As the days cool and the leaves begin to turn, the beginning of fall sees young Americans heading back into the classroom. Unfortunately, fewer children are following this perennial ritual of autumn.

A June study by Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) highlighted the persistence of chronic absenteeism in American schools. Already a problem before Covid hit, pandemic-era lockdowns led to a near-doubling of absenteeism, with the gradual declines in recent years barely making a dent in the problem.

And, as one might expect, the absenteeism problem has hit hardest in those communities with some of the biggest need for quality education. The AEI paper provides yet another example of how government policies often hurt those in most need of assistance, whom our “leaders” claim to want to help. 

Rising Rates

Overall, the study found that chronic absenteeism — defined as missing 10 percent or more of a school year — rose from 15.1 percent in 2018-19, the last complete academic year before the pandemic, to 28.5 percent in 2021-22, the first full year that most schools were in-person after Covid. (Malkus viewed the two intervening years’ absenteeism data as unreliable due to the pandemic.) 

In the years since, the chronic absenteeism rate has declined slightly, to 25.4 percent in 2022-23 and 23.5 percent in 2023-24. Put another way, nearly one-quarter of students are missing nearly one month (i.e., 18 days in a 180-day school year) of school per year.

In 2019, the Department of Education viewed prepandemic levels of chronic absenteeism as a “crisis.” Yet, as the AEI study analyzes, in several states — Mississippi, Idaho, South Carolina, Delaware, Oregon, Georgia, Washington state, and the District of Columbia — the average rate of chronic absenteeism post-pandemic is at the 99th or 100th percentile of prepandemic rates. In these states, absenteeism in the average school after the pandemic is roughly as bad as the state’s worst school before the pandemic.

Vulnerable Populations Hit Worst

Breaking districts out by various performance metrics shows that, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the districts where students might face more obstacles to receiving a good education are the ones most affected by chronic absenteeism. When divided into terciles (i.e., “high,” “medium,” and “low” tiers), low achievement districts have more absenteeism than medium or high achievement ones.

That trend continues for other important demographic metrics: High poverty districts have more absenteeism than low or medium poverty ones; districts with high minority enrollment have more absenteeism than those with low minority enrollment; and districts with high percentages of single parents have more absenteeism than those with low percentages of single parents. In short, the absenteeism epidemic is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities the hardest.

Harming an Entire Generation?

In a literature review to begin the paper, Malkus cites other studies demonstrating what logic would suggest: Chronic absenteeism harms student achievement on standardized tests, while making students less likely to graduate, more likely to drop out, and more likely to encounter social or emotional problems. He also notes that absenteeism hurts more than just the absent students; as one might expect, teachers helping students “catch up” on material they missed consumes much of their time and energy, such that the performance of non-absent students suffers as well.

All these harms demonstrate the pernicious effects of the myriad school lockdowns that plagued the nation for years after Covid hit. The effects were known at the time: Even 60 Minutes, not exactly a bastion of right-wing conservatism, noted in November 2020 that roughly a quarter-million students disappeared from the classroom that fall in the nation’s biggest school districts.

Yet the lockdowns persisted through that 2020-21 academic year and even beyond in some cases. While Americans should find the results of the AEI study disappointing, on many levels, they do not seem surprising. If districts discourage and/or prohibit students from attending in-person school for years on end, a good many families will stop sending their children to school.

Lest we forget, not three years ago, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten echoed The Atlantic’s call for “a pandemic amnesty.” That’s easy for her to say; she won’t have to pay the consequences of millions of students with a substandard education because “forever lockdowns” encouraged them to skip school. Weingarten and the education-industrial complex keep trying to stuff their lockdown history down the memory hole, but the numbers — not to mention sheer common sense — are too obvious and egregious to ignore.

Unfortunately, the next generation will pay the price, in terms of lost opportunities and a diminished future. One hopes that, through diligent efforts, families and schools can help coax these chronically absent individuals back into the classroom. Yet in many ways, if this next generation succeeds academically, it will be despite how school districts and the public health clerisy treated them during Covid, rather than because of it.