Opinion A surge in absentee students might require a radical rethink of schools

July 7, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

(Washington Post staff illustration; iStock)

5 min

The coronavirus pandemic kept kids home from school for months. Many of them still haven’t really come back — at least not full time.

Chronic absenteeism isn’t a new problem in the United States: The number of students who miss 10 percent or more of the academic year (the amount that most experts agree puts them at risk of falling dangerously behind) was high before 2020. But the situation was improving until covid disrupted good attendance habits that had developed over years of hard work.

By last year, the estimated 8 million students who were chronically absent pre-pandemic had doubled to an estimated 16 million, or about 33 percent of students nationwide. In D.C., according to a recent report, an astonishing 48 percent of kids reached that 10 percent mark — up from 29 percent three years earlier. Obviously, covid’s diminished impact on everyday life hasn’t reversed the patterns developed at the disease’s peak.

The causes of chronic absenteeism, which includes both excused and unexcused absences, can be opaque. The results, however, are as clear as they are concerning.

Kids who are chronically absent in their earliest years of schooling are likelier than their peers to struggle to read at grade level by the end of second grade — and students who still struggle by the end of third grade are four times likelier to drop out of high school. By ninth grade, one study found, every week a student misses reduces that student’s chance of graduating by about 20 percentage points.

As schools focus on what’s to be done, they might acknowledge what’s not to be done. Research suggests that punitive responses hurt more than they help.