Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?” Learn more.
I have a radical idea. As schools across the country grapple with how to curb absenteeism, let’s give the responsibility to the kids themselves. We should work together to modify our expectations for participation and attendance by taking the pressure off parents. Let’s ban the endless lines of minivans, SUVs, and buses in the morning and afternoon. This year, it’s time to give responsibility back to kids.
I know this seems crazy. We have a problem with kids not coming to school, and your suggestion is to give them more opportunities to ditch school? Are you insane? The answer is both yes and no.
We are entering the third year following the Covid-19 closures, and student absences are still above pre-pandemic levels. It’s not hard to see why. In commentary from the New York Times, students report they no longer feel an urgency or necessity to go to school.[1] With online learning systems now ubiquitous, our students know educators will accommodate their participation through various instructional modalities, none of which require a physical classroom presence.
While our oldest learners had to manage their schedules and workload independently, these same tools shortened the day for students in elementary and middle school. In the morning, at lunch, and after school, learners no longer had to rely on buses, carpools, or scheduled enrichment activities. Freedom from the classroom environment began the minute they closed their screens. The pandemic’s shift from in-person to remote learning enabled a specific type of autonomy, external to an environment built on rigid schedules and locked exterior doors.
One of the bestselling books this year is Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, which outlines the challenges facing our youngest generation. Haidt argues that over the past 30 years, American culture has overprotected and overindulged children, making them more fragile to setbacks, challenges, and adversity.[2] We saw this in real-time when students returned to school, stripped of the autonomy and agency they had during remote learning. Today, many students reject this encroachment on their autonomy, exemplified by their chronic absence from classrooms across the country.
In the book’s conclusion, Haidt makes a strong case for giving kids more autonomy and responsibility. Kids need to want to be at school. Our job as parents and educators is to help them realize school is not a place where they are trapped, but a place that provides opportunity and independence. If we start with this small change in how they get to school, we might motivate them to come back together.
For context, let me give you some data. Every decade, the Federal Highway Administration publishes the National Household Transportation Survey Children’s Travel to School Brief. For 2017, the year it was last compiled, only 10.4 percent of students walked or biked to school. Most students—54.2 percent—got to school in a private vehicle,[3] meaning a parent or guardian took time out of their day to drive them. We have clipped students’ growth and limited their independence by chauffeuring them to school every day.
Yes, in some areas, distance to school is an issue. FHA surveys show many schools are two to six miles from a student’s home.[4] This is significant but not insurmountable. With e-bikes, scooters, and hoverboards—many of which have a fifteen-mile range—getting to school without a bus or car has never been easier. We need to look at how technological advancements can create opportunities for unscheduled play and peer engagement.
Encouraging students to rely less on vehicles may foster behaviors that prime them for greater engagement with classroom material. A systematic review by Donnelly et al. (2016) found that physical activity benefits students’ health and well-being and positively affects cognitive function.[5] Data from IES suggests students spend around 6.9 hours a day in school,[6] with less than thirty minutes per day for recess.[7] Not only have we locked them on campus, but we have also cemented them to desks limiting their opportunities for physical activity. Requiring students to walk, bike, or commute without cars and buses might enhance learning and instructional effectiveness.
To make this work, we need radical change. Kids need to be in school to learn, and we need to make schools places they want to be. This requires changing our expectations and norms around attendance. Police and public safety must work with district leaders to ensure local areas are safe for active transportation. Neighborhoods need walking busways, and local public safety must identify streets that support micromobility during school drop-off and pickup times. LEAs may need central pickup and drop-off locations for students who must cross highways. Districts should install bike racks for students traveling to these locations. Additionally, schools need bike stands, charging ports for e-transport, and storage areas for transportation materials. School administrators must map out new walking, biking, and e-transportation options to meet all students’ needs.
Internal policies must also evolve. Teachers and parents can tap into school service organizations to build neighborhood paths through woods, fields, and roads. Administrators and teachers need to identify students in upper grades who can take on roles as crossing guards or walking-bus drivers. Programs like Safe Routes to School and Action for Healthy Kids can support LEAs and school leadership through these steps.
Schools should help kids who live near each other connect and increase peer accountability. Given that the youngest kids are absent the most, start in elementary school. Let the 5th and 6th graders mentor younger children. Schools may need to provide incentives like extra recess, dress-up days, or in-school privileges to these grades and reintroduce perfect attendance and competition initiatives. It is easier for kids to say no to parents than to a schoolmate waiting at their door to maintain a perfect month streak.
