The damaging cycle of poverty and student absenteeism in urban areas

I just read a New York Times article that I found on Twitter which really got me thinking about the unfortunate presence of social reproduction in urban school systems. The article discusses current downward trends in attendance rates throughout Chicago, in general public schools and in charter schools. Obviously, students who have poor attendance are not only more likely to struggle in school and less likely to learn skills they need for jobs or college, but are also significantly more likely to not even graduate at all, often dooming them to a life of minimum wage jobs, uncertainty, crime, and drugs. All of the reasons the article gives for why some students have low attendance rates come directly from the cyclical effects of our economic segregation and stratification. Even the common reason that students are attracted to the idea of playing hookey to watch TV or play video games is a more likely issue in low income areas because of the prevalence of single parent families where the students' mother or father is lucky to have enough time and energy just to confront their child about the issue, let alone get away from work responsibilities enough to be home to stop them from coming back home. Furthermore, the fact that some students cannot make it to school due to how dangerous it is to walk through their neighborhoods also stems from the economic segregation that created these urban ghettos in the first place. Other reasons students might stay home, such as reoccurring sickness due to lack of health care and the necessity of taking care of younger siblings because child care costs too much money are also direct results of the widening gap between rich and poor in our country. I believe that any efforts to improve school attendance, such as starting early with emphasizing attendance in preschool and focusing extra resources on secondary students with chronic absenteeism, will only be partially effective as long as our nation's cities remain economically segregated and these students are stuck in ghettos, leaving their seats as empty as their minds:

Original Image: desk
http://www.flickr.com/photos/booleansplit/3616922753/sizes/s/in/photostream/
by: Robert S. Donovan

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