Where Are All the Missing Students?
Schools are struggling with abnormally high rates of absenteeism since the pandemic began.
In 2006, the School District of Philadelphia, in partnership with Microsoft, opened the School of the Future. The idea was simple enough: Establish a learning environment centered on technology—no textbooks, just laptops and Wi-Fi—that would provide students in relatively poor districts the same benefits that those in wealthier areas enjoyed. The district built a handsome, well-lit building and filled it with state-of-the-art trappings including electronic lockers and Italian-marble bathrooms. It was heralded as a path-defining achievement for public-private partnerships in education.
Two years later, Michael Gottfried, now an economist at the University of Pennsylvania but then a graduate student there, was part of a
