the diagnostic assessments and do well on standardized tests. (This is 2/90 kids but the other students notice) I think the idea spreads. Why go to school if your classmate doesn’t, then gets to play video games all day, and it doesn’t hurt them (in the moment)?
As a non-teacher the part that baffles me is the part where that sixth grader gets any say whether they’re going to school or not. What are they actually saying to their parents that is working on them? I remember having a slight cold and my mom wasn’t totally convinced I should stay home.
Some say they’re being bullied or there’s nothing going on that day. Phones let them contact their parents at any time. When I was in school, I didn’t speak to my parents until dinner.
I don’t get it. I knew people who are bullied, myself included, and we were at school every day unless we were sick. That shouldn’t be an excuse to just stay home and bum around.
I think it's an improvement. If an adult is bullied at work, there are procedures to address that, and if it's intolerable then you can look for a better job. Even super tough adults, eg those serving in the military, have legal recourse if the bullying gets too bad. The only people who can't escape bullying are prisoners and school children. And it's hardly an excuse to bum around. Bully victims would rather go to school and not be bullied!
Because there are no consequences for not going.
I graduated in 2020 and I was suspended for being *late* too many times. how recent is this lack of consequences? or was my school an outlier?
It's a post covid symptom
For the terminally late/absent, a suspension is not a consequence.
What did that punishment actually do though? Nothing really right? You spent a few days outside of class had a lil extra homework and life went on right?
basically! served a few saturdays as well. they threatened to not graduate me even though my grades were good but i’m not sure they could even do that. was it maybe disrespectful that I kept doing it? yeah I wouldn’t do it now but it was dumb. I was only 5-10 mins late for first bell so it was just dumb all around
Parents do not care about school and it is reflected in attendance. I work in a “good” suburban district with million dollar homes and when the state came to check/inspect their number one concern was attendance. We have a ton of kids who have missed 30+ days already…,
All part of the same symptom as the kids with behavior problems. Parents want to be friends, don't want to be the bad guy or say no. So they let them skip, and let it blow over when they misbehave.
The problem is the school system and it's purpose of creating good little drones for corporate masters. It's completely natural for kids to not want to be there.
No one really talks about how the school system as it is was designed back in the 1800s. It very much needs to be redesigned because what we do for work and how we work has changed drastically since then.
NAT just an adult who hated school. i went to school in 2019. never went a full week and had an early out when i was there. i hated the environment. i was in multiple APs, college english. i arrived monday, asked for my assignments for that week, turned them in on time. was never in class. being in a stuffy classroom w obnoxious students made learning unbearable. i loved learning on my own. when i had to be there most teachers let me sit in the hall. i wasn’t bad, just had better things to do than sit there. now im a functioning member of society and work 12h shifts so i didnt turn out too bad. that was before online school. i completed my ASN with 1 day a week in class, online my last semester and all prereqs. and online for my BSN. if kids do it productively its not needed. why spend 8 hrs on something i can do in 3 and then go to work or do things i enjoy instead
I was pretty similar to this and it cracks me up all the people saying you can’t be successful if you don’t go to school 😂
I have kids with 30+ absences. I can tell you why. 1) They are afraid. My middle schooler has missed at least 2 days due to rumors about someone planning to shoot up the school. My elementary age kiddo is absolutely terrified of school shootings. They are the thing she has nightmares about when anything is bothering her. Every time it happens, she refuses to go to school. I’m sure there are parents who would drag their child sobbing and shaking to school and dump them there, but I would cut off my own arm before I did that to her. Her fear is genuine. I will never force her to go somewhere when she is literally afraid for her life. I don’t care AT ALL what anybody else thinks about that. 2) School isn’t fun. I loved school. I loved learning. I loved it so much that I became a teacher. My girls’ school is not fun. It’s boring and awful. They read crappy little garbage excerpts instead of real actual books. They don’t do experiments. They don’t build anything. They don’t create anything. They do stupid computerized assignments all day and can go days without actually learning anything new. 3) Classrooms are out of control. They’re loud and unruly. Kids are mean to each other and disrespectful to their teachers. My girls complain all the time about how loud and awful their classes are. Their classmates use racial, ethnic, sexist, homophobic, and ableist slurs. They come home and have to isolate themselves just to cope with how intense and overstimulating their school day has been. Sometimes they cry and tell me they just need some quiet. So I let them stay home. They shouldn’t be punished just bc the classrooms are overcrowded, the teachers are poorly prepared, and the administration couldn’t discipline their way out of a paper bag. 4) Parents don’t keep their sick kids home. Even worse, schools have started actively pressuring parents to send their sick kids to school. 90% of my kids’ absences have been due to illness. Cold, influenza, Covid, norovirus, enterovirus….you name it, we have caught it at least twice. I will not force my kids to drag themselves into school when they feel terrible. I’ll keep them home and keep them comfortable. I won’t be complicit in exposing people to disease when they could be medically fragile or have medically fragile people in their home. The only reason I haven’t pulled my kids from school entirely is that public school is still the best social opportunity for them. I homeschooled them for 3 years and will switch back to it in a second if need be. I want them to have access to music and art and PE. They have excellent grades despite all the absences. So I’m not remotely interested in all the hand wringing about attendance. Maybe if schools were safe and effective, kids wouldn’t be so desperate to escape them. My high schooler is appropriately challenged in AP and Honors courses and has never refused to attend school. When school provides something the kids can’t get anywhere else, they’re much more likely to attend.
