Many Kids Are Struggling in School. Do Their Parents Know?
When schools treat mental health with the same urgency as physical health, struggling students have a better chance of being seen and supported.
Gowher Bhat
Kids walk into school every morning. They carry backpacks, lunch boxes, notebooks. They carry hopes. But many also carry something else, stress, anxiety, fear, and a sense of falling behind. These struggles are quiet. They don’t always show up on report cards. They don’t always get talked about at the dinner table. But they are real, and they are everywhere, across continents, across cultures.
In the United States, the cracks in the education system have been widening for years. Reading and math scores have been slipping. Fourth‑grade reading scores dropped from an average of 220 in 2019 to 215 in 2023, and eighth‑grade scores slid from 263 to 258. These numbers come from the latest national assessments tracking student performance. What these numbers don’t show is what happens in the margins. What it feels like to sit in a classroom, struggling to make sense of sentences that once seemed simple. What it feels like to watch classmates move ahead while you stay stuck. What it feels like when your confidence sinks a little more each day.
Experts say this decline reflects more than temporary setbacks. It goes back to deep changes in how children read, think, and engage with long, meaningful text. Students today spend less time with sustained reading and more time with fragmented digital content, a shift that quietly erodes comprehension, according to Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.
In school hallways from Harlem to suburban Texas, another crisis takes shape: attendance. In New York City, nearly 35 percent of public school students, about 300,000 children, were chronically absent during the 2023‑24 academic year, a steep rise from before the pandemic. Chronic absence is defined as missing at least ten days of school in a year. You don’t have to read the statistics to feel its weight. Just talk to parents like Tiwana Robinson in Harlem, whose grandchild avoids school because of bullying. In her words, “They’re not missing school because we keep them home. They don’t want to go.”
Absenteeism alone doesn’t tell the whole story, but it points to a deeper truth. Many children are not thriving in the environments meant to nurture them. What ties these challenges together, both in the U.S. and in India, is a less visible struggle: mental health.
A growing body of research shows that children’s mental well‑being is tightly connected to their performance and engagement in school. In a survey of Gen Z students in the U.S., 57 percent reported that their mental health had not improved even after schools reopened fully post‑pandemic. Anxiety, loneliness, depression, and feelings of being overwhelmed were common. Ninety‑five percent said their mental health affected their schoolwork.
Schools in the U.S. have responded in part by introducing mental health screenings. Nearly one‑third of K‑12 public schools now require mental health screening for students, an important step forward. But identification is not care. Even when screenings flag a student in distress, connecting that student with meaningful support is often difficult. Forty percent of school leaders say finding adequate care for flagged students is very difficult, and resources like telehealth are available in less than one in five schools.
In India, the pressures on students take similar shape but in different contexts. A 2025 report surveying more than 8,500 high school students nationwide revealed that one in five rarely feels calm, motivated, or excited about life, emotions closely tied to academic stress, sleep loss, and uncertainty about the future. Three‑quarters of older students reported sleeping fewer than seven hours on school nights, and many felt unprepared for decisions about careers. This stress isn’t abstract. India recorded over 13,000 student suicides in 2023, a sobering figure that has climbed steadily over the past decade.
At the core of these struggles is a system that too often equates performance with worth. In many Indian schools, academic success is seen as the singular path to stability. Children internalize this belief from early years, learning to value marks over curiosity, rankings over understanding. National assessments in India also show how widespread anxiety and burnout have become. A study across eight major cities found that nearly 70 percent of college‑age students reported moderate to high levels of anxiety, and around 60 percent showed signs of depression.
It would be easy to tell ourselves that these things are just part of growing up, that every generation goes through stress, that kids today are just more vocal about it. Yet when the numbers point to dramatic declines in reading proficiency, stalled math progress, high absenteeism, widespread emotional distress, and barriers to care, it’s clear we’re looking at something systemic.
Parents often don’t know because kids don’t tell them. A child wakes up early. They get dressed in silence. They don’t complain. They don’t say anything about the panic that hit them in the bathroom before class. They don’t text home when they felt too tired to focus on homework. They don’t say they skipped lunch because the cafeteria felt too overwhelming. They don’t say it. And if parents don’t ask, really ask, then these struggles stay hidden.
In the United States, parents are also wrestling with faith and doubt. Only about one‑third of Americans believe schools prepare students well for college and careers. That’s the lowest level of satisfaction in more than 20 years of polling. This isn’t just criticism of schools. It’s a reflection of a deeper anxiety. Are we equipping the next generation with the tools they need to succeed in an ever‑changing world?
Yet awareness without action is not enough. In communities across both countries, school counselors are stretched thin. The ideal ratio of one school psychologist per 500 students is often far exceeded, leaving professionals juggling heavy caseloads. Some schools are trying new approaches. They embed emotional support into daily routines, offer smaller group counseling, and train teachers to spot signs of distress. But these efforts are uneven, dependent on local resources, funding, and policy will.
What parents can do matters. Not by rescuing their children from every challenge, but by listening deeply. Ask about school in ways that go beyond, “How was your day?” Try, “What was one thing today that made you feel tired?” or, “Was there a moment today you wished you could change?” When parents, teachers, and communities talk openly about stress, anxiety, and struggle, when they make room for questions instead of just answers, children are less alone.
And when schools treat mental health with the same urgency as physical health, struggling students have a better chance of being seen and supported. Because behind every test score, every attendance slip, every silent dinner table is a story. Not just of struggle, but of a child trying to keep going, trying to stay present, trying to belong.
And that’s something every parent deserves to know.
(STRAIGHT TALK COMMUNICATIONS EXCLUSIVE)
