Recently, I was asked to go down to the dean’s office. When I arrived, my dean explained to me that I had accrued eight absences. The dean said that this was a mandatory intervention and that my next absence benchmark is 13 days.
Under Nebraska legislature in section 79-209, school districts are required to have an attendance policy that outlines the number of absences a student can accumulate before the school addresses it directly. The goal, of course, is to raise attendance rates.
Since the pandemic, Nebraska schools have struggled to keep students showing up to school. FutureEd, an independent think tank at Georgetown’s University, has been tracking attendance data across the country. In the 2018-19 Nebraska school year, 14.7 percent of students were chronically absent–that percentage is at 22.4 percent as of the 2022-23 school year.
The numbers have long since connected suffering academics with chronic absences but does just showing up to school actually mean a student’s grades will improve in any major sense? I think not. If a student doesn’t want to do their work, they won’t do it–no matter if you have them sitting at a desk or not.
Chronic absenteeism is not the problem; it’s a symptom. And diagnosing the sickness means taking an honest look at the state of our education system and the greater effects of current culture.
Talking with some of my teachers, I’ve found that many have issues with the way schools function: practically, financially, and academically. There’s too much to divulge so to summarize, know this: the system has not been seriously rebuilt since its inception, and partly because of its rigidity, students are failing and losing their drive to continue.
Student apathy is also just a symptom. It’s a response to a greater world that is terrifying, confusing, and has been made nearly impossible to navigate because of how little schools actually prepare students for adult life. School is structured. School leaves little for the imagination. School is rarely unpredictable or new–in the sense that days are horribly monotonous for the average student.
Of course, it’s not solely the fault of schools but I don’t think it’s unfair to ask our schools to make adjustments anyhow. In a study that looked at the graduation and attendance rates at 29 high schools across the country, later start times have been linked to higher attendance and graduation rates. At one high school, after only two years of starting school at 8:30 a.m., the graduation rate increased from 77 percent to 88 percent.
This brings me back to the school’s policy on absences. Some students may benefit from adult intervention if their inability to show up to school is due to lack of transportation or problems at home. But there are an overwhelming number of students who simply don’t want to show up in the first place.
Creating a multi-faceted solution is important when dealing with problems that are multi-faceted. One size fits all just doesn’t work and, in reality, never has. I’d like to see schools actually talk to students about these issues and be more innovative when they invent solutions to problems.
That’s a place to start.
