Daily Herald opinion: In addition to COVID-19, absenteeism affects a new generation's chances for success

The story of the 2021-22 school year, much like the year before it, has tended to focus on the impact of COVID-19 and remote learning. But another theme also emerged from the release last week of the 2022 Illinois School Report Cards - chronic absenteeism.

It seems likely that the dramatic increases in absenteeism documented last year had a COVID component, considering all the confusion and hardships associated with remote learning. But the numbers also suggest additional factors may be at play.

Statewide, according to the report cards, three in 10 students were chronically absent last year - which is to say they missed 17 or more school days during the academic year. The figure reached to nearly half of Black students and to more than a third of Hispanic students.

The absenteeism rates were mixed in the suburbs, ranging from as low as the single digits in some school districts to as high as 60% in others, the kind of figure that cries out for action.

Responding to the urgency of the issue, the Illinois State Board of Education has allocated $12 million in grants to districts statewide to help them get wayward kids back in class.

The challenge is finding strategies that work.

If experience weren't teacher enough, logic tells us at least one approach that doesn't. It always seemed pointless on its face to assume that expelling students who already showed little interest in showing up at school would intimidate them into returning, and other forms of discipline also seem to have little value in making the prospect of going to school more appealing.

So, now districts are turning to practices that promise greater success. But it takes staff involvement and financial resources to reach out to potentially hundreds of truant young people, get to know their families, investigate the circumstances that keep them away from school and devise solutions.

Staff Writer Alicia Fabbre reported Monday that, among the efforts districts are employing, the North Cook Intermediate Service Center has hired two attendance liaisons and eight student advocates who will work in teams to reach 200 to 250 students and try to get them back in school regularly. DuPage and Kane County have devoted similar resources and intervention-oriented programs to connecting with truant students and helping them get back to school.

Success in school is closely associated with success in adulthood, and failure to attend classes can have a lifelong negative impact for a student.

"Just missing a few days can have a really great impact on a child," Amber Quirk, assistant regional superintendent for the DuPage County Regional Office of Education, told Fabbre.

Consider the risk for students who miss 10% or more of the school year.

There is no denying the data showing the harm the pandemic did to this generation of students, and no doubt, regular attendance was one of its casualties for many students. Thankfully, educators are getting creative to address the problem. In conjunction with more financial resources and, hopefully, cooperative families, that should forecast a brighter future and better school experience for thousands of suburban schoolkids.