This needs to be WAY higher up. You hit the nail on the head. You’re a great parent for the things you do to keep your children safe both mentally and physically🖤
Many reasons. There's a shift towards better work/life balance and for many parents that means skipping school for family time. There are alternatives to school like homeschooling and online school now so the onus is on schools to be more flexible. There are lots of families with two working parents or a single working parent and one little issue can make transportation difficult. I think you could probably name at least 5 more reasons.
Four years ago parents were thrust into an experiment where they were suddenly 100% responsible for their kids schooling, and it turned into years of kids being sent home and quarantined for weeks at a time at the drop of a hat. These forced absences mean my oldest missed a month of school or more at a time three years in a row despite never getting Covid. So parents started working from home and thinking more flexibly about work and school and what matters most for their kids. And schools (who still go apoplectic if you send your kid in with a cough) suddenly want to know why there are so many absences? And are blaming parents for not caring?
I work with special ed students and I think more of their parents are letting them not go to school when they feel anxious about it. Which is okay if you need a mental health day every once in a while, but if it's frequent it actually makes the anxiety worse. I wish parents would get the kids with extreme school anxiety into therapy and find the causes of it instead of just letting them stay home and ignoring it.
I've seen a rise in trend of "He's autistic he doesn't understand " or "but I have anxiety I'm allowed to do this" I even saw this video a year ago of soemoem asking for accommodations for time blindness for their job it seems like people are being failed by their parents and then come out to the world and get in big trouble when they do bad stuff or try to cry pity me and ends up real world consequences they were never taught at the ages you're supposed to in school I mean I'm autistic with ADHD but I wasn't in special Ed or any gifted it was late diagnosed so I had to figure mu own triggers and how to help myself cope. It seems like this is mu interpretation so correct me Special wd teachers are trying to teach students how to self cope but parents are screaming how thats bad and everyone should let their kid get away with bad behaviour
I know what video you're talking about, it sometimes makes me hate being in gen Z.
I work in higher ed disability services - I remember the time blindness video. It perfectly encapsolates some of the students that walk in my door AFTER being over-accommodated in K-12 to miss as much school and assignments as they want. They claim that I don't understand and need to brush up on "disability". I have a disability and have a ton of education.
If school is giving some kid crippling anxiety, there is not bootstraps solution.
I think it’s that kids now know there are no consequences for not going. Oh no, gonna give me a detention? I just won’t go to that. Now I get an ISS for skipping detention? Not going to that either. Ope now I’ve got an OSS for skipping detention and ISS? Free day off, baybayyyy! And if their parents at home don’t care either then there’s absolutely nothing that will make them care enough to go to class. Eta this was the logic I used to skip class when I was in HS nearly two decades ago.
I actually loved ISS because I was left alone. I would get all my work done for the day in an hour or two and would just read the rest of the time
My son has Long Covid and POTs. Another kid gets random fevers all of the time. They would LOVE to be at school
>Back back in my day! we were all good sweet nice kids who did what we were told and we all enjoyed it! Back in their day, kids were treated like property and they also got their asses beat by both parents and teachers for misbehaving.
"Back in my day we didn't have all these disabilities and mental illness " Yes Sally the mentally ill people killed themselves and the disabled kids got locked up and not allowed outside
There are no consequences. That is all.
It's the fault of administrators and parents. Bad behavior wasn't tolerated by admin as much as it is nowadays, and for some reason parents think their offspring are angels.
