What will be the consequences of the recent wave of truancy?

A dumber citizenry and more income inequality

Recently, a Chinese-American family moved into a house on our street. My wife, the sociable member of our couple, struck up a conversation with the father of the family, an engineer.

The conversation quickly turned to the neighborhood public schools. This is par for the course regardless of the race and ethnicity of new neighbors. When they buy their house, they pay a premium for the right to send their kids to good schools for free. So of course, school quality is at the top of their list of questions to long-time residents.

My wife assured our neighbor that the public schools around here are first rate. At least they were in the early 2000s when our daughters attended them.

The new neighbor then asked where our daughters went to college. This, too, is par for the course.

He was suitably impressed by the answer, though maybe he was just pretending to be. Neither daughter attended Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, or Cal Tech.

Shortly after this conversation, I read the New York Times’ report that American kids suddenly are missing large amounts of school. Then, I read Bill’s post about this development.

It’s a sad one. Sure, much of what’s taught in schools these days is either worthless or downright harmful. Yet, we want a country populated by people capable of understanding what they read, of writing passably, and of doing basic math. If school attendance is spotty, the prevalence of these basic skills will be spotty, as well.

One upshot will be increased income inequality. Why? Because not all demographic groups are skipping school with the same frequency.

Do you doubt that the daughter of that Chinese-American family on our street will attend school faithfully? Neither do I. Indeed, truancy will almost surely be minimal in neighborhoods populated by well-off strivers who typically move in with an eye on the quality of the public schools and who pay a premium for being able to send their kids to them.

Yes, the Times is correct when it reports that “students are missing more school in districts rich and poor, big and small.” But its graph confirms that absenteeism is significantly less prevalent in the “richest districts” than in “average” ones, and significantly more prevalent in “poor” districts than in average ones.

Thus, the rise in absenteeism can be expected to cause poor kids to fall even farther behind than they already are and rich kids to move farther ahead than ever. Over time, these disparities will be reflected in the incomes these people earn as adults. Other things being equal, there will be more income inequality than exists now.

The left will cite the increased income inequality as reasons for higher taxes on the wealthy and more government handouts to the poor. It always does.

In addition, ignoring one of the main drivers of the increased inequality, it will continue to take stances on education issues that, if adopted, will make things worse. For example, it will oppose funding charter schools where poor attendance isn’t tolerated.

It will also induce (or coerce) schools into shying away from disciplining misconduct — such disciplining has a disparate impact on blacks, don’t you know. This, in turn, will likely reduce the desire to attend school. What’s the point of showing up for a class in which disruptive students make learning impossible and perhaps bully you in the process?

The left’s consistent opposition to measures that might get at the real causes of income inequality — weak family structures and bad education policies — supports Bill’s view that the left’s goal is not to help kids or to ameliorate income inequality, but rather to use these issues and concerns as a way to “exert control for control’s sake” and perhaps to exacerbate the problems so as to exercise even more control.