short essay on skipping school

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Problems With Teens Skipping Schools, Truancy and Chronic Absenteeism

Teenager skipping school or being truant. Shown instead at home asleep on her books.

April 26, 2021

Updated on June 28, 2023

The majority of parents recognize the fact that children cannot learn effectively without going to school. Skipping school or some classes hinders students from gaining academic success, which may limit their capability to become financially successful.

Parents, being the primary authority figures responsible for their children, definitely play a big role in reducing juvenile truancy.

Truancy and Skipping Class

The term “juvenile delinquency” officially entered mainstream jargon in the ’50s as the popularity of rock and roll music and movies like Rebel Without a Cause gave parents nightmares but enthralled suburban adolescents.

Dropping out of high school in the 1950s and 1960s was fairly common among boys who could get good-paying jobs at factories that didn’t care if you had a high school diploma.

Apprenticeships were also plentiful, with plumbers, electricians, and auto mechanics training teen boys who dropped out in their junior or senior year.

By 1970, however, employers were starting to hire high school graduates exclusively due to industrial and office equipment requiring better reading, math and writing skills.

University enrollment increased exponentially during the 1970s as well. The digital revolution was just around the corner, employees with degrees were in high demand and high school drop-outs could no longer depend on factories to hire them.

Why Do Teenagers Skip School and Class?

If you have asked yourself this question one too many times, take solace in the fact you are not alone. An examination of surveys completed by teachers and teens indicates that 13 percent of middle and high schoolers are regularly skipping school.

In addition, rates of unexcused absences are consistently higher in urban areas where race, poverty, crime and lack of qualified teachers fuel chronic truancy among troubled teens.

Typical Skipping School Reasons

Parents are often surprised at the reasons kids give for skipping school. In most cases, teen truancy is not because they are bored or unmotivated. In fact, one of the leading causes of teens skipping school and class before and during the COVID-19 pandemic is bullying .

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 20 percent of students of all ages report being bullied at school. The most common method of bullying involved being called names, being insulted and being the target of rumors.

Five percent of students say they have been shoved, tripped and pushed. Most bullying incidents happen in school hallways or stairwells (43 percent). Fifteen percent of students say they are bullied via text or on a social media site.

Online bullying rates have increased dramatically since the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close and move to strictly online learning. Fortunately, the pandemic appears to be easing with the rapid rollout of vaccinations.

Most schools are expected to allow students to attend classes in person this fall. However, the problem of bullying continues to be a leading driver of chronic absenteeism in both online and “brick and mortar” schools.

Teens skipping school because of bullying

Other reasons kids skip school include (in their own words):

I don’t have any friends. Nobody wants to sit with me at lunch. Nobody wants me on their team during gym.
Teachers don’t care. I raise my hand to ask questions about something I don’t understand, and they just ignore me.
I hate riding the bus. (Kids in rural areas sometimes ride the bus 45 minutes to an hour to and from school)
Being labeled a “smart” kid makes you a target for bullies
I don’t have money for lunch, decent clothes, school items, etc

If you discover your child has been skipping school, sit down with your teen and ask why they are not attending school.

If you don’t get the results you wanted, schedule a meeting with yourself, your teen and the school’s guidance counselor to determine what can be done about your teen’s absenteeism.

Schools are supposed to inform parents via email or text notifications regarding their child’s unexcused absences. In some cases, schools lacking resources or manpower may not get these notifications to parents in a timely manner.

As soon as you learn your teen has missed just one day without your knowledge, you should take action immediately to stop future absenteeism.

Why Kids Need to be in School Every Day

When a child is chronically absent in grade school, research indicates that child will likely drop out of high school

Students who miss more than 15 days out of one school year (two days per month) have poorer academic performance indicators than students who don’t miss 10 percent of the school year

Kids with autism, ADHD or other developmental disabilities are twice as likely to skip school than kids without ADHD or an autism spectrum disorder. Schools offer special resources and teaching professionals these kids need to help them graduate high school and potentially enroll in college

When high school students struggling with depression, anxiety or other mental health problems are chronically absent from school, they increase their risk of experiencing worsening mental illnesses, social isolation and dropping out of school.

According to NCJRS (National Criminal Justice Reference Service), teens skipping school will cause them to lose interest in school activities and lower their confidence and ability to complete their schoolwork.

Statistically, juvenile truancy causes many students to get left behind or prevents them from graduating from high school. Researchers also show that children and teens that constantly skip school are also more likely to participate in daytime crimes such as vandalism, shoplifting, drug use and others.

Legal Consequences for Skipping School Summary. Other personal skipping school consequences for teens.

Effective Consequences and Creative Punishments for Skipping School

Consequences parents could invoke when their teens skip school includes:

Taking cell phones away
Limiting Internet time
Grounding teens from attending school events (when schools allow such events)
Deactivating social media accounts
Taking away a teen’s car and/or driver’s license
Delaying the start of driving school

Legal Consequences for Skipping School

Most kids are unaware that chronic absenteeism could lead to dealing with legal ramifications.

Is Skipping School Legal In Some States?

In California, parents of truant kids could be fined for failing to ensure their child attends school.

They may also be found guilty of an infraction and prosecuted if the authorities determine the parent has not attempted to keep their child in school.

Students between 13 and 18 years of age who refuse to attend school may be suspended from school and/or have their driving privileges revoked.

When all other avenues have been exhausted, habitually truant teens under age 18 may be put into foster care if the parent is found to be grossly neglectful regarding school attendance.

Beyond the Punishment

The best consequences for bad behavior lead young people to learn valuable lessons. For example, parents who deal with teens constantly skipping school may opt to address the issue a different way.

They may try to set reasonable academic goals for their children. If they meet this goal, they receive a reward. If they don’t meet this goal, some of their privileges will be restricted until the goals are met.

This way, children focus on the real goal rather than just school attendance. They also learn for themselves that when they don’t stay in school, they most probably can’t meet their academic goals.

After all, parents want their children to stay in school not just for the sake of school attendance but for the sake of learning what they need to learn to advance to the next stages of their academic life.

How to Stop Kids from Skipping School

There are many possible reasons why teens skip school, and while consequences and punishments for skipping school is an important means of behavior modification, it is not enough.

Finding out the underlying reasons why your child is unmotivated to go to school (or motivated not to go to school) is the best way to help them get back on the right track.

When a teen consistently skips school, it’s a good idea for parents to take extra measures in order to keep their teens in line. Here are a few suggestions that may be helpful.

Keep track – Parents can request the school to notify them if their teen is absent, regardless of whether the absence is excused. If possible, have your own system to track your teen’s attendance in school (like an attendance log signed by their teacher).
Is he being bullied?
Are there classes that he’s scared to attend because he’s not confident about his performance in it?
Are there gang problems in the area?