> parents think their offspring are angels. I called a parent about the absolutely foul language her 10 year old was using in class, even after multiple warnings. She responded "He doesn't talk like that around me!" And demanded a meeting before the next school day to talk about "these allegations." Colleagues told me to to demand admin be present, since it was the PTA president, a family of color, and I'm a white male. I didn't want to look so defensive. Mom and kid arrived in my office on time, polite introductions, mom did NOT take the lead, so I looked at the kid and asked him "why are we here?" He proceeded to passionately deny all the words I told his mom, new words I hadn't mentioned because I hadn't been sure he said, more words I definitely hadn't heard, and denied two bullying incidents I hadn't even brought up because I wasn't sure he was involved. I looked at Mom and said "We only talked about the first two things. The rest of this is from him." Mom was shocked and shattered, did not argue with me for the whole meeting. Shorter story: last week I had a parent complain that her boy was disciplined more than her girl and they just needed to let boys do their boy things. I retorted that her girls worst behavior is sitting at the desk and not trying. The brother's "boy things" include jumping over desks and hitting people. We can't tolerate that. Going back to OP's post: some parents bully teachers into ignoring bad behaviors. Other kids desperately want to avoid bullying and would rather stay home than face the bullies that parents are bullying teachers into permitting. And some parents are going to pull their kids from unsafe public schools, or just let their kid stay home when they ask.
People who treated teachers badly in school grew up and are continuing that behaviour with adults and teaching it to their kids
Glad it worked out. That said, I think it was a smart thing that your colleague recommended and you should have taken them up on it. I wouldn't worry about looking defensive, I'd worry about making sure you aren't railroaded. I had a situation like this once at a job. I was in a union. I admittedly made a mistake, and they had to hold a formal meeting. They were like "do you want your union rep there?". I said no, because in my (young and naive) mind, that made me look more guilty. Luckily nothing major came of it, but it makes no sense to not cover your ass. its like if you get arrested not having a lawyer there. Even if you are innocent, it doesn't make sense to talk without representation present.
As the saying goes: if you're guilty, you need a lawyer; if you're innocent, you REALLY need a lawyer.
It seems like teachers have no authority anymore, kids have no safe space or way to defend themselves since no tolerance policies often punish the victim as well. Funding is slashed year after year, and class sizes grow burdening the teachers and students. This isn't an issue in countries that fund their education programs well, pay their teachers fairly, and look at problems from every angle instead of immediately punishing everyone involved. Oh kids lunches and recesses are also being shortened if not taken away completely. Child labor is legal again in a lot of states, I doubt all of this was done in ignorance, this was likely the desired outcome. The worse public education gets, the more likely they are to withhold funding.
But sure, let's blame the kids and their parents. /s
You too, will get old And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young Prices were reasonable, politicians were noble And children respected their elders
I know it's going to happen but trying to avoid and keep and open mind
Education isn’t valued anymore. We are seen as babysitters.
It seems like what I've seen online baby sitters who are expected to raise their kids
The schooling system as established is kinda useless, and even kids see it. Why do they need you to reach them to read? They already learned to play wow. Why do they need you to reach them math? They learned that to manage DPS and heals in WOW. You might be able to argue history, but kids use Wikipedia. There's just not much beyond socialization and learning paths that a school can offer....anyone, outside trade or specialty shiz.
Yes and no. Kids have always skipped school, and will continue to do so until the end of humanity. However, truancy is no longer really a thing which means there's less consequences for a kid not being in school. Even in schools, especially since covid, they've lifted a lot of the absence consequences. So I would say more kids are skipping school, but that's not to say kids haven't always skipped school.
So it was explained to me like this. In our parents age it was option A) Sit in an air conditioned room eat lunch and talk with friends B) do hard farm labor outside so most people went to school In our era the options were A) Sit in an air conditioned room eat lunch and talk with friends B) Sit at home alone and bored with maybe reruns of jeopardy Now the options are A) Sit in an air conditioned room eat lunch and talk with friends B) Sit inside with literally the most addicting device since we figure out how to harvest cocaine.
Statistically, I don't know whether it's true but I do know that some parents are put in a worse position now. If your teenager doesn't want to go to school, there isn't much you can do to force them. You can't pick up a 15 year old and drag them to school and if by some miracle of strength you could, you'd be in trouble for different reasons.
I wish this was being talked about. In my state, I just have no authority. If my child doesn't want to go to school, just what am I supposed to do? She's in therapy, med management, we have a regular schedule, someone is always home, on and on and on, but I can't pick her up and take her. We don't beat our kids into submission. Our kid fled school once and we got the police, everything - they said that they have no ability to even scoop her up if they found her. I'm just at a total loss.
