Another Labor Day weekend means that schools across the country are back in session. You would think that with a school year starting, it would mean a whole lot of students would be attending school. However, that may not be happening as much as you would think. Last month, the Associated Press reported that students have been absent at record rates since schools reopened during the pandemic. In the United States, schools went from 15 percent of students missing at least 10 percent of school pre-pandemic to 25 percent. What could have caused such an increase in absenteeism in such a short time? A preprint paper released last month from Stanford education studies professor Thomas Dee shows how bad that chronic absenteeism became. An increase of 13.5 percentage points (which is a 91 percent increase), or to put that in another way, 6.5 million more chronically absent students between 2018-19 and 2021-22.
What is interesting about Dee's analysis is what we could not blame since there was a lack of correlation in the data. One was mask mandates in schools. This is important because an argument from the maskaholics during the pandemic was that mask mandates kept students in school. This Stanford preprint study indicates they did no such thing. Another one is that "private and charter schools are stealing students from public schools." This study did not show that demographic shifts in people moving or a crowding out effect from private and charter schools are not responsible either. The Brownstone Institute took some of Professor Dee's raw data on the research and showed a different possibility that the Professor did not discuss in his paper.
Above is the correlation data between the length of school closures with chronic absenteeism. What we see is a modest relation between the two. Since the decisions to close schools were made on a district level, it is hard to extrapolate too much from these state-level data. This also keeps in mind that historical data on chronic absenteeism are limited and it would be nice to see district-level data. I hope more research is done on the topic. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that states with longer school closures have greater issues with chronic absenteeism.
For those of us who had the foresight to see the larger issue with COVID school closures, this correlation is not a surprise. In mid-2020, I pointed out that it did not make any sense to close schools because children were not superspreaders and the costs would be great. It turns out that I sadly was correct. In my 2022 analysis of how COVID policy affected children, I covered school closures once more. I came across multiple costs covered in the academic literature that ranged from lowered academic achievement to lower GDP and lower lifetime earnings.
COVID school closures exacerbating chronic absenteeism makes sense when you think about it. Trying to get students to learn at home and sit in front of a screen all day severed the capacity to focus on or care about school. Students struggled with mental health during the pandemic. We can thank lockdowns and school closures for increased depression, anxiety, isolation, suicidal ideation, and sleep deprivation. Or to quote the CEO of Attendance Works (which focuses on addressing chronic absenteeism), "the pandemic really, really broke down connections between kids and schools."
We have to remember that it was not COVID that shut down the schools. Viruses can make people sick and kill them from infection. Viruses are physically incapable of shutting down schools. School closures were an active policy choice, one that was rejected by European schools, American private schools, and a few red states. Teachers unions peddled fear to keep schools and multiple school districts prominently under Democratically governed jurisdictions capitulated.
And yes, this was a major faux pas among much of the political Left in the United States. The New York Magazine and The Atlantic, both of which are prominent Left-leaning media outlets, pointed out the abysmal failure coming from the Left on school closures. The effects of school closures disproportionately affected minority students, which is even more embarrassing given how much those on the Far Left clamor for greater equity. The fear of COVID in many enclaves of the political Left superseded the damage COVID restrictions caused to students. If this article from libertarian Reason Magazine is indicative of anything, it is that various COVID school closure components, including American Federation for Teachers President Rand Weingarten, would rather whitewash history and wash their hands of the damage they caused children.
A theme I will keep repeating until I get blue in the face is that policymakers, politicians, and other decision-makers need to learn from the past mistakes on such policy debacles as school closures. Tough questions need to be asked about what policy decisions transpired during the pandemic because without that understanding, we are opening ourselves to letting fear get the better of us once again and making the same policy mistakes for when the next pandemic comes.
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