 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. On today's program, Brian Lin tells us about a flying vehicle that organizers in France hope to introduce during next summer's Olympics. Dan Novak presents this week's Education Report. We close with the next part of our U.S. History Series. But first, here is Brian Lin. French officials are preparing to offer flying taxi services to people attending the Paris Summer Olympics in 2024. If the taxis are actually deployed in the French capital, it could mark the first major real-world demonstration of the flying technology. Some air taxi developers attended the recent Paris Air Show to show off their products and seek industry support. One of the companies in attendance was Germany's Volocopter, which plans to offer a flying taxi service during the Olympics. But so far, no air taxi maker has received government approval to launch service in France. Volocopter hopes to be the first, but the company still needs to run its aircraft through intensive weather tests and provide thousands of pages of documentation to the European Union Aviation Safety Agency. Company Chief Dirk Hoca admitted to the Reuters news agency that securing the approval will not be easy. It's not a walk in the park to be the first, he said. Volocopter plans to carry out tests of its electric air taxis in different environments in Germany next month. Hoca said that in addition to worries about government approvals, the environment for air taxi companies has also faced difficulties linked to economic slowdowns affecting the world. Robin Reidel co-leads the Center for Future Mobility at the business advisory company McKinsey. She told Reuters that companies formed to support air taxi projects have lost about 30% of their value in recent years. In addition, many investors have decided to put money into drones instead of flying taxis. Industry experts say they fear these struggles could signal more financial problems for many other companies involved in air taxi development. Hoca, a former top executive at Air Industry Player Airbus, has thought about a person he would like to be the first rider of his flying taxis, French President Emmanuel Macron. That would be super amazing, Hoca told the Associated Press at the Paris Air Show. He added, Macron believes in the innovation of urban air mobility. That would be a strong sign to Europe to see the President flying. One of the five planned Olympic trips would land in the heart of the city on a floating pad on the River Seine. In the beginning, air taxi trips are likely to be short and costly. This is because limited battery technology restricts the distance and number of paying passengers the aircraft can carry. The long-term success of air taxis will also be dependent on effective systems to manage all the air traffic using the skies. Experts say such systems will need new technology to provide safety for all flyers. As the industry progresses, the number of air taxis and drones is expected to reach into the millions. Hoca said that one thing is sure, it will be a total new experience for the people. He added, 20 years later, when someone looks back and changes based on that, and then they call it a revolution. And I think we are at the edge of the next revolution. I'm Brian Lin. Education officials and activists are concerned about an increase in the number of American students who are absent for many days during the school year. Education policy experts call the problem chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing more than 10% or about a total of 18 days out of the school year. The 18 days do not need to be missed at one time and can be missed for any reason. Joshua Childs is a professor of education policy at the University of Texas, Austin. He said in an interview with the American Association for the Advancement of Science that on average, 7.5 to 8 million students each year are chronically absent from school in the United States. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, that number has increased to at least 10 million a year. In Los Angeles schools, the second largest school district in the country, nearly half of students were considered chronically absent during the 2021 to 2022 school year. In Chicago, about 45% of students were chronically absent. Following the pandemic, chronic absenteeism reached levels never before seen in this community. Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, told reporters in February. Educators say students need to attend school regularly to be successful. Childs said being absent from school hurts students both academically and socially. Students who are chronically absent or miss a significant amount of school are more likely to drop out and are less likely to graduate from high school, Childs said. He added that students who miss a lot of school are less likely to feel connected with the school community and build relationships with other students and teachers. The Education Trust is a nonprofit education research organization. In a report published in March, the group said that poor students, students of color, and students who do not speak English at home are the most likely to miss a lot of school. Those students are also more likely to lack the ability to make up for the lost time. There are many reasons why students miss a lot of school. Childs said the long condition of asthma, obesity, or being extremely overweight, and dental problems are the leading physical causes. Since the pandemic, mental health problems also have increased. There may also be community and neighborhood problems that play a part in attendance, Childs said. Certain conditions also can affect attendance. These include whether a student has safe transportation to and from school or whether the school itself is a safe environment. Childs added that if families do not feel connected with the school community or do not value education, that can add to absenteeism. The Education Trust report advised districts to deal with the underlying issues that are keeping students out of school to improve attendance. It said answers require cooperation between students, families, and the community. Traditionally, students and families have been punished for low attendance. In extreme cases, parents can be sentenced to