Why has all the talk of student absenteeism focused more on changing students' behaviors than reimagining schooling as a place students want to go? Rick Hess and I discuss.
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But I’m struck by the way in which this discussion has completely ignored the most important and obvious question: Why don’t kids want to come to school? The current debate seems to take as a given that the students and not the schools are the problem. We know that most academic tasks are fairly rote and that students report seeing little purpose in completing them, and we know that many students, particularly the most disengaged, have few if any deep and meaningful relationships with the adults in their buildings. But rather than take these things on, our analysis seems to focus almost exclusively on what the students and their parents need to be doing differently.
If we took this perspective seriously, we would stop hectoring students. Instead, we would really think about whether we wanted to make some significant changes in our schools and we might enlist students to help us in doing so. For instance, Salem Middle School in Salem, Massachusetts, was able to reduce its absenteeism rate by more than 50 percent by convening students in a human-centered design process and using what they learned to develop a more flexible curriculum, create opportunities to learn in local communities, and design more hands-on and project-based learning. Much as the post-pandemic work conversation has led to a redesign of many workplaces to attract those skeptical of returning to the nine-to-five grind, we could view students’ slow return to school as a sign that we should redesign schools as well.
