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Among the data points made available with the release of last year's Balanced Scorecard results was K-12 school attendance. The numbers are frightening. Approximately 28% of public school students are chronically absent. For this measure, chronic absence is missing more than 10% of instructional days per year.
That figure is higher than it was when measured before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is a big problem.
If more than a quarter of Mountain State students is missing that much school, they're not just missing academics. They are missing social interaction, extra-curriculars -- and maybe essentials such as food, shelter and safety. Meanwhile, teachers must work to keep them up to speed; and some parents aren't much help.
"They just don't want to go to school, and there is no one at home to get them to go to school," Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, told WV MetroNews.
Perhaps new efforts to collaborate when it comes to dealing with truancy, and expansion of the Communities in Schools program will help. Something must be done, as schools are overburdened with responsibilities as it is.
As Georgia Hughes-Webb, director of Data Analysis and Research for the state Department of Education, told WV MetroNews, "students have to be in school in order to be successful."
Students want to be in school when they --and their parents -- have hope. They are more likely to value education when they believe there is a goal worth chasing, an economy in which it is worth aiming to become a productive part. We've done a terrible job of giving our young people hope, of giving families the tools to break out of generational poverty and/or addiction.
In a data point as simple as public school attendance we see just how many families we are failing. Some of the answers may come from our school systems, but the heavy lifting is up to all of us.