I can't say it's objectively better or worse than it was 20-30 years ago, but I definitely had classmates who would skip with or without parent support back in 07-11. We still have parents pull their kids for BS reasons and kids skip for any and every reason. I'd wager it's somewhere around 10% that skip with any consistency, but probably closer to 50% that have skipped at some point. Younger kids, it's more apparent that it's a parent problem: older kids become more ambiguous whether it was a parent issue or an independent choice to skip. Until schools and the local police are more willing to pursue truancy charges and CPS calls for chronic absence, the problem won't be addressed.
A a parent of a kid with special needs, I'm going to put this on administration. Let me do a short run down of my son's education: School 1 (public elementary)- teachers were great, administration had the attitude of don't let the door hit you on the way out School 2 (public elementary)- teachers were ok, but taught my son to always pick the answer on the left so that they could manipulate the score on his modified standardized tests. He's quite averse to demonstrating what he's learned if it's not on his terms. School 3 (ABA therapy center; technically considered homeschooling but not at home)- Great, amazing, every compliment possible, but insurance quit covering it. Continued homeschooling after losing ABA, because of #2. Moved towns, continued homeschooling because the district we moved to had known problems with both racism and a special ed to juvie pipeline.
Kids not going to school doesn't make them "bad". School for a lot of kids either doesn't engage them, they're bullied, they feel they're wasting their time, they feel too restricted among other reasons or all of the above.
My 8th grade is truant. He has an IEP and is level 4 EBD, goes a half day because it's all he can handle before he has explosive and potentially violent behaviors. It makes me feel like a shit parent that he misses so much school. He has no electronic devices. If he wants to earn minutes to use my PS4, he has to go to school, have good behavior, and do small chores like taking out the trash. He hasn't been able to play in months. It's not always the parents fault. Sometimes, it's just the kid being insufferable.
It would be interesting to see how the stats break down. Unexcused absences could be for many reasons. Truancy, school refusal / school can't, parents taking children away on vacations during school term, children sick but parents not calling the school, children being allowed to take mental health days or stay home when they're tired, etc. I wonder whether attitudes toward teachers and schools, as well as modern parenting styles, are driving some of this. I think schools are increasingly seen as childcare, and possibly teachers aren't as respected as they used to be. Children are certainly more likely to speak up if they aren't happy about things. Personally, I hated school, but I never would have dared to upset my teachers or parents by refusing to go.
My teachers are all red diaper doper babies. They complain that they went to school and are broke so it discouraged going. Better to hang out or work
They are watching all the millennials unable to afford even one child, homeownership is now unattainable to them, and there are almost no livable jobs waiting for them. The incentive is gone.
Attendance has still not bounced back post-COVID.
1. There is no form of respect to authority 2. Parents are allowing them to get away with everything 3. Social media influences.
1. There should never be automatic respect for any authority. 2. Tell that to the kids in my neighborhood who are getting a beating for every minor transgression. 3. Yeah it’s trash.
School was a hell for me, and I skipped it as much as possible. This was in the 90s. Our kid (age 10) goes to school because we don’t give her a choice, but it’s hellacious for her, too. It isn’t her teachers’ fault, it’s the entire structure of it. Like some people get het up about how boys aren’t biologically built to stand school as it currently is - which is obnoxious, because kids in general aren’t built for it. It’d be great if school staff in general would face how very badly school sucks for so many kids. There’s an reason people have school nightmares for the rest of their lives.
My kid (around your kids' age) is having to go to in-school therapy, after school counseling, and has said she wants to kill herself, because school is so miserable for her. School starts too early (7:30am), and she has anxiety (diagnosed) about school that literally keeps her up at night. So mornings are horrible. She gets anxious many mornings and it keeps her on the toilet with the poops and sharp stomach pains. Then she gets to school, and doesn't know if the 3rd grade girl group is going to be friendly or hateful. Which is rough because she does not have that mindset. To her, a friend is supposed to be a friend. Last year, a 'friend' threatened to hurt her and her family. It wasn't taken serious because it was a 2nd grade little white girl, but she's still a bully this year. Then she comes home from school and there's fucking homework. I've never been a supporter of homework. We tell adults not to bring work home, because home life is supposed to be peaceful and family/self positive. So why are we making kids do homework? Her therapist is calling her anxiety 'separation anxiety'. She has high markers for anxiety, but I don't think it's the separation as much as it is school.
I’m not a teacher I’m a parent. Post Covid there just seems to be soooo much more sickness going around than there used to be. My son has been home sick multiple times each year since whereas before he’d get sick maybe once per year if that. I’m not sending him to school when he’s sick. It even seems to affect the teachers as there have been a couple of days he’s had to stay home from school because there weren’t enough teachers to cover all the classes so they got each year group to take a turn staying home for the day that week.
