Students who miss a lot of school probably are not doing very well academically. Students who are frequently not in class get behind and don’t learn as much as they could or should.
There are exceptions, but we suspect this rings true for the vast majority of the chronically absent.
That’s why the Mississippi Department of Education’s recent annual report on students who miss 10% or more of the school year is so troubling.
In the report, Charleston’s East Tallahatchie School District is listed as having the second-highest rate of chronic student absenteeism among all public school districts in the state during the 2018-19 school year. More than a quarter — 25.53% — of all students in ETSD missed 18 or more days of classes.
The figures are not as bad in the West Tallahatchie School District, where 16.76% of students were said to be chronically absent over the course of the year.
The vital importance of the role that parents or guardians should play in ensuring that their children are in school cannot be overstated. Parents must stress the importance of attending school and ensure that their children are in school as much as possible. In fact, they have a legal obligation to do so under Mississippi’s Compulsory School Attendance Law.
Furthermore, even if a student who misses a lot of school can still do well enough to pass the school year, their chronic absenteeism — especially at the high school level — creates a bad habit of undependability. That, in turn, could hurt the student’s future job prospects and earnings potential.