This plan may also necessitate shorter, more flexible school days, especially for younger grades. One that, instead of being six or seven hours long, is closer to four to five hours long. If students don’t want to be in the building, spending less time there could be beneficial. Instead of cutting time from the school day, consider it an opportunity for better time usage. Schools might need to open earlier and stay open later, allowing kids to stream in and out at different times. Secondary schools could adopt more flexible scheduling, accommodating work, extracurriculars, or other activities. Open gyms, playgrounds, and common spaces can support various afternoon activities and peer interactions. More flexible scheduling provides options for peer tutoring and extracurricular engagements. In other words, give kids more opportunities to engage without feeling overwhelmed by external obligations. Shorter days with more unstructured time before or after learning may motivate attendance.
Finally, schools must ban the endless parent and guardian car pickup lines. This will be challenging. School security needs to block access during traditional pick-up and drop-off times. Local law enforcement may need to enforce idling statutes. One benefit is schools will not need to charge for early drop-offs or late pickups, as students will have the autonomy to arrive and depart when they want.
By giving kids the autonomy to get to school and the peer support to help them, students may stop viewing schools as buildings they are locked in and prevented from leaving. Instead, they might begin to see school as adults see jobs—a place to do work, then leave when tasks are done. This is good; we need to give kids more unscheduled and unsupervised time to learn responsibility for their actions.
If we reframe school as an opportunity for independence—to be active, to be with peers, to be responsible for each other—maybe, just maybe, they will rise to the occasion.
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References
Active Education: Growing Evidence on Physical Activity and Academic Performance. (2015). In activelivingresearch.org. https://activelivingresearch.org/sites/activelivingresearch.org/files/ALR_Brief_ActiveEducation_Jan2015.pdf
Bricka, S., Reuscher, T., Schroeder, M., Fisher, M., Beard, J., & Sun, L. (2024). Summary of Travel Trends: 2022 National Household Travel Survey.
Carlson, J. A., Steel, C., Bejarano, C. M., Beauchamp, M. T., Davis, A. M., Sallis, J. F., Kerner, J., Brownson, R., & Zimmerman, S. (2020). Walking School Bus Programs: Implementation Factors, Implementation Outcomes, and Student Outcomes, 2017–2018. Preventing Chronic Disease, 17, 200061. https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd17.200061
Donnelly, J. E., Hillman, C. H., Castelli, D., Etnier, J. L., Lee, S., Tomporowski, P., Lambourne, K., & Szabo-Reed, A. N. (2016). Physical Activity, Fitness, Cognitive Function, and Academic Achievement in Children. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 48(6), 1197–1222. https://doi.org/10.1249/MSS.0000000000000901
Engle, J. (2024, April 4). Has Your Relationship to School Attendance Changed Since the Pandemic? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/learning/has-your-relationship-to-school-attendance-changed-since-the-pandemic.html
Federal Highway Administration. (2008). NHTS BRIEF National Household Travel Survey Travel to School: The Distance Factor.
Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press.
Jordan, P. (2019, June 27). “Walking School Bus” Drives Better Attendance. FutureEd; Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy. https://www.future-ed.org/walking-school-bus-drives-better-attendance/
National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Schools and staffing survey (SASS). Ed.gov; National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_035_s1s.asp
Perno, J. (2023, April 28). The Advantages of Walking to School. Www.hopkinsmedicine.org; Johns Hopkins Medicine. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-advantages-of-walking-to-school
Pete, N. (2024, July 4). Safe Routes to School aims to make getting to class an enjoyable experience for Oregon students. OPB; Oregon Public Broadcasting. https://www.opb.org/article/2024/07/04/safe-routes-to-school-getting-to-class-an-enjoyable-experience-oregon-students/
Rosen, J. (2019, February 13). Dangerous school commutes lead to absenteeism, study finds. The Hub; Johns Hopkins University. https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/02/13/dangerous-commutes-student-absenteeism/
Rovniak, L., & Holmes, L. (2024, July 8). Mitigating barriers for children walking and biking to school | Social Science Research Institute. Https://Ssri.psu.edu/; PennState Social Science Research Institute. https://ssri.psu.edu/news/mitigating-barriers-children-walking-and-biking-school
Tsai, M. (2023, October 5). Prevalence of Recess and Supportive Practices at U.S. Public Elementary Schools - PAPREN. PAPREN; Physical Activity Policy Research and Evaluation Network. https://papren.org/prevalence-of-recess-and-supportive-practices-at-u-s-public-elementary-schools/#:~:text=Our%20study%20found%20that%20providing
Zimmerman, S. (n.d.). Addressing Attendance through Safe Routes to School. Safe Route to Schools. Retrieved July 10, 2024, from https://www.saferoutespartnership.org/sites/default/files/resource_files/addressing_attendance_through_safe_routes_to_school.pdf
