Sept 4, 2018, Education Week: 1 in 7 Students Found to Be 'Chronically Absent,' Report Finds https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/09/05/1-in-7-students-found-to-be.html As schools prepare to face increased accountability for bringing down rates of chronic student absenteeism, a new report reveals the scale of the task. Nationwide, about 1 in 7 students was chronically absent, missing at least 15 school days during the 2015-16 year, according to an analysis of the most recent federal data that was released last week by the reseach-and-advocacy groups Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. Of those nearly 8 million students, 52 percent were concentrated in schools where chronic absenteeism rates topped 20 percent…. Absentee rates were extremely high at schools focused on special education. At about half of those schools, more than 30 percent of students missed at least 15 school days. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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