Talk to your child’s guidance counselor and teachers to find out if he has begun hanging out with a bad crowd.

Explore alternative solutions – For parents who continuously have a hard time keeping their teens in school, it may be best to explore other alternatives.

Depending on the reason your child is skipping school, possible solutions may include homeschooling, encouraging your child to see a therapist, transferring your child to a different school in order to avoid bad crowds, and others.

In some cases, sending teens to therapeutic boarding schools may help stabilize them emotionally before reintegrating them to mainstream schools.

Truant teens will only stop skipping classes and begin giving their best in school when they are convinced personally that this is the right decision to make.

When is it Time to Seek Professional Help?

For parents who have done all they can to help their child stay in school, the next step may be to consider sending their child to a therapeutic boarding school .

These schools provide caring, licensed teachers and counselors who can help children struggling emotionally and/or academically.

Therapeutic boarding schools also offer a holistically structured environment in which children receive one-on-one time with teachers, share similar experiences with peers and improve their self-esteem.

Who Can You Contact for Help?

When speaking to your child, coming up with creative consequences and punishment fails. You can contact your local education authorities for help.

Please talk to the school principal, visit with a social counselor or work with the juvenile officers to suggest ways that you can work with your teen to make school more relevant and or develop a coordinated plan to help your teen.

If all of that fails, and your teen is missing or skipping school, about to be suspended, or has been expulsed, contact us to learn how residential treatment can help.

Speak to an expert about Problems With Teens Skipping Schools, Truancy and Chronic Absenteeism and your teenager.

Connect with an Admissions Counselor who specializes in "comorbidity, mental health treatment" to help your teen begin their recovery today.

Why Parents Need to Monitor Skipping School

Students who regularly cut classes and skip school say their parents are largely unaware of their failure to attend school, according to “Skipping to Nowhere,” a report released today by the Get Schooled Foundation .

Besides that, these students don’t believe that their lower-than-average attendance will create any barriers to their eventual goals of graduating high school, attending college or getting a job. Often, they are wrong.

“Students who miss more than 10 days of school are more than 20 percent less likely to graduate from high school than their peers, and those same students have 25 percent lower likelihood of ever enrolling in any type of college,” the report says, citing the work of Robert Balfanz and Vaughan Byrnes from Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center .

In fact, 7 million students miss 18 or more days of school each year, according to the report, “ The Importance of Being in School: A Report on Absenteeism on the Nation’s Public Schools,” from those two researchers.

Who are the skippers? Hart Research conducted interviews in late June with 516 teens at malls in 25 cities to learn about their school attendance habits. Researchers found that students who do skip tend to skip a lot—46 percent of skippers are absent at least part of the day about once a week or more. Skipping school becomes an established behavior by the end of 9th grade, the researchers discovered.

Interestingly, the skippers come from all socioeconomic, racial and geographic backgrounds. The Get Schooled research indicates that 57 percent grew up in a two-parent home; 34 percent have one or more parent who graduated from college; 33 percent have a parent who dropped out of high school. Two-thirds report that they come from homes with average or above-average incomes.

Most teens believed that their parents were clueless about their children’s absence from school: 42 percent said their parents “never” or “rarely” know when they skip school. “This is despite the fact that 65 percent of these same students said their teachers, principals and others have talked to them about their skipping habits,” according to the report.

Teens skip for one main reason: ennui. More than 61 percent of school skippers find school boring and uninteresting. When they are not in school, nearly two-thirds reported that they are most likely “hanging out with friends.”

Reversing the Behavior

What works to keep students in class, and in school? The students themselves identified three factors:

Raise awareness about the importance of attendance. If students understood the consequences of their absences, they would be much less likely to skip, they said.
Make school more engaging. Students yearn for a connection between their “real lives” and what they learn in school. Relevance matters.
Deliver the right message with the right messengers. Parents, a trusted teacher, and a respected artist, athlete, or celebrity can have a dramatic effect on student decisionmaking when it comes to school attendance.

New York City schools, at the behest of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have piloted programs with the Get Schooled Foundation to reverse absenteeism. Because there are also public safety implications—almost 80 percent of all juveniles arrested had been chronically absent prior to their arrest—the mayor created an interagency task force to tackle the problem two years ago.

The city created an evidence-based model of mentoring called Success Mentors, and used “wake up” calls recorded by a variety of celebrities that students could request to help them get out of bed and to school on time.

The city also focused on parent engagement in elementary and middle schools by holding various summits at the schools.

“The one area that has been most successful is when we can report a success about a student. When we had a summit for chronically absent students and their families, we looked for any improvement—like five straight days of attendance—and we reported that. The parents are so used to being contacted by school when there’s a problem,” said Leslie Cornfield from Bloomberg’s office. “The response (to positive news) was overwhelming.” What Parents Can Do

“Parents are the very first line of defense when it comes to absenteeism or skipping school,” said National PTA President Betsy Landers, who participated in a webinar yesterday about the Get Schooled study. “Parents have to talk to their children about the significance of attendance.”

“Back to school season is a great time to talk about this, for parents to set good habits...There are literally more than 100 ways parents can be involved, from sharing their expectations, to setting goals with a teacher and deciding with the teacher the best way to stay in touch. A few simple actions will help parents know if our children are skipping school.”

Among the Get Schooled resources that can benefit parents of teens:

An Attendance Calculator that allows parents to input the number of days their child has missed to see how this may impact their test scores and graduation rates.

Wake Up Calls allow students to sign up for an automated wake-up call with a recorded morning message from some of their favorite celebrities, including Nicki Minaj, Wiz Khalifa, Chris Rock, and Tyra Banks. Thus far, more than 55,000 students have signed up for celebrity wake-up calls.

Schools can participate in friendly attendance challenges. Todd Peterson, an assistant principal at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas, reported that his school won one of these. “We increased our average daily attendance from 90 percent to 93 percent, and took 1,600 kids on buses to see the premiere of a movie. That was exciting, and the kids were so proud of it,” he said.

A version of this news article first appeared in the K-12 Parents and the Public blog.

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Plagiarism vs copyright, top 20 best books on american history, possible outcomes of skipping classes at school essay sample, example.