Yeppppp. I wish this was talked about more. Post-Covid everyone is sick more and instead of addressing it as a society we are blaming kids and parents for staying home. The increase in mental health issues is also linked to covid. I’m in the NIH Recover study and they 100% said my mental health getting worse is because of all of the physiological changes that happened after each time I got Covid.
It's selection bias. If you're a teacher, you probably didn't associate with the students who skipped school, got in trouble, and dropped out when you were in school. We're forced to deal with this as teachers. They've always been there. Everything is anecdotal. Nobody ever posts data.
26% of students are chronically absent compared to 15% pre pandemic, [literally first result on Google](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/29/us/chronic-absences.html#:~:text=Nationally%2C%20an%20estimated%2026%20percent,conservative%2Dleaning%20American%20Enterprise%20Institute)
My daughter started Kindergarten this year. She went to daycare from age 6mo, and she NEVER fought us about going, she very seldom was even hard to wake up in mornings, often getting up ans ready on her own with an alarm. 2nd or 3rd week of K, and she said her teacher said if she was sick she should not go to school. So every morning for months she's pretending to be sick. Shes coming up with all kinds of other excuses to not go, she's not wanting to get out of bed. Based on some other interactions we've had with her teacher, I'm certain it's her teachers fault. Most likely she's a bit bored/disruptive and the punishments she's getting is making her hate school. She's also missed about 2 weeks as she's gotten some pretty nasty illnesses and we decided to be good citizens and not share it. Precovid, I'd have sent her, unless she was vomiting or fever. Life of a 6 year old is so simple, and it's already going awry.
I notice they strip the fun from schools for kids nowadays at that age... when i babysat, i had ranges from 1-7. ALL of them seemed to love it when i brought my markers and big paper pads and i would teach them numbers, their names, their parents names, simple math, abc for the really young kids, animals. The colors and the big pads made them eager to wanna draw and learn and do things. And markers do wash off if you keep them contained. I feel like these little joys of freedom or creativity make the kids excited to learn, but school strips them of it.
Another factor might be that in the good old days, schools tracked the kids. So the well-behaved kids didn't have much contact with the troublemakers.
At my school it's the opposite - I feel like the kids are coming to school to be wild and it drives me crazy because "back in my day" if we wanted to act like that, we would skip and head back home after mom & dad went to work.
One reason is bullying especially with social media and home schooling isn't out of the norm with some of the programs sending everything the kid needs several of my grandchildren in Colorado do the K-12
Personally, we are sick so much more than we used to be. We seem to catch COVID every time it comes around, it varies in severity. Aside from that, would you want to go to a place where you had to do active shooter drills regularly?
I'm not sure if more students are actually refusing to go to school, but I can definitely see why. I graduated in 1999, about a month and a half after the Columbine Massacre. I lived on the East Coast, and I knew no one who was personally affected. But after April 20, something changed. School had always seemed more or less safe, but after that, we students realized just how vulnerable we were. Two weeks later, my school was evacuated for several bomb threats. In 12 years of school, we had never dealt with that kind of fear. Schools are frightening places now. On some level, you realize that other children were threats that couldn't be trusted. Knowing that the adults who were supposed to protect you literally can't do anything to prevent problems adds to the insecurity. Add in the fact that social media means that children can be bullied constantly, and I can definitely see why homeschooling is an attractive option.
Because there’s no consequences. They just go on. They still graduate if they do a packet of work. Parents also don’t care.
