What is going on here? I spoke with school leaders, counselors, researchers and parents. They offered many reasons for the absences: illness, mental health, transportation problems. But underlying it all is a fundamental shift in the value that families place on school, and in the culture of education during the pandemic.
“Our relationship with school became optional,” said Katie Rosanbalm, a psychologist and associate research professor at Duke University.
non-paywall link - https://archive.is/6YVKZThe share of students missing many days of school helps explain why U.S. students, overall, are nowhere close to making up their learning losses from the pandemic. Students who are behind academically may resist going to school, but missing school also sets them further back. These effects are especially pernicious for low-income students, who lost more ground during the pandemic and who are more negatively affected by chronic absence.
BUT, BUT....we were just trying to SaVe LiVEs!!!!! Except anybody with a half of a functioning brain could have figured out early on that closing schools did literally nothing to save anybody's life, outside of maybe reducing vehicle-related fatalities. But instead those without half-functioning brains made major decisions that will set us back decades.
