My mom's a teacher in a decent school district in California, and later school times didn't have a significant effect on post-pandemic absences in her experiences (for the students who did come in, it did have a positive effect on their performance though).
The brutal truth is a subset of parents just don't care too much about education. It doesn't matter if it's an affluent or a working class district - there will always be a subset of parents that are either unable to (fairly common among impoverished parents sadly) or uninterested to (fairly uncommon among more affluent parents sadly) become much more involved parents
Basically, teachers assume parents will intervene in their students lives to give structure. Parents in the other hand assume teachers will intervene to give their children structure in their lives. And neither side will budge.
Some autonomy for kids is critical, but there also needs to be some amount of structure as well. You can't be 100% disciplinarian nor 100% free roaming. A happy balance is needed, and sadly, a handful of bad apples among both teachers and parents have deteriorated that relationship among these critical caregivers.
The brutal truth is a subset of parents just don't care too much about education. It doesn't matter if it's an affluent or a working class district - there will always be a subset of parents that are either unable to (fairly common among impoverished parents sadly) or uninterested to (fairly uncommon among more affluent parents sadly) become much more involved parents
Basically, teachers assume parents will intervene in their students lives to give structure. Parents in the other hand assume teachers will intervene to give their children structure in their lives. And neither side will budge.
Some autonomy for kids is critical, but there also needs to be some amount of structure as well. You can't be 100% disciplinarian nor 100% free roaming. A happy balance is needed, and sadly, a handful of bad apples among both teachers and parents have deteriorated that relationship among these critical caregivers.