COVID debunked decades of consensus around the salience of daily school attendance. During the 2022-23 school year, a quarter of California’s students were chronically absent.
Without fail, whenever my 4-year-old student Kimberly goes back to school, her return is always accompanied by tears. Sometimes screams. Often both.
The adjustment back is an arduous one. Kimberly (not her real name) has forgotten the routines. She has no idea what we are learning. She misses her mom. All the stress destabilizes her little body and she erupts into a meltdown, making the 50th day of school feel like the first.
As an early childhood educator, it has been startling to see absenteeism rise with the youngest students. Families think that a 4-year-old missing a few days is insignificant. Sometimes we as a nation think so, too. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. That time away leaves a child socially and academically ill-equipped for a successful school career. Kimberly remembers fewer numbers and letters and is less confident during classroom discussions. Before her education has even really begun, she is already behind.
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Students who have missed at least 10% of the school year are labeled chronically absent. Their numbers have risen significantly since the pandemic, doubling in some states and observed across demographics. During the 2022-23 school year, a quarter of California’s students were chronically absent.
Chronically absent kindergarteners are less likely to be fluent readers or become middle schoolers and high schoolers and are more likely to drop out. Even students who are not chronically absent suffer in the chaos of their classmates who have fallen out of step.
After the bell on a recent Tuesday morning, I texted Kimberly’s mom to ask if she was coming. She replied to tell me that Kimberly’s dad was responsible for drop-off while she was at work and he kept her home because she was sleepy and congested. The response was a familiar one. The pandemic trained parents to isolate their children and be hypervigilant about coughs and runny noses. Some parents like Kimberly’s mom gave birth to our youngest students in the same hospitals where thousands died from COVID. My handouts affirming that children can come to school when a little under the weather are competing with months of conditioning that taught parents to keep their children home no matter what.
Furthermore, COVID debunked decades of consensus around the salience of traditional daily school attendance. In California, where many schools were closed for over a year, many families at my school opted for a virtual option or homeschool upon reopening, keeping with nationwide trends. This shift reflects growing comfort with children staying home, and other parents with young children like Kimberly’s have adopted a skeptical attitude toward daily attendance. Kids were home for months. The world didn’t end.
But the time away from school did hurt students. Years after reopening, schools now have high chronic absenteeism rates and low academic performance, even for students too young to be in school when lockdowns began.
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To address the crisis, school districts have dispatched staff members like social workers, counselors and vice principals into the community to find out how to get their kids back into the classroom. Some districts have even hired contractors to do the work of truancy officers, renamed as “professional student advocates.” But repeating to parents through home visits, emails and phone calls what they already know about the importance of daily attendance isn’t making much of a difference.
So what can be done instead? How about paying parents to bring their kids in?
Hear me out. We have the money. The American Rescue Plan put close to $190 billion toward academic recovery efforts, and states are already using that money on interventions to pay staff members or external companies to improve attendance. But that money could be placed directly in the hands of students and their families. Paying students and their families to come to school would provide a source of motivation and could also be used to offset some of the barriers keeping the most at-risk students out of school, like housing and transportation costs.
We also have the political will. Students are absent in red and blue states — in the 2022-23 school year, the Republican-governed Alaska had a chronic absenteeism rate of 45% and the Democrat-governed District of Columbia had a rate of 44%. The impact of the crisis on all students leaves a path open for a potential bipartisan effort in collaboration with the White House, which has committed to improving attendance.
Of course, payments for attendance are not a long-term solution. With tens of millions of students enrolled in public schools, paying families can only be a short-term and temporary policy. And, yes, once the money stops, some families may backslide into absenteeism. But paying people to do the right thing has worked before. Researchers concluded that guaranteed cash payments were the most effective way to ensure people get the COVID vaccine. And, researchers also found that being paid for getting the first vaccine didn’t lower the likelihood that people would seek a second or third dose.
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In other words, payments can help establish a new norm, or in the case of school attendance, reestablish a norm.
Chronic absenteeism affects children and their families, but consequential lower test scores and lower graduation rates will lead to a poorer economy and a poorer democracy. This crisis impacts us all.
My commitment to Kimberly and her future means I will not stop texting, calling and doing whatever else it takes to get her in the classroom. But it isn’t enough. A problem of this magnitude warrants a solution of matching vigor. We need change. We need investment. We need it now.
Alicia Simba is a transitional kindergarten teacher in Oakland Unified School District and a Teach Plus California Policy Fellow.
Kids aren’t coming back to school. Why not pay their parents to bring them in?
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24.03.2024
COVID debunked decades of consensus around the salience of daily school attendance. During the 2022-23 school year, a quarter of California’s students were chronically absent.
Without fail, whenever my 4-year-old student Kimberly goes back to school, her return is always accompanied by tears. Sometimes screams. Often both.
The adjustment back is an arduous one. Kimberly (not her real name) has forgotten the routines. She has no idea what we are learning. She misses her mom. All the stress destabilizes her little body and she erupts into a meltdown, making the 50th day of school feel like the first.
As an early childhood educator, it has been startling to see absenteeism rise with the youngest students. Families think that a 4-year-old missing a few days is insignificant. Sometimes we as a nation think so, too. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. That time away leaves a child socially and academically ill-equipped for a successful school career. Kimberly remembers fewer numbers and letters and is less confident during classroom discussions. Before her education has even really begun, she is already behind.
Advertisement
Article continues below this ad
Students who have missed at least 10% of the school year are labeled chronically absent. Their numbers have risen significantly since the pandemic, doubling in some states and observed across demographics. During the 2022-23 school year, a quarter of California’s students were chronically absent.
Chronically absent kindergarteners are less likely to........
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