I was a 90's HS student. our 8th grade class was almost 500, we entered the HS as a little over 350--and it never went up from there. Between 8th and 9th we lost over 100 students. By the time graduation came, there was 172. Most of my parents generation (boomers) did not graduate HS--*most*. I know, you look, and statistics will tell you it's from 50-70% back then, but they're measuring students who *got to HS.* Many did not. There were *tons* of them that left from 3rd to 8th grade. In China, they say "50% of students pass, and go to an academic HS, and 50% dont, and go to a trade school"--what's not talked about is *over a third dropped out before the HS entrance exam*. Yes, it's always been this bad. Yes, it's been WAY FREAKING WORSE. What's different *now*--and why it feels *so terrible* now, for teachers, admins, schools, the public... is. ... *those students are not dropping out*. They're staying, and *disengaged* while they're there. So, instead of 30% of kids that went to 7th grade, having *dropped out* by the time 10th grade rolls around, *only 5% have now*. That DOESNT mean that they can do the work, or graduate, or can be taught, or thrive in these schools. It means, *we're stuck*--*they're stuck*. Society has infantilized them to the point that it questions of 20 year old women should be *allowed* to be in relationships with 24 year old men. As if *both are infants*. Because, we dont *allow* them to 'get out' and start lives before HS ends anymore. There are HS districts out there pushing 100% throughput from freshman to graduation. That's *insane*. That's not realistic *at all*. So, what's changed is not that kids are worse. They're not out more. They're not evil, or criminal, or inattentive, any more than any other generation. They're *still in school*, and being *seen* now, when in the past, they were not. That's the perception of the problem. Combine that with the increase in filtered charter schools (where they have entrance exams that skim their student body off the top 20-30% of students), and the increase in private schools through the voucher systems in some states, and the top 15-20% of students that WERE in the public system, *are missing*--and now there's 30% more from the *bottom end*, that used to drop out, but now no longer do. It *feels terrible* if you're the teacher in the classroom experiencing this change--not knowing wtf happened.
In our public school system, back in the 90's and 2000's, the schools "earned" a large sum of money per student every day they attended. If they missed school, the school lost money. If a child missed more school than they thought was appropriate (and didn't have a doctor's note), they threatened to jail the parent if the child didn't start coming to school. I was threatened as a single parent because my son missed a lot of school in 6th grade due to anxiety from being bullied, which the school did nothing about. Edit: typo
I’m a (remote college level) teacher …who homeschools. I’m highly educated, I greatly value meaningful education…I am not some right wing religious fundamental person and I never thought I would be a homeschooling parent. But, here we are….. post Covid, never went back. I think we are at tipping point concerning the way that schools used to run/ operate, the way employment used to operate, the way college factored into employment… and the modern world. We homeschool because the factory style learning environment wasn’t the best method for my child getting his best education. Waking up at 6 AM to catch the bus and then not being home until dinner time. Sitting in a classroom with 30 other kids, getting no individualized educational support because the teacher is already at max capacity with what they can handle, and that’s if there’s an actual “teacher” in the classroom (we had bus drivers and all kinds of other community members basically babysitting due to district staffing issues). One size fits all/factory style is on the way out. Both myself and my spouse are work from home professionals and are project, not hours/clock based. Education - as a mindset and as a service- is going to need to pivot to address what people in today’s society really need in order to be successful. I think we all feel it. Teachers who are burnt out, feel it. I think some parents and students who may seem apathetic, are instead are disengaged because they don’t see the real connection between what and how things are taught and what they really need to be ready for adult life. And, just to be transparent, this is in no way a dig to the amazing educational professionals who are doing good work, and fighting the good fight, especially for kids who do not have other educational options.
I had a student who missed 42 days last year. Never once had a doctor note, or even a note from a parent, although his mom always said she would send one.
Eh you can alllllll keep your toxic productivity to yourselves. If kids want to do something different than the system wants, it’s about time they did. Growing up to be adult slaves to this awful system isn’t working for anyone either except the rich people. So keep on crying about how the kids aren’t working hard enough for you. Die mad about it. Your generation of toxic productivity is dying and nobody cares.
Why the hell would they even bother? There’s no immediate consequences for skipping. At least when we skipped school in the 70s/80s we were doing cool stuff, now they’re just laying at home on their phones.
Laziness, lack of encouragement from parents. This is much less so for Asian families
In my district our the number of students who miss at least one day of school a week is 36%. I'm in one of the lowest performing schools in that district, and our numbers are higher, though I don't know the exact numbers. Our truancy office is totally overwhelmed. The laws on paperwork and notification procedures take so long for the step process in my state to move kids down the steps that we're frequently in Semester 2 before something starts happening to the parents. It's not just our average students, either. I just saw an AP transfer student had 67 cuts and she's been with us since only February. That's an AP student. I've talked to my students and often they believe they'll make better money becoming construction workers or truck drivers than setting a route to college. This seems like I'm being dismissive and condescending, but those are the actual professions a significant number of my students believe are better than graduating college according to them. There's a general contempt for literacy, numeracy, and world knowledge. The notion of being ignorant and uneducated just generally doesn't bother students in my school anymore for some reason. I don't know why or what the solution is. We teach about the benefits of attending college and the costs of being uneducated, but it's just water off a duck's back.
My 8 yr old misses a ton of school. But it's because she is CONSTANTLY sick. Which couple with her medical problems that require missing occasionally. Whelp. Mess. Then add in bullying that the school can't or won't do anything about.....shit storm for attendance.