jail if their children are absent from school too often. But punishing students and families for being absent has not been shown to improve attendance and can even make the problem worse, the group's report said. In Los Angeles this year, improving attendance was a top issue for the district. The city hired workers to visit homes to find students who had been absent to get them back into school. The district also hired more attendance counselors to assist families in getting housing, food, or even transportation. Los Angeles school's superintendent Carvalho told the Philadelphia Inquirer in May that the district had seen a 32% decrease in chronic absenteeism. The Education Trust said chronic absenteeism is a community problem that should be dealt with using community-based methods. Unless school leaders draw upon the knowledge of their students and families, they are unlikely to create effective solutions, the report said. I'm Dan Novak. Dan Novak joins me now to talk more about this week's Education Report. Welcome back, Dan. Hi, Ashley. Your story was about chronic absenteeism in school, both its causes and how to prevent it. Would you mind explaining what the word chronic means for listeners who may not know? Yeah, something chronic happens for a long time or is reoccurring. You often hear the word in the context of health. A chronic health problem is something that has continued for a long time or never really goes away. What does it mean to be chronically absent? Chronic absenteeism is a term used by education experts, and it means missing more than 10% of the school year for any reason, which for most American schools is about 18 days. Of course, every student is going to get sick or miss a couple days throughout the school year. But when students miss 10% of the school year is when education researchers really start to see problems for students, both socially and academically. What are some of the effects of chronic absenteeism? As you could expect, student performance in school really suffers if they don't come to class consistently. It's also harder for students to make friends or build relationships with teachers or other school workers if they don't come. And those kinds of relationships are important for success and happiness in school. Experts in your story said that any solution to chronic absenteeism should be dealt with at the community level. What do they mean by that? Many things that cause absences stem from problems in the community. Maybe students don't have great transportation to and from school. Maybe their family is short on money and they have to get a job to help out causing them to miss class. Maybe the school environment isn't safe. So addressing these things will help the community as a whole and it will also help bring students who have been missing a lot of school back. In Los Angeles, what really helped for the school district there was going to individual families that had children that were missing school and seeing what the problem was. In some cases, the city provided kids transportation, food, or even shelter. Well, thanks again, Dan, for coming on today's show. You're welcome. Welcome to the Making of a Nation, American History in VOA Special English. I'm Steve Ember. We begin the story of the presidency of George W. Bush. His first term came to be defined by the worst terrorist attack against the United States in the nation's history. George W. Bush had been in office for less than eight months when the events of September 11th, 2001 took place. A plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Good Lord, this is just a horrific moment. The day is remembered as 9-11. On that morning, 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four large passenger airplanes on the East Coast. The planes were flying to California, so they were heavy with fuel. Each group of hijackers included a trained pilot. American Airlines Flight 11 had just left Boston, Massachusetts when five hijackers seized control of the plane. Is that American 11 trying to call? We have some planes that are safe-wise and you'd be okay. We're landing to the airport. American 11, are you trying to call? Number three in the back. The cockpit's not answering. Somebody's stabbed in business class. And I think there's mates that we can't breathe. I don't know. I think we're getting hijacked. Nobody knows. Everything is okay. If you try to make any moves, you can do it yourself and the airplane. Let's take life. Shortly before nine o'clock, the hijackers crashed the Boeing 767 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. A plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center. He had happened just a few moments ago. World Trade Center, tower number one is on fire. The whole outside of Boeing was just a huge explosion. Five other hijackers seized United Airlines Flight 175, another Boeing 767, also on a flight from Boston. Can you look at your window right now? Can you see a guy about 4,000 feet by a five-east-year pull right now? Looks like he's... Yeah, hi, Sam. Do you see a guy? Look, is he descending through the building also? He's descending really quick, too. Yeah. Well, that's... He's about 100 feet now. He just has dropped 800 feet in like one sweet. That's another situation. Another one just hit the building. Hit it hard. All building just came apart. They crashed the jet into the south tower of the World Trade Center a short time after the first plane hit the north tower. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That looks like a second plane. You just saw another plane coming in from the side. You did. That was out of... Yes, and that's the second explosion. You could see the plane come in. So this looks like it is some sort of a concerted effort to attack the World Trade Center that is underway in downtown New York. The Twin Towers each had 110 floors. They were the tallest buildings in New York and among the tallest in the world. They stood a few streets away from the New York Stock Exchange in the heart of the Wall Street Financial District in Lower Manhattan. My goodness, there's another one. The planes exploded in fireballs that sent clouds of smoke pouring from the skyscrapers. Thousands of people were in the buildings. Many workers on the floors below where the planes hit were able to escape. Others on the floors above were trapped. Some apparently felt their only choice was between burning to death and jumping. News cameras showed disturbing images of bodies falling from the towers. The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed just before 10 o'clock after burning for almost an hour. The North Tower came down about 30 minutes later. It had been hit first and had burned for one hour and 42 minutes. The second building that was hit by the plane had just completely collapsed. The entire building has just collapsed as if a demolition team set off when you see the old demolition to the old building. It's down on itself and it is not there anymore. Investigators later found that the intense fires from the jet fuel burning for as long as they had had caused the structures to fail. The ruins of the two buildings quickly became known as Ground Zero. Several other buildings in the World Trade Center complex were damaged or destroyed as a result of the collapse of the Twin Towers. Another group of hijackers took over American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757. The plane had taken off from Washington-Dulles International Airport. Okay, American Airlines is still airborne. He's heading towards Washington. I think we need to scramble Langley right now and I'm going to take the fighters from Otis and try to chase this guy down if I can find him. Nick Leshevsky has some new information at the Pentagon. I hope you'll stand by and continue to talk with us, Mick. Katie, I don't want to alarm anybody right now but it felt just a few moments ago like there was an explosion of some kind here at the Pentagon. The hijackers crashed the plane into the Pentagon, the Department of Defense headquarters across the Potomac River from Washington in the Arlington, Virginia. We're on the e-ring of the Pentagon. We have a window that faces out toward the Potomac, toward the Kennedy Center. We haven't been able to see or hear anything after the initial blast. I just stepped out in the hallway. Security guards were hurting people out of the building and I saw just a moment ago as I looked outside a number of construction workers who have been working here have taken flight. They're moving as far away from the building as they can right now. The plane exploded a hole into one of the five sides of the huge building and four hijackers seized United Airlines Flight 93, another 757. That plane had taken off from Newark, New Jersey. We're at 93, that traffic three is one o'clock, 12 miles east on 370. Negative contact, we're looking at United 93. People on the flight learned about the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington through phone calls to loved ones. United 93, verify 3,000. United 93, Cleveland. You have United 93 south of Sharpe. We hear some punny noises. We're trying to get him. You have him. No. Some of the 40 passengers and crew members fought to retake control of the plane from the hijackers. United 93 was waving his wings as he went past the VFR aircraft. They don't quite know what that means. Rocking his wings. Air traffic controllers and law enforcement officials struggled to make sense of the events taking place that morning. United 93, have you got information on that yet? Yeah, he's down. He's down? Yes. Why did he land? Because we had confirmation. He did not land. Oh, he's down? Yeah. Somewhere northeast of Camp David. Okay, there is now on the United 93. Yes. There is a report of black smoke in the last position I gave you. 15 miles south of Johnstown. Flight 93 crashed in a field near the small town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The intended target for Flight 93 may have been the capital, the building where Congress meets. No one could be sure if other airliners were involved in the terrorist operation. The Federal Aviation Administration has actually gone even further than it did a few minutes ago. It was asking all planes not to take off. Now the FAA has ordered all aircraft currently in the air over the United States to land at the nearest airport. Air traffic controllers began the complex job of getting all planes across the country and those heading in over the Atlantic onto the ground safely. So this meant at very early in the morning, as flights were halfway across the Atlantic Ocean to land in the United States, we had already initiated protocols to shut those arrivals off from the oceanic areas and they had to make tough decisions such as either turn around and go back to Europe or go to alternate destinations which many of them did in Canada. Canadian officials assisted. They allowed flights from across the Atlantic to land in eastern Canada including at airports in Halifax, Nova Scotia and Gander, Newfoundland. Almost 3,000 people died in the 9-11 attacks. We're coming in for building number 2 on a 97-storey piece of travel. We're all around the building. We're completely around the building. We're instead of building now. Most of the victims worked in the World Trade Center. The victims also included rescuers. Among them, 343 New York City firefighters. They died trying to save others. The guys are still over there. Not many of them have to get a different elevator. Pictures of missing persons began to appear in the city as loved ones waited and worried. Three days after the attacks, President Bush went to ground zero. He spoke to the rescue workers and promised that the attacks would be answered. Thousands of visitors came to see the site and to honor those who died. At the Pentagon, people left flowers and messages of sympathy near the heavily damaged wall. 184 people died in the attack on the Pentagon, including the victims on the plane. It took months to clear the wreckage of the Twin Towers. The attacks in New York changed the distinctive skyline of Lower Manhattan. The Twin Towers, completed in 1973, were gone. The economic effects of 9-11 were felt far beyond America's largest city. The New York Stock Exchange stayed closed until September 17. When it reopened, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a measure of leading stocks, fell by what was then its biggest point drop ever in a single day. Among the companies most affected by the attacks were airlines and other businesses that depