It’s early in the spring semester at the high school where I teach, which means it’s time to have meetings about failing students.

What a treat!

This year’s crop of Juniors (to whom I teach English) are securely buckled into the struggle bus with their “on track” numbers (the number of students in the class who are on track to graduate next year) falling wayyyy behind other classes. Something like 1/3 of the students are missing required credits.

It’s not that they won’t graduate. It’s that they’re behind.

This isn’t the school’s fault, it isn’t admin’s fault, and it surely isn’t the fault of the parents or the students or the teachers. These are students who went through all the remote-learning pandemic nonsense right when “socialization” was most necessary — in elementary and middle school. It should come as absolutely no surprise that they are struggling; their view of education has been wrecked by years of shake-ups and the whole crap chute of “remote learning.”

The biggest educational detriment provided by the pandemic was, in my opinion, convincing millions of students that they just didn’t need to be at school. They went through years of remote learning, which is wildly ineffective, but they still passed all their classes. Now it seems like many of them (and their families) are questioning the whole institution of public education.

Fair enough. Question away! I say. But you can’t be surprised that over 1/3 of the class isn’t on track to graduate. And we certainly shouldn’t be having meetings where we point fingers and assign blame. “How do we best support students who aren’t showing up?” is a question that most classroom teachers aren’t equipped to answer, and the solutions are probably things that most classroom teachers can’t implement.

It’s not like we can sneak into Billy’s house and set his alarm for him.

When I look at a list of students who are failing my English classes, the unifying factor between them is they simply aren’t coming to school. And, on the odd day when they do show up, they don’t get enough work completed to receive a passing grade.

Example: Last semester, I had a student submit a total of 2 assignments. 2 assignments out of 25. And she still expected to pass! It came as a shock to her that she didn’t.

“I got a good grade on the final. I thought that would be enough!”

The student definitely could have passed — she’s got tremendous writing skills, speaks well, and I’m sure would be able to analyze a literary text — but she didn’t show any of that in her work. Why? She was only here for a handful of days.

That student isn’t alone. It’s happening a lot with the students in my classes, and it’s happening all over the country. In 2019, pre-pandemic, about 15% of students missed at least 10% of class days. After the pandemic hit, that number doubled, rising to around 30%. It’s been going down, but 23-25% is what’s being projected now (in the ’25-’26 school year).

(It’s normally the Department of Education’s job to keep track of these statistics, so it’s a good thing our nincompoop-in-chief shut the whole department down via executive order. Who wants to help kids stay in school, anyway? Certainly not republicans.)

Is that an over-simplification? Sure it is! There are other obstacles standing in students’ way — hello, cell phones! — but this problem, “Chronic Absenteeism,” is the first thing my school needs to tackle if we want our students to walk across that stage next year.

And, quite honestly, I have no idea what to do about it. Decisions are made by people who show up, but what decisions do you make about the people who are staying home?