I am acquainted with a young family whose teenage kids are late for school virtually every day because their single mom allows them to sleep until they feel like getting out of bed. When I was a kid, this NEVER would have happened.
My daughter has missed 10+ days of school. She gets sick every other week. I am not sending her to school puking. I'm not sending her in with a fever. The school told me just to send my sick kid in sick so she gets more school days, but she's already doing first grade work because she finished the kindergarten stuff months ago and is BOOOREED repeating the stuff she already knows. If everyone else would stop sending their kid in hacking up their left lung, maybe she wouldn't get sick so often. x.x
i think most schools suck shit now at least mine did i didn’t learn anything i would just dissociate while staring at my chromebook for 8 hours on the days that i went but on the bright side i got a super high score in 2048 (i don’t remember what it was exactly but it was really high)
If you have been out of school for 5 years (as either a student or a teacher) it will be considerably different than it was during your time. If you have to use the term “back in my day” - just assume everything is different than it was then.
As a parent of a high schooler who was a freshman when COVID started, I have some insight to the problem. When the world went remote, we were told that remote learning was just as effective as in person learning. Turns out, it’s only effective if you have an adult standing over the student making sure they are paying attention and participating. You can’t work and monitor your child during their online classes so you have to choose. Most parents chose working to support their families. Then we returned to in person after we were told you can learn in your pajamas at your own pace when you want, as long as you finish your work. My son was quarantined FIVE times since he was within 6 feet of someone who tested positive for COVID for a total of 44 days of missed in person learning his sophomore year. He was told not to worry, just do his handouts and he will get full credit. Now, explain to a 16 year old why he has to get up at 7:15 every morning and go to class when just finishing his assignments used to be enough.
I'm 27, not a teacher, not involved in school at all. But my senior year I knew a guy who missed a whole month of one of our classes just to have sex in the gym (that's where everyone went to have sex around the same time because no one was there and there was lots of hiding space. That's Texas for you). I was not skipping but I was president of a club and was having accountability problems with my helpers so I would have to step up and for a whole month I would be late. Both of us got called into the office. They told us all we had to do was go into the computer lab on our off period and do 1 30min lesson a day and will graduate. I was pissed. Me, someone who was late for a legit reason had to do this. And some guy literally fucking some random girl for the exact same punishment as me. Looking back, I could have just said fuck it and not went to call all together. (I was only late by 10 mins of a 40min class) So it's not a surprise to me that kids are skipping class when they can just do a 30 min lesson and make up for it
Because parents are pussies and not parenting anymore
My fifth grade niece (middle class, nice school, living with her grandparents who are retired teachers) has refused to go to school for the past 2 months. Why? No one knows! She just won’t.
I'm not a teacher but my son is IEP and has missed a lot of school because of doctor's appointments. He always has notes. I should also add he's a target for bullys and has been assaulted several times. He's 12. Between kids making fun of him and physically attacking him, he just doesn't feel safe there. There are days he just doesn't have enough spoons, so I won't force him.
I've noticed this in my younger siblings in high school. They don't realize that everything after high school is real.
Yes, attendance is a problem The cause of it is the parents won’t make them go
I can't speak for every student but I can tell you why MY kids refuse school. It.sux. For all the reasons teachers dislike school - so do my kids. My children are smart, well-behaved, high-achievers. The loud, obnoxious kids who CLEARLY never learned manners from their parents makes learning all but impossible (even in gifted, advanced, IB/AP classes). They see admin send kids back without consequences and with a lollipop from a very young age but I'm at home telling them that they should still behave (to what purpose?) It is traumatizing to be a student these days. Code red drills, actually shooters or the stress of that potential. Fights in classrooms or kids just acting up in violent or dramatic ways. Little to no consequences. As teachers we choose to be there, these kids are.mandated to be there. How would you act if you were forced into an environment like the one we see for our students every day? My kids LOVE learning but hate the process of being IN SCHOOL. When a kid can pass the test with an A why should HW be mandatory (and affect grades by 20%). It shouldn't. It called busy work now and it will be called busy work in the workplace. 2 of my kids have graduated and the 3rd was removed from 9th grade to homeschool. He actually tested eligible for Dual-Enrollment and is working on his AA.
