Covid has broken the social contract between parents and schools

Reminds me of a story in which a day care started charging fees for parents who were late picking up their kids. The behavior of the parents then changed, from regarding tardiness as a moral failure, to viewing it as something they could pay for, whenever they wanted to, and therefore the amount of late parents <i>increased</i>. The way I heard it, the day care did not want this, and so they removed the fee. But the outlook of the parents had irrevocably changed, and since being late was now <i>free</i>, they started to be <i>even more late</i>. There was no going back.<p>I believe that this is the study in question, but I have not verified whether my recollection above (of the story as it was told to me) matches the actual study:<p>&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;2587744_A_Fine_is_a_Price" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.researchgate.net&#x2F;publication&#x2F;2587744_A_Fine_is_a...</a>&gt;

This article is UK-centric, but something similar is happening in the US: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;08&#x2F;11&#x2F;school-chronic-absence-record-rates-skyrockets-kids-stay-home&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;fortune.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;08&#x2F;11&#x2F;school-chronic-absence-record...</a><p>Test results also show significant decline in the US: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-pandemic-has-had-devastating-impacts-on-learning-what-will-it-take-to-help-students-catch-up&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brookings.edu&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-pandemic-has-had-deva...</a><p>My wife and I had just started sending our daughters to public schools when the pandemic hit (kindergarten and pre-k). We were excited about some of the special programs available in our school district. But the public schools handled the pandemic so much worse than many of the private schools, some of which stayed in-person throughout the pandemic, sending students home in clusters of just 6 to 12 when someone got sick... when nearby public school districts were closing down entire districts at a time on the strength of a single student&#x27;s illness. We moved our girls to a private school that stayed in-person, and I don&#x27;t think we&#x27;re coming back anytime soon. We&#x27;re pretty happy where we are, and I expect that public schools will need to spend significant resources managing their social and academic pandemic fallout, leaving less time for students who have not (yet) fallen behind.

Glad to hear parents are altering the social contract, and hopefully for good. Let people take their kids out and bring their kids in anytime of the year. Schools need to adapt instead.<p>Attendance isn&#x27;t fundamentally the problem. Self-paced learning is what&#x27;s needed here. It should be okay to have students at varying stages of learning the material.<p>Teachers should be careful about wasting class time with lectures. Flipped classroom model or similar is probably the way to go - lectures in video watched at home, class is for practice&#x2F;homework&#x2F;support.

Parents want more adorable family fun time and are taking their kids out of school more frequently to accomplish this.

In many areas in the US, state funding for schools is done using attendance data. tardies and absences result in the school losing funding partially or fully for the day (even if it is averaged across the school population). So, &quot;no big deal&quot; for parents and kids is for the school&#x27;s budget.

That&#x27;s an odd article. It seem none of the examples are of <i>persistent</i> school absence, but rather parents pulling kids out for a small amount of time. I&#x27;d be much more interested in the kids persistently absent.

&gt; Education research – and the experiences of heads up and down the country – tell us that attendance directly correlates to performance in exams.<p>We’re assuming test scores are a valid metric for success later in life.<p>Test scores also correlate with parent’s educational background, the community students live in, and their families income [1]. These factors are not affected by the student’s attendance, but attendance can be affected by these factors.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;students-test-scores-tell-us-more-about-the-community-they-live-in-than-what-they-know-77934" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;students-test-scores-tell-us-mor...</a>

As a positive, maybe we can consider this a bit like wfh vs in-person. We had this Dickensian workhouse version of work as somewhere you go for the day and give someone else your time. And in the best cases, this turned into outcome based work where you got paid to deliver some result.<p>Likewise, the idea of school as a place we lock our kids in for a fixed number of hours per day is potentially dated, and it would be interesting to see how it could transform to something more aligned with what we actually want to achieve as opposed to the process.<p>There is also a link, school prepares you to tolerate spending your day somewhere being told what to do. Maybe we can do better.

I remember in high school long wasted days of nothingness. Sorry but I agree with the other parents.<p>I do what I can to bring my children to school, but I&#x27;m not going to die over it.<p>School needs to change so much and we are so far from it

teachers, as a class, loudly declared they aren&#x27;t essential workers.