HOOKY EPIDEMIC: School's Out For... Ever in NYC

No readin’, no writin’, no ‘rithmatic for the hooky-loving students of New York City’s public schools.

A whopping 40% of the city’s 938,000 students are suffering, not from COVID, but from “chronic absenteeism,” according to figures seen by the New York Post.

That’s about 375,000 school-age kids who are “missing too much school and falling too far behind.” ie, playing hooky.

The current rate is up from 26% in the years before COVID, which wasn’t exactly anything to crow about.

However, the Post says that 40% might actually be an undercount. Students with COVID or under quarantine may be marked as “present” — I’m sure there’s a bureaucratic justification for that — or if they “logged in online or had minimal contact with a teacher.”

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Also probably undercounted: The number of days being missed.

I can tell you from practical experience with my own sons that logging in remotely is no substitute for in-class learning. Fortunately, my Colorado district ended such COVID-panic nonsense over a year ago.

All that hooky results in “low academic achievement, truancy, dropping out, delinquency and substance abuse,” according to the Post.

Meanwhile, New York teachers are lobbying for additional sick days and “true paid family medical leave.”

The city’s new mayor, Eric Adams, eliminated most COVID restrictions last month but still requires students five and under to mask up.

On the other hand, what were New York City kids doing before the hooky epidemic began?

Not very much and not very well, according to the figures.

School Chancellor David Banks admitted last month that “our $38 billion bureaucracy” has produced “a school system [that] is completely dysfunctional.”

“With 65% of Black and Brown children never [achieving] proficiency, it’s a betrayal,” Banks said.

Maybe New Yorkers ought to look at the bright side of this latest educational crisis.

Kids weren’t learning much in school before the COVID crisis, and they’re learning even less in school now.

Maybe parents should be grateful that their kids are playing hooky in record numbers.

Because they might not have been getting educated in school but at least by cutting class they aren’t getting indoctrinated, either.