To start with, parents of a student who skips school lose huge amounts of money (given that it is not the student who pays for studying). In the United States, free education is a rare privilege; every single class skipped is worth a certain amount of money. Whether a student studies at high school, college, or university, it does not matter— the average cost of a skipped class is in the range between $50 to $100 (IFR). If a student chooses to skip classes regularly, it will cost him or her or his or her parents a lot of money annually, without getting the result: education and knowledge. The likeliness to get lower grades when skipped classes is another consequence. Whereas those who stay in class obtain at least some knowledge, even if they are not bright, a person who skips classes is at higher risks of obtaining no knowledge at all. Besides, teachers may have a bias toward such a student, and will treat him or her unfairly even though this person might be bright and studied the subject on his or her own. Needless to say, this situation can lead to a failure during exams or getting expelled from an educational institution (FRI). According to research, only five absences is usually enough for a student’s academic performance to drop. Five more absences would most likely lead to a decreased chance to graduate a particular educational institution: on average, skippers are about 20% less likely to successfully graduate. If a student studies at high school, he or she has a 25% less chance to enter any type of higher education institution. They are also 2.5 times more likely to have to live on welfare compared to their more disciplined peers ( Middle Earth ). Skipping classes has yet another not-so-obvious consequence: a student is more likely to become engaged in activities that neither the American society nor the legislative system would approve. Skipping classes does not always imply staying at home; more likely, a student would spend their time outdoors, and chances to get involved in antisocial behavior (substance abuse, shoplifting, gambling, and so on) increase. No need to say it can cause a person to enter prison eventually. Skipping classes is not so harmless as it might seem. It is a direct waste of money for all those who have to pay for the education—and such people are the majority. Students who skip classes are more likely to get lower grades and face a biased attitude from their teachers; moreover, they have lower chances to successfully graduate, and enroll in a college—of any type. Such students are also more likely to live on welfare, and get engaged in antisocial behavior. Therefore, this problem should be treated with all possible attention from teachers, parents, and authorities.

“The Impact of Skipping School.” Middle Earth. N.p., 16 Oct. 2012. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. <https://middleearthnj.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/the-impact-of-skipping-school/> “Why Skipping Classes is Bad.” IFR. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. <instituteoffakeresearch.org/artile/sep/1443> “Skipping Classes? Have Fun While You Can.” FRI. N.p., 12 June 2014. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. <fri.net/research/fake/articles/4392898/skipping-classes>

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It is a good essay which changes mind for many people 🤣😸

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The Impact of Skipping School

Research shows that student achievement suffers after only five absences. Students who miss more than ten days of school are more than 20 percent less likely to graduate from high school than their peers and are 25 percent less likely of ever enrolling in any type of college. Those who drop out are two and a half times more likely to be on welfare than high school graduates. Those who do attend college are less likely to be prepared, more likely to enroll in remedial class, and more likely to leave college before earning a degree.

In a recent report from the Get Schooled Foundation, Skipping to Nowhere , more than 500 teens in 25 cities were given in-depth interviews to get an accurate picture of truancy in America. The report found that skipping school is behavior developed by the end of 9th grade. Of current sophomores, juniors and seniors who skip, nearly three quarters of them started skipping in middle school or during their first year of high school. Class cutting transcends socioeconomic, racial, and geographic backgrounds.

The interviews revealed that most students face few or minor immediate consequences for skipping school, and many do not think missing class impacts their grades, their chances of graduating, or whether they’ll attend college. According to the report, more than 80 percent of students who skip school once a week believe it is unlikely they will fall behind in class. Nearly half of skippers are absent at least part of the day about once a week or more and 42 percent of students said their parents “never” or “rarely” know when they skip school. Young people are often unaware that skipping even a few days of school can dramatically affect their grades and even decrease their odds of graduating.

The Get Schooled Foundation’s report supports past research that shows a direct link between family engagement and student achievement. Parents are the most important defense against absenteeism. Following are some tips on how parents can prevent their child from cutting class:

Be involved with your teen’s school . Attend Parent’s Night and other school functions. Volunteer within the school. Get to know your teen’s teachers. Be aware of your child’s grades and attendance record. The more involved you are in your teen’s school the more likely your teen will perceive education as important and the less likely they are to skip class.
Encourage open communication . Allow your teen to vent about a teacher, a certain class, etc. without providing any judgment. Everyone needs to feel heard and understood. If you believe your child is facing a challenge at school, talk to their teacher.
Explain the importance of attendance . Give your child a vision for their future and then explain how skipping school impacts that vision. Tell them some of the statistics from this report and explain that skipping school significantly changes their ability to have a bright future.
Live in the real world . Students surveyed expressed a desire for a connection between their ‘real lives’ and what they learn in school. Too often there is a complete disconnect between their lives outside of school, their dreams and hopes for the future and how they spend each day. Draw the lines for them so they can see the usefulness of what they are learning.
Repeat the message . When the message to avoid skipping only comes from the school principal, it’s not as effective. Having the message about the importance of attending school come from several sources – parents, teachers, neighbors, the local truancy officer, police, celebrities, athletes, etc. – can have a dramatically stronger effect on student decision-making.
Establish consequences for truancy . Tell your teen that skipping school is not acceptable in your family and provide a consequence if you discover they have skipped. Parents should also inform their teens of their local area’s laws for truancy.

Final Thoughts…

According to the US Department of Education, skipping school is one of the first signs of trouble in a young person’s life. When young people start skipping school, they are telling their parents and teachers that they are in trouble or are giving up. Students are truant for different reasons. Yes, some just would rather hang out with their friends than go to school, but others may skip a day of school because they were concerned for their personal safety or did not want to take a test for which they were unprepared. It’s important to find out the reason they are skipping and address it directly. If they are bored, show them the correlation between what they learn and what they want to do in the future. If they are avoiding a test, determine the reason and help them with their studying or provide a tutor. If they are scared for their safety, work with the school to stop bullying. Do not ignore their cry for help… skipping school or cutting class means there is a problem to solve in your teen’s life.

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How Do You Motivate Kids To Stop Skipping School?

Nurith Aizenman

It seems like a no-brainer: Offer kids a reward for showing up at school, and their attendance will shoot up. But a recent study of third-graders in a slum in India suggests that incentive schemes can do more harm than good.

The study , a working paper released by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , looked at 799 boys and girls. The kids, mostly age 9, were students in several dozen single-classroom schools run by the nonprofit Gyan Shala in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Ahmedabad.

Gyan Shala's program is free and has a reputation for offering decent quality instruction in language, math and science. Still, attendance rates are no better than the average for the region. On any given day, about a quarter of students are absent. Gyan Shala's administrators believe many opt to stay home and play if, say, it's a festival day or a sibling who attends a different school is off or simply because they're not in the mood for class.

So the researchers challenged kids in about half of the classes: Over a designated 38-day period, show up for at least 32 days — that's 85 percent of the time — and get a special gift: two pencils and an eraser.

That might not sound like much. And it's not as if these kids couldn't get a pencil or eraser some other way, notes Sujata Visaria , an economist at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a co-author of the study. Still, such items are a treat in the slums where these kids live, Visaria says.

And the erasers weren't run-of-the-mill. "We spent a lot of time trying to make sure what they got would be a little unusual," she says. "Not a plain, drab eraser but something colorful and shaped like an animal."

Dear World, Your Grade For Educating Your Children Is ...

The kids could inspect sample erasers before the 38 days kicked off. The prospect of winning the prize certainly provoked interest. The students were nearly twice as likely to attend class during the 38 days. The effect was particularly pronounced among kids whose attendance level had been the lowest before the reward program began. They were now 2.3 times as likely to come to class. By comparison, kids whose attendance level had been the highest before the reward program also improved their attendance, but by somewhat less: They were 1.8 times as likely to come to class.

So far it all seemed logical, says Visaria. As an economist, she would expect a reward program to be most effective with students who don't already have some existing, intrinsic motivation for going to school — like finding class fun.

After the 38 days, rewards were handed out to those who qualified in a special ceremony in front of the rest of the class. The researchers checked back on the kids two more times. And that's when things got surprising.

Cellphones Or School? What Makes Kids Around The World Happy

The researchers looked at three different categories:

• Kids whose attendance rate was highest in the class before the reward program. They reverted to their baseline level.

• Kids whose attendance rate was lowest but managed to up their attendance enough to win the prize. After the program was over, these kids also reverted to their lower baseline level.

• Kids whose attendance rate was lowest to start off with and who did not improve enough to qualify for the reward. In other words, they failed the challenge. More than 60 percent of the lowest attenders fell into this category. For them, the aftermath was grim. They were now only about one-fourth as likely to show up for class as they had been before the reward scheme was introduced.

What happened? Visaria speculates that for these low-attending students, the incentive program underscored how poor their attendance was. So they may have lost what little motivation they had to begin with. Other findings in the study bolstered that theory. After the reward program concluded, the kids with lower original attendance rates were less likely to feel confident about their scholastic abilities than before.

Visaria says this result was not just unexpected and cautionary but disheartening. She and her fellow researchers had been prepared for the possibility that the reward program would not prove particularly helpful, or that any positive effects would not last. But they never expected it to leave children worse off.

"I almost felt badly about what we had done," she says. "That in the end, we should not have done this reward program at all."

school attendance

Skipping school and how to reduce it? The value of information and incentivizing parents vs. children

Development impact guest blogger.

The precocious teen who’s too cool for school—earning high marks despite skipping class—is a pop-culture standard, the idealized version of an effortless youth for whom success comes easy.

Too bad it’s largely a work of fiction that belies a much harsher reality: Missing just two days a month of school for any reason exposes kids to a cascade of academic setbacks, from lower reading and math scores in the third grade to higher risks of dropping out of high school, research suggests.

A new analysis of federal data shows that the problem of chronic absenteeism is both widespread and concentrated. Of the more than 6 million students who are chronically absent, half attend just 4 percent of the nation’s school districts and 12 percent of the nation’s schools. Nearly nine in 10 districts report chronically absent students, based on data from the 2013-14 school year, a figure that some experts believe is an undercount. The report defines chronic absenteeism as missing at least 15 school days each year, which is roughly 10 percent of the academic calendar.

Pinpointing the students who miss school that often is crucial, said Hedy Chang, a co-author of the report and the director of the advocacy group Attendance Works. “Is the issue that kids are coming to class but they're not learning, or is the issue that there's so much chronic absence that kids are missing out on the instruction, and not learning?” she asked during a call last week with reporters.

Robert Balfanz, the other co-author of the report and the director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, said districts with high levels of chronic absenteeism are located in diverse settings, from large urban centers and affluent suburbs to small post-industrial towns and rural enclaves. “We have to know where we have to go to find these kids who are chronically absent, and tailor our approach to the situation,” he said. “A big benefit of this report is it helps us understand the contours of chronic absenteeism.”

In the Philadelphia school district, 37 percent of the system’s 144,000 are chronically absent. Among high-school students, the figure shoots up to 51 percent. The districts in Baltimore and Milwaukee have similar numbers. For Cleveland and Detroit, the chronic absenteeism rates are around 50 percent, and more than 60 percent of Cleveland’s high-schoolers missed more than three weeks of school a year.

The report’s authors write that one common denominator linking these cities is the “nearly 100 years of historical actions that aimed to segregate African American populations in sections of the city with the poorest housing, greatest proximity to industrial pollutants, greatest exposure to violence, and highest unemployment rates, resulting in widespread inter-generational poverty.”

Tyrone Howard, an associate dean of inclusion and an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in an email that “chronic absenteeism is typically one of the most ardent signs that something serious may be happening with a student and his or her family.” He noted that students who skip school may be caring for younger siblings, experiencing neglect or homelessness—a plight endured by 1.3 million U.S. students—or facing related traumas.

“Such episodes can lead to students avoiding school for long periods of time,” he added.

Some districts with high levels of chronic absence have more resources than others. Chang and Balfanz’s research shows that affluent suburban districts, such as those in Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland, post some of the highest absenteeism numbers in the country, likely as a result of their growing low-income populations, though the communities’ wealth can provide the financial backstop to support students who are missing too much class. In fact, recent reporting from U.S. News & World Report found that some rich suburban districts receive more federal aid for low-income students than smaller but far poorer districts.

Also at risk are the hundreds of thousands of students in smaller, post-industrial cities, “places like Utica, Schenectady, and Albany in New York, and Syracuse and Buffalo, all of them have very high rates of chronic absenteeism, often topping 50 percent, and they all often have very high rates of concentrated poverty," said Balfanz. "That's part of the challenge, that many states have these sort of economically and socially isolated cities spread out across the state."

The economic malaise of these cities rarely receives national attention, argued Paul Jargowsky, a Rutgers University professor, at an Education Writers Association seminar in Chicago last fall on poverty and education.

UCLA’s Howard joins other scholars in advocating for more social workers and psychologists on school campuses to address the factors that may drive chronic absenteeism. An NPR story recently spotlighted a principal in St. Louis who acquired several free washers and dryers after learning some students avoided school because they lacked clean clothing.

Other researchers and school leaders point to districts collaborating with local charities or agencies to address chronic absenteeism. The Nashville school district joined forces with the city’s after-school program, called Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA), to share student demographic data and results on interim tests . The program identifies students who are struggling academically and pairs them with tutors to receive additional learning. School and city leaders in Grand Rapids, Michigan, launched an advocacy and training campaign for educators that has resulted in the absenteeism rate dropping by a quarter and student test scores increasing over time.

Such collaborations may multiply in the near future. That’s because Congress recently overhauled the main federal law for K-12 education, now called the Every Student Succeeds Act. The federal legislation encourages the lowest-performing schools in districts to partner with after-school providers and other community organizations.

“This is a beyond-schools approach—this is a multi-sector approach, and we have to use our data to bring in those partners,” said Attendance Works’ Chang.

The data point is key: Until recently few districts had the incentive to monitor chronic absences, and instead looked at truancy—a type of unexcused absence—or suspensions. But under the newly overhauled federal education law, states and districts for the first time must report annually on their rates of chronic absenteeism.

Still, Chang said data filed annually isn’t enough . While the federal data set her report used was the first time information on chronic absenteeism had been made publicly available nationwide (the data came out in June), Chang urged districts to collect the information on a continuous basis to detect troubling trends before they escalate. She also believes gathering information only on students who miss three weeks or more of school conceals students who need serious intervention, such as those who are gone for weeks at a time. Relying on cut-offs also obscures kids who miss just under 10 percent of the school year.

Beyond academics, students who frequently miss school are less likely to adopt the behaviors and social norms that employers, colleges and law enforcement may expect, experts say.

“Absence is often associated with low supervision … and alienation or detachment from conventional institutions,” said Patrick H. Tolan, the director of Youth-Nex, a center at the University of Virginia that conducts research on factors influencing youth development.

Camille Farrington, an education scholar at the University of Chicago who studies the ways students’ emotions and mindsets influence learning, added that "poor attendance itself can cause problems with healthy development because of the disruption it causes to academic achievement (and learning) and to social connections with peers and adults at school."

Students should also want to attend school, and not just for the academics, Chang of Attendance Works said. “We have to have an even more concerted effort around making sure that schools are warm, welcoming, engaging.”

This article appears courtesy of the Education Writers Association .

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Skipping School

Should parents let their children miss school for a vacation?

An illustration of a family of four wearing summer clothes and walking in front of a beach in the middle frame, while in the top and bottom frames, other children are in a classroom and a school bus.

By The Learning Network

Does your family travel during your time off from school? Have your parents ever let you miss a few days of school, or more, for a trip?

As travel has become more expensive and sites more crowded during peak seasons, such as summer break and the winter holidays, some budget-conscious families are vacationing during the off-season — and taking their children out of school to do so.

A recent Times article asks whether they should. What do you think? Is it OK for children to miss school for a family trip? Why or why not?

Tell us in the comments, then read the related article to see what others had to say.

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

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Skipping School: Is it Worth it or Not?

Just taking one day off from school can affect your entire life. Even though you may feel too tired to go, or you don’t feel like taking a test, putting school off gets you nowhere. According to a recent survey, approximately 63,000 kids skip school each day. Why are so many choosing not to go? Maybe it’s because they only see the positive outcomes of it. In contrast, in this paper I will explain the negative effects skipping school can have on a kid’s life. Most people don’t like doing make-up work because it puts them behind everyone else. However, others may think it’s easier to miss any lectures or videos, and just get to the assignment. Little do those people know how much it affects their assignment and test grades. At a school in Ohio, 50 students of the same age and GPA were put into a class that none of them knew anything about. Some were told to miss around 20% of the class periods, others were permitted to miss one lecture, and the third group couldn’t miss anything. At the class final, the students who attended class every day passed by a large margin, and it went downhill from there. Think of it like this: for every day of school you skip, that’s one percent your grade can go down. Not only can skipping school have a toll on your academics, but it can damage your personal life, too. Some activities that students take part in while they are skipping class can be deadly. Studies have shown that kids can become involved in drugs, alcohol, gangs, vandalism and more, of which none result in a positive outcome. For instance, in Florida two years ago, three high school students decided to skip the last day of school and go down to the beach. On their way, they were in a car accident and all were killed. Going through one more day of school could have saved their lives. Skipping school determines your everyday life but has just as big of an impact on your future. Missing important lessons on school can lead to missing questions on major tests like the HSPE or SAT/ACT. Also, being involved in some of the activities I listed above while skipping school can lead to suspension, expulsion, or even jail. Going to school will keep you safer and makes your resume and future applications look much better. In brief, skipping school has more negative than positive sides. Teachers and students should not allow anyone to miss out on school and then come back with no consequences. There should be a certain number of “sick days” that a person is allowed before suspension or possible expulsion comes into place. In my opinion, it should be school every day or no school at all. Whatever one you choose is your decision, but consider your future before you turn off the alarm clock.

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Sophomoric Skipping: Determining Fair Consequences

Snapshot : should a student who skipped school be allowed to make up missing work this case explores dilemmas that arise when academic consequences are linked to behavioral infractions. how can schools discourage dangerous behavior without endangering learning .

Case Description : Sophomore Skip Day is a longstanding tradition at small-town, middle-class Wingrave High School. But concerns about equity and safety have led administrators to implement a new policy aimed at discouraging students from skipping school. These new consequences mean that students will not be able to make up any work they miss for an unexcused absence. The new policy is quickly put to the test when three sophomores skip school and find themselves publicly outed on social media. One of those boys is now in danger of failing biology after missing the chance to present a big project—a presentation that was moved because of snow days.

This case explores important dilemmas related to school discipline. How far should schools go to discourage students from engaging in risky behavior? How can teachers and administrators determine just consequences for infractions? Are blanket discipline policies essential for consistency and fairness—or does fairness require leaving room for individual exceptions? What do schools teach students when they aren’t allowed to make up missing work?

Additional Resources:

While the students in the case are sophomores, at many schools around the country the tradition is for seniors to skip school. For a look at how one school tried to end their tradition of Senior Skip Day, read this account from the Acalanes Blueprint, the student newspaper of Acalanes High School in California.
There is a movement in education to ensure that grades reflect student learning, rather than student behavior. This article , written by a high school assistant principal, describes how and why one school rewrote their grading policies so that students with unexcused absences (like Rocco) could make up their missing assignments.

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Skipping class has big societal impact, experts say

Skipping class only two days a month adds up to nearly five weeks of missed school a year. This is the reality for a growing number of students who are labelled with ‘chronic absenteeism’.

School is the place where you learn crucial knowledge about the world, develop social skills with your peers and learn the importance of discipline.

However, with 15.6 percent of students in Michigan alone being chronically absent in the 2016/17 academic year, many students are missing out on core development milestones that school provides.

Education experts say chronic absenteeism, which starts as early as kindergarten, increases the likelihood that children are unable to read well by third grade, fail classes in middle school and drop out of high school, reports The Detroit News .

“The reality is they are missing school, no matter what the reason is. The data is clear on the negative outcomes. If you aren’t there, you aren’t being successful,” said Kyle Guerrant, deputy superintendent of finance and operations with the Michigan Department of Education.

https://twitter.com/samiramoosa/status/940895449266798593

Last school year, kindergartners had the highest rates of chronic absenteeism among all grades, with seniors being close behind, according to The Detroit News . About 20.4 percent of kindergartners were chronically absent while 20.2 percent of seniors were.

The statistics also reveal a worrying social trend, with African-American students having the highest rates of chronic absenteeism at 31.9 percent. Students with disabilities, considered economically disadvantaged and those who were identified as homeless, were also more likely to be chronically absent.

If chronic absenteeism is prevalent among certain disadvantaged minorities, it is unlikely these students will ever gain the same level of education as their peers. Education is one of society’s greatest tools in promoting social mobility, but if certain groups are not attending school, it is unlikely this will ever come to fruition.

“If our kids aren’t in school, it’s pretty tough for them to succeed and thrive. Kids who are successful in school are more likely to be contributing citizens. Attendance is our earliest warning sign that kids are off track,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, what are the consequences of skipping classes in high school.

Hi friends, quick question because I've heard mixed things: What actually happens if you skip classes in high school? I’m not planning on doing it, but I'm curious about how it affects stuff like transcripts, college apps, or even graduation. Is there a record of it that colleges see?

Skipping classes in high school can lead to a few direct and indirect consequences that are important to be aware of. Firstly, many high schools record attendance as part of the student’s official record. While these attendance details might not be a part of your transcript, habitual skipping can be reflected in your overall performance and teacher recommendations, which are components of your college application. Teachers and counselors who write recommendations are less likely to provide strong support for students who don't show commitment or responsibility.

Poor attendance can lead to lower grades due to missed instruction and participation points, and consequently, it can impact your GPA. Moreover, excessive unexcused absences can trigger truancy actions, which come with their own legal and academic repercussions. As for graduation, each school has its own attendance policy that students must comply with to be eligible to graduate.

In summary, skipping classes is a short-term action that can have long-term negative effects on your academic journey and college prospects.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

Students Skipping School

Truancy has been a problem since the first schools. In the past, students were punished by parents and their schools for skipping. Today however, with many human rights laws and rules against punishing children (Parliament of Canada), truancy comes with almost no consequences and has grown in popularity (The Independent).

Truancy is often caused by the students’ family problems, abuse and neglect, mental and physical health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, low self esteem, lack of friends, safety concerns and a number of other reasons.

Some effects of truancy on students include involvement in crime, more likely to be unemployed, decreased academics, and risk of not obtaining a higher education (GTC Michigan). Truancy not only effects the truant student itself, but also an entire class, when a teacher slows down to help him catch up.

Theory B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) was only concerned with observable behaviors, not the mental processes behind them. Skinner used animals to study how the use of rewards and punishment can influence behavior, which became known as operant conditioning.

He performed the Skinner box experiment, where a rat in a cage must press a button for food to be released into the cage. After the food has run out, the rat stopped pressing the button after a few futile attempts. This is called extinction.

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) studied “self actualizing” people, which is reaching one’s full potential, only after basic needs are met. Maslow created his Hierarchy of Needs, it explains that basic needs must be fulfilled before higher order needs become important.

Proficient in: Education

“ Ok, let me say I’m extremely satisfy with the result while it was a last minute thing. I really enjoy the effort put in. ”

Carl Rogers (1902 – 1987) developed client-centered therapy. This approach focuses on the potential of each person to realize his or her own growth in self-awareness and self-fulfillment.

I think B.F Skinner’s research could be applied to the issue of skipping school the best. Although therapy is important for truant students, rewards and punishments are more important. School is a place that teaches discipline, and Skinner’s idea demonstrates just that. Solutions The following are some possible solutions to dealing with truancy in the classroom. 1. Make students feel needed at school. To do this, teachers can assign certain responsibilities to the students, such as group projects. This way, the students will feel a responsibility to others and may be less likely to skip because they will feel guilty.

2. Use a reward system (operant conditioning). Offer truant students a reward for perfect attendance for a certain amount of time. This may encourage them to attend school for the reward. 3. Make students feel liked at school. To do this, teachers can display students’ work, be supportive of students, and engage students in group activities and clubs where they can be social and do work at the same time. 4. Work together with the truant students’ families. Find out why the student skips school and figure out a solution to prevent or change this behavior. This is an effective method because the families know the students the best and can find productive solutions together with the school.

5. Find out why the students skip school and figure out a solution. Counseling groups and guidance counselors are very important for this role, but they must respect the students’ opinions and statements and work with them to fix their problems (client-centered therapy). 6. Some students skip school because they are failing and see no point of returning to school. Teachers should give these students an opportunity to make up for their missing work and provide extra help at lunch or after school. 7. Make sure that the school is a safe and positive atmosphere for all students. Teach students to respect each other through assemblies and in class work. Increase teacher supervision. Conduct student surveys to find out how they feel about the school environment. Be open to suggestions from students on how to improve the school environment.

Cite this page

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Skipping School

28 Best Excuses for Getting Out of School

Last Updated: January 25, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff . Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. There are 20 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 326,611 times. Learn more...

Sometimes, going to school sounds like the worst thing ever. You have your reasons, but they might not be convincing ones for your parents or teachers. If you need a good excuse to miss school, you’ve come to the right place. There are a ton of things you can say that can snag you a day off, or at least a few hours of reprieve from the stresses of school. Read on for 28 excuses to pull off the great escape!

Excuses to Tell Your Parents

“My stomach really hurts—I think I might have eaten something funky yesterday.”
“My head is pounding and it hurt when I turned my light on this morning.”
“I’m really not feeling well this morning.”

“My friend just texted me and said they have COVID. I was with them all day yesterday.”
“I got a notification on my phone that there was a COVID exposure at school.”
“My teacher went home early with COVID symptoms yesterday and I’m worried.”

Step 3 You didn’t sleep well last night.

“I didn’t get any sleep last night. I was up late studying.”
“I had this horrible nightmare and stared at the ceiling until 6 AM”
“I was tossing and turning all night and barely slept an hour.”

“I’m sorry I had all these assignments and couldn’t finish them before I passed out asleep.”
“My biology project ended up taking longer than I expected and I didn’t finish my math homework.”
“I was waiting for my partner to finish the first part and they didn’t get it back to me until this morning.”

“This test is supposed to be super hard and I want to make sure I do well on it.”
“My friend bombed this test and it’s got me really worried.”
“If I get a good grade on this test, I’m guaranteed an A for the semester.”