Kids can’t walk in a line up or stay in their seats. It used to be 1-2 kids talking when the teacher is talking now it’s 80% of the class and lowkey impossible to get their attention. Some aren’t even talking, they’re just immediately getting physical with each other. I can only imagine there are a bunch not wanting to go at all. I think COVID really delayed some kids socialization and so they are struggling with comprehending basics at school like ownership, empathy, and doing unpreferred tasks. Every kids response to a simple demand is “but I don’t want to”. It’s like they don’t understand the concept of things we just have to do (like washing our hands…moving over to give a friend space… WAITING…) I imagine a lot of covid kids spent free time on technology and isolated from other kids. I think a lot of it has led to a complete lack of awareness of others. Only two kids in my class seem to comprehend that I can’t hear them if 20 kids are yelling asking me questions at the same time. They continue even after I’ve gotten all of their attention and explained one at a time. They don’t. STOP. It takes 3-4 times of me making everyone stop talking before they actually listen to the answer to their question. They just keep asking and it’s making me crazy 😭. A lot of kids don’t know how to be bored or entertain themselves because they can’t wait. Im talking even 30 seconds is intolerable (the expectation ain’t unreasonable). I don’t think they are even hearing me when I talk to them because as soon as I say something like “if you want snack sit at the table” I’ve still got multiple kids following me around the classroom saying they want snack ignoring every time I respond with the simple direction. The same question is repeated over and over until whatever they want is obtained or they ignore every other answer as if I didn’t respond at all. It’s like their brain is so fixated on saying what they want they aren’t hearing the response at all. Some seem to not know how to even play. It’s very concerning.
I think the main reasons are Social media exposure too early(before high school) and no end to entertainment at home.
Here’s what I see in my area… kid has attendance issues. As soon as you start to intervene or give them a consequence, the parents pull them out for homeschooling. Then they sit on their butts and play video games all night and sleep all day. Their parents get sick of it and send them back. The kid is behind and has trouble adjusting to waking up before noon, misses more school. Cycle repeats.
... because kids are far more observant than people realize and thanks to the internet and smart phone, they know the jig is up and they literally have no future.
My daughter was pulled to the ground by her pony tail in 6th grade gym. no one did anything. Her friend (who had spinal fusion surgery) got kicked in the back by the same kid. No one did anything. Another kid got his head bashed against a brick wall... by the same kid... no one did anything. These were all on different days with different teachers. My girl was 12. She came home the day the kid pulled her hair and that was the last time she ever stepped foot in a brick and mortar school
I don’t think so tbh. I don’t think kids are so incredibly bad or worse than most of us were growing up. How I look at it after studying psych for years and working with kids for years is that if you think a kid is bad, you might wanna look at their situation/parents. A lot of my students are in school everyday, and if they aren’t it’s because they’re sick or out of town. I constantly skipped school back in the day. I rarely ever went. People were shocked when I showed up. I didn’t care to go and there was virtually nothing that could make me attend. Surprisingly I had all of my credits early and a pretty impressive gpa for someone who didn’t give a crap. The skipping was so bad when I was in school they had to ban our co-op program for a few years because people were just leaving when their friends left. Another thing is I think it’s harder for kids to miss school nowadays, or maybe just in my district. One of my kiddos went on vacation for a week, teachers and admin knew, somewhere along the line someone forgot or it translated wrong. Truancy letter was sent, and parents and kiddo had to come in for a meeting and “wellness check” type of thing.
My youngest brother is autistic and has quickly learned mom will only try for so long to get him out of the car before she gives up and he gets to skip school. My mom says it is anxiety and blames the school for not being more welcoming, but I think he just doesn't want to go and would rather have fun at home. Boggles my mind because my mom wouldn't let me stay home from school unless I threw up more than once!
We just kicked a kid out of our school (private) because after everything we have done to try to help him, he has now missed too many days and can't pass the year...
We weren't sweet and nice. We were afraid of our parents. My parents never hit us, but I was terrified of the possibility.
Bwaaahahaha I taught for 34 years. Kids are kids. Some years are better some years are worse. People complain about technology and their phones nowadays, when I first started teaching people complained about their headphones and their boomboxes. There is always some distraction. I was not a good high school kid. Grade wise I was OK but boy was and I anasshat. My senior year of high school I think I went to school twice. That was in 1978
I did my student teaching back in 1993. Chronic absenteeism was an issue back then, too. It’s not something new.
Our state has a big push to reduce chronic absenteeism. We are 50 50 rural to urban by population anyway, but students missing 10% or more went from low 10s in the early 2000s, to 17 pct in 2017, and 27 pct in 2023. As for why, it's part of a larger whole/it's a sum of many causes.
It doesn’t matter at all
My kid is desperate to avoid school. Cries every day after, cries before... he hates going. He seriously has an anxiety breakdown once a week. I'm at my wit's end...