There’s much handwringing about absenteeism, even though many understand that corporate school reformers have always wanted students to leave public schools and mosey over to charters, homeschools, parochial schools, or private schools when they can afford them.
Indeed, Steele and Hanover of the World Socialist Website offer one of the most honest explanations as to why we’re hearing so much about public school absenteeism. It’s the push for public school privatization.
“Chronic absenteeism” has become a catchphrase on the lips of politicians and think tanks purportedly describing the “failure” of the US public education system. The high rates of student absences from school are being weaponized to justify Wall Street’s demand for the privatization of public education, a top priority of the incoming Trump administration and its nominee for Education Secretary, Linda McMahon.
The right wing has systematically laid blame for the crisis—and attendant dropout rates—on the existence of public education. The Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025, insists, “Students won’t consistently show up for school until we have school models tailored to the needs of every family.” Championing this program of “school choice,” Education Savings Accounts and other privatization policies, the American Enterprise Institute made chronic absenteeism its “top priority” at last summer’s conference.
We do in fact know what makes a good school: it’s having the will to do it. Think about how the following have been sidelined in public schools by those who have used high-stakes standardized tests to destroy schools. Those like the groups mentioned above.
These are a few impacts that have hurt public schools and helped drive students (and parents) out of them.
The Arts
The arts have been removed in many schools. Yet, every child should have access to the arts. Self-expression is critical to students liking themselves. Studying the arts can keep a child focused on school and can also lead to careers.
Students should have access to qualified art teachers. Displaying art and watching children express themselves through the arts makes students and families proud. Without it, there’s a real gap in education.
Buildings
Is the school facility safe and welcoming? Is the outside of the school bright and sunny, or doom and gloom? How’s the temperature? Too cold in winter? Too hot in spring and summer?
Is the playground at the elementary school safe, colorful, and enjoyable? Is there safe padding on the ground, not concrete or toxic rubber tire dust?
School buildings are left to crumble in many places with with school privatization in mind. Some still contain asbestos. When new schools are built it’s with school privatization and technology in mind, with the idea that teachers are dispensable.
If we want students to like school, they shouldn’t see the school building as a haunted house!
Class Size
Class sizes must be manageable so teachers can get to know students and parents. Corporate school reformers have rallied against lowering class sizes for years. Here’s one example. Here’s another.
The STAR study showed that lowering class size in K-3rd grade led to better results. If nothing more schools should lower class sizes in these grades, making it easier for teachers to provide a rich introduction to the literacy classroom to teach reading.
We’ve known this for years, yet class size is still a problem in most places. Also, students with learning difficulties do not get the attention they need in large classes with inclusion.
Students want to be known and parents want teachers and staff to care about their kids. If class sizes are enormous, that’s not likely to happen.
Expectations
Are expectations too high? If kindergartners are now doing first grade work, assume that other grades are doing higher level work as well. Some children will do well but many more may fail.
When children fail at work that’s developmentally unreasonable, reformers can say public schools and teachers are failing. When children are led to believe they’re failing they lose interest in school. Why should they care?
Corporate school reformers appear to want public schools to fail. Thus, parents will be driven to send their children to outside schools, many unaccountable to the public.
Resources
Public schools become a shell of what they could be, when they lack resources. School library closures and the removal of school librarians is a sad example of this.
Retention
State lawmakers are either deceived by the idea of retention or don’t bother to read the research. Retention is unnecessary. There are cheaper solutions kinder to students. The research is clear about the harm of retention. Many retained students eventually drop out.
If you still harbor some fancy idea that children are given the “gift of time” or that being held back, especially with some different curriculum, leads to magical results, read Flunking Grades. Research and Policies on Retention Edited by Lorrie A. Shepard and Mary Lee Smith. Here’s the book online!
Safety
Do students feel safe? Do parents believe their kids are safe? Every school, school district, and state should have a safety protocol. Who’s working to lower class sizes to make schools safer?
Notice in this parochial school claim that private schools are safer than public schools, the first three reasons have to do with lower class sizes, a manageable study body, and chances for human personalization…student discussions.
But using concern about safety, instead of working to make safer schools, promoting negative headlines about public schools drives students out of public school.
School System
Corporate school reformers like to slam school systems, claiming money should go to students directly. But a system of teachers buoyed by support staff are necessary to provide them with a variety of learning services.
This includes administrators, counselors, school psychologists, librarians, office staff, school bus drivers and custodians. All of these individuals have jobs that must run smoothly for a school to function and teachers to effectively teach.
Support staff are critical for students to do well and can help them stay in school and figure out what they want to do in the future.
Technology
Many of these same corporate school reformers want us to believe that the pandemic ruined schools, that students were failing earlier. They may not say that for years there has been a concerted effort to replace teachers with screens either at home or in cyber charter schools.
Technology is important but it is not good enough to replace teachers, and lately there’s too much of it with a huge AI threat.
Testing
I learned in graduate school never to trust tests. I still believe it. Why do Americans trust the punishing tests promoted by corporate reformers and testing publishers? How do we know tests are developmentally sound?
Some testing is necessary, but so much testing and such strict alignment makes a school’s focus on testing, not the student. Every educator understands that children don’t always learn best in strict alignment and that there are many things that can’t be tested.
Tests should never define a child. The more variety teachers have for getting children interested in the world around them, the better.
Corporate school reformers have used tests to disparage public schools and teachers. Many parents take their children out of public school due to too much testing!
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Americans know what makes great schools. But the corporate school reformers can’t drive parents to remove their students from school if they’re happy, if those schools are working well. There’s no need for school privatization. So for years they’ve put up roadblocks, some listed above, for teachers and schools to make them fail…to drive students and their parents out of public schools.
Sadly, both political parties have been complicit, and now the Trump administration looks to be completing the agenda.
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