Step 6 You’re working on a personal project.

“I really want to memorize this song before the talent show on Saturday.”
“I think getting extra time to work on my project will mean I can use it in the future for jobs and stuff!”
“My friend’s birthday is coming up and I’d like to finish the blanket I’m knitting for them.”

Step 7 Your friend is having a personal emergency.

“My friend’s dog passed away yesterday, and she could really use someone to comfort her.”
“Finn's parents are gone for the next couple days and he got sick! I want to go over and help him with his homework.”
“Yesterday, Beth got into a huge fight with Fiona. I want to try to work things out between them.”

Step 8 You want to take a mental health day.

“I’ve been really stressed lately and could use a day to catch up on sleep.”
“I really haven’t been feeling mentally okay the past few days and need a break.”
“I’m burned out and don’t want it to affect my schoolwork.”

“I just started my period today and my cramps are awful!”
“I’m really nauseous—I started my period yesterday.”

“Ah I slept in! I’m so sorry! I was just so tired.”
“My phone died so my alarm didn’t go off.”
“I forgot to set my alarm so I slept in!”

Step 11 There’s something wrong with the school building.

“I had to come back early because the school was freezing! The heating broke.”
“The teacher sent us home early because she smelled something in the room. She says it might be a gas leak.”

Step 12 You want to spend more time with your parents.

“I just feel like I never get to see you and would appreciate the extra time.”
“I wish I could see you more often when you aren’t working.”
“There are some things I need to talk to you about.”

Step 13 You’re avoiding certain people at school.

“I got in a huge fight with Martina yesterday and I don’t want to see her at school today.”
“My teacher has been really stressing me out recently.”
“I completely messed up talking to this person I like and I’ll die of embarrassment if I have to see them.”

Step 14 You just don’t want to go to school.

“I really just don't want to go to school today. I promise to go tomorrow."
“Some things have been bothering me and I could really use the day to talk about them."
“I'm constantly worried and stressed at school and I don't know how to make it better."

Excuses to Tell Your Teachers

Step 1 You’re going on a family vacation.

“My family is going to the lake up north for the weekend. We’ll be driving all day Monday, so I won’t be in class.”
“Hi Ms. Garcia, I’m just letting you know I’m not going to be here on November 1st or November 2nd—my parents and I are visiting family.”
“Our flight back from Paris was delayed, so I’m going to miss a day of school while they rebook it.”

“Sorry Mr. Hawthorne! I left my medicine at home and had to go back and get it.”
“I left my homework sitting on the counter.”
“I nearly locked myself out of the house leaving my keys, so I had to rush back before Mom left for work.”

“My grandmother passed away last night. We’re having a funeral on April 10th.”
“Mr. Blanchet, I’m not being in class on April 10th. I have to go to a funeral.”

"I've had a toothache for the past couple days and needed to go to the dentist for it."
"My cleaning was scheduled in the middle of class. If I didn't go I would have had to wait another month."
"My appointment changed suddenly so I had to rush over there."

Step 5 You were performing an act of kindness.

“I spent most of the day trying to find this lost dog’s owner. He looked so sad!”
“This kid was sobbing over a toy they got stuck in some pipes. I had to help her!”
“I had to run to the store before class and ended up helping this old woman with her shopping.”

“Ugh, I’m so sorry, my car just wouldn’t start yesterday.”
“My dad was trying to fix the car all day but couldn’t get it ready in time.”
“We got halfway down the road before smoke started coming out of the hood of the car. We had to stop in case it exploded!”

Step 7 You were helping your parents with something.

“Our basement flooded yesterday and my mom needed help sucking up all the water.”
“The backyard was a disaster after the storm the other night, so dad had me stay home to help clean up all the branches.”
“We’re having this big family get-together this weekend and mom had me stay home to help with some cooking.”

Step 8 Bad weather stopped you from coming in.

“A big tree fell over in our driveway—we’re lucky it didn’t hit the house!”
“That blizzard made the roads a death sentence. Mom had me stay home because she was worried.”
“The river up north got flooded and made it impossible to get here safely.”

Step 9 You have a sick pet you need to care for.

“Sorry Ms. Silva, my dog had an ear infection and I had to watch him to make sure he was okay.
“My parents work all day so I had to bring my dog to the vet on my own.”
“My cat recently ate something bad for her—I had to watch her until the medicine kicked in.”

Step 10 You were babysitting a younger sibling.

“Sorry, the sitter we usually have fell through and I had to watch my little brother.”
“My mom usually watches my little sister but she had to go on a trip, so I stayed home to watch her.”

“I’m working on getting a job and had this interview yesterday I couldn’t reschedule.”
”They rescheduled the knitting club meeting at the library to earlier in the day, so I had to miss class!”

“Sorry I’m late—we didn’t have anything to eat at home so I needed to stop somewhere.”
“I’ve been trying to make myself breakfast every morning and I’m still working on the timing.”

“I would have been here early, but then I spilled my coffee all over my shirt.”
“My dog tore up my uniform pants so Mom had to take me to the store to get more.”
“The clothes I was going to wear didn’t dry properly this morning, so I had to wait.”

Step 14 You were studying for a different class.

“I’ve really been struggling in biology, so I stayed home a little longer to study for the test today.”
“I didn’t sleep well and had to catch up on a couple chapters of the book we’re reading in English.”
“Midterms are really worrying me, so I wanted to catch up on some material.”

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Solar Eclipse 2024

What the World Has Learned From Past Eclipses

C louds scudded over the small volcanic island of Principe, off the western coast of Africa, on the afternoon of May 29, 1919. Arthur Eddington, director of the Cambridge Observatory in the U.K., waited for the Sun to emerge. The remains of a morning thunderstorm could ruin everything.

The island was about to experience the rare and overwhelming sight of a total solar eclipse. For six minutes, the longest eclipse since 1416, the Moon would completely block the face of the Sun, pulling a curtain of darkness over a thin stripe of Earth. Eddington traveled into the eclipse path to try and prove one of the most consequential ideas of his age: Albert Einstein’s new theory of general relativity.

Eddington, a physicist, was one of the few people at the time who understood the theory, which Einstein proposed in 1915. But many other scientists were stymied by the bizarre idea that gravity is not a mutual attraction, but a warping of spacetime. Light itself would be subject to this warping, too. So an eclipse would be the best way to prove whether the theory was true, because with the Sun’s light blocked by the Moon, astronomers would be able to see whether the Sun’s gravity bent the light of distant stars behind it.

Two teams of astronomers boarded ships steaming from Liverpool, England, in March 1919 to watch the eclipse and take the measure of the stars. Eddington and his team went to Principe, and another team led by Frank Dyson of the Greenwich Observatory went to Sobral, Brazil.

Totality, the complete obscuration of the Sun, would be at 2:13 local time in Principe. Moments before the Moon slid in front of the Sun, the clouds finally began breaking up. For a moment, it was totally clear. Eddington and his group hastily captured images of a star cluster found near the Sun that day, called the Hyades, found in the constellation of Taurus. The astronomers were using the best astronomical technology of the time, photographic plates, which are large exposures taken on glass instead of film. Stars appeared on seven of the plates, and solar “prominences,” filaments of gas streaming from the Sun, appeared on others.

Eddington wanted to stay in Principe to measure the Hyades when there was no eclipse, but a ship workers’ strike made him leave early. Later, Eddington and Dyson both compared the glass plates taken during the eclipse to other glass plates captured of the Hyades in a different part of the sky, when there was no eclipse. On the images from Eddington’s and Dyson’s expeditions, the stars were not aligned. The 40-year-old Einstein was right.

“Lights All Askew In the Heavens,” the New York Times proclaimed when the scientific papers were published. The eclipse was the key to the discovery—as so many solar eclipses before and since have illuminated new findings about our universe.

Telescope used to observe a total solar eclipse, Sobral, Brazil, 1919.

To understand why Eddington and Dyson traveled such distances to watch the eclipse, we need to talk about gravity.

Since at least the days of Isaac Newton, who wrote in 1687, scientists thought gravity was a simple force of mutual attraction. Newton proposed that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe, and that the strength of this attraction is related to the size of the objects and the distances among them. This is mostly true, actually, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

On much larger scales, like among black holes or galaxy clusters, Newtonian gravity falls short. It also can’t accurately account for the movement of large objects that are close together, such as how the orbit of Mercury is affected by its proximity the Sun.

Albert Einstein’s most consequential breakthrough solved these problems. General relativity holds that gravity is not really an invisible force of mutual attraction, but a distortion. Rather than some kind of mutual tug-of-war, large objects like the Sun and other stars respond relative to each other because the space they are in has been altered. Their mass is so great that they bend the fabric of space and time around themselves.

Read More: 10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

This was a weird concept, and many scientists thought Einstein’s ideas and equations were ridiculous. But others thought it sounded reasonable. Einstein and others knew that if the theory was correct, and the fabric of reality is bending around large objects, then light itself would have to follow that bend. The light of a star in the great distance, for instance, would seem to curve around a large object in front of it, nearer to us—like our Sun. But normally, it’s impossible to study stars behind the Sun to measure this effect. Enter an eclipse.

Einstein’s theory gives an equation for how much the Sun’s gravity would displace the images of background stars. Newton’s theory predicts only half that amount of displacement.

Eddington and Dyson measured the Hyades cluster because it contains many stars; the more stars to distort, the better the comparison. Both teams of scientists encountered strange political and natural obstacles in making the discovery, which are chronicled beautifully in the book No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity , by the physicist Daniel Kennefick. But the confirmation of Einstein’s ideas was worth it. Eddington said as much in a letter to his mother: “The one good plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein,” he wrote , “and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.”

The Eddington-Dyson experiments were hardly the first time scientists used eclipses to make profound new discoveries. The idea dates to the beginnings of human civilization.

Careful records of lunar and solar eclipses are one of the greatest legacies of ancient Babylon. Astronomers—or astrologers, really, but the goal was the same—were able to predict both lunar and solar eclipses with impressive accuracy. They worked out what we now call the Saros Cycle, a repeating period of 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours in which eclipses appear to repeat. One Saros cycle is equal to 223 synodic months, which is the time it takes the Moon to return to the same phase as seen from Earth. They also figured out, though may not have understood it completely, the geometry that enables eclipses to happen.

The path we trace around the Sun is called the ecliptic. Our planet’s axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane, which is why we have seasons, and why the other celestial bodies seem to cross the same general path in our sky.

As the Moon goes around Earth, it, too, crosses the plane of the ecliptic twice in a year. The ascending node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic. The descending node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic. When the Moon crosses a node, a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good at predicting when eclipses would occur.

Two and a half millennia later, in 2016, astronomers used these same ancient records to measure the change in the rate at which Earth’s rotation is slowing—which is to say, the amount by which are days are lengthening, over thousands of years.

By the middle of the 19 th century, scientific discoveries came at a frenetic pace, and eclipses powered many of them. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the colors of sunlight during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of an unknown element, indicating a new discovery: Helium, named for the Greek god of the Sun. In another eclipse in 1869, astronomers found convincing evidence of another new element, which they nicknamed coronium—before learning a few decades later that it was not a new element, but highly ionized iron, indicating that the Sun’s atmosphere is exceptionally, bizarrely hot. This oddity led to the prediction, in the 1950s, of a continual outflow that we now call the solar wind.

And during solar eclipses between 1878 and 1908, astronomers searched in vain for a proposed extra planet within the orbit of Mercury. Provisionally named Vulcan, this planet was thought to exist because Newtonian gravity could not fully describe Mercury’s strange orbit. The matter of the innermost planet’s path was settled, finally, in 1915, when Einstein used general relativity equations to explain it.

Many eclipse expeditions were intended to learn something new, or to prove an idea right—or wrong. But many of these discoveries have major practical effects on us. Understanding the Sun, and why its atmosphere gets so hot, can help us predict solar outbursts that could disrupt the power grid and communications satellites. Understanding gravity, at all scales, allows us to know and to navigate the cosmos.

GPS satellites, for instance, provide accurate measurements down to inches on Earth. Relativity equations account for the effects of the Earth’s gravity and the distances between the satellites and their receivers on the ground. Special relativity holds that the clocks on satellites, which experience weaker gravity, seem to run slower than clocks under the stronger force of gravity on Earth. From the point of view of the satellite, Earth clocks seem to run faster. We can use different satellites in different positions, and different ground stations, to accurately triangulate our positions on Earth down to inches. Without those calculations, GPS satellites would be far less precise.

This year, scientists fanned out across North America and in the skies above it will continue the legacy of eclipse science. Scientists from NASA and several universities and other research institutions will study Earth’s atmosphere; the Sun’s atmosphere; the Sun’s magnetic fields; and the Sun’s atmospheric outbursts, called coronal mass ejections.

When you look up at the Sun and Moon on the eclipse , the Moon’s day — or just observe its shadow darkening the ground beneath the clouds, which seems more likely — think about all the discoveries still yet waiting to happen, just behind the shadow of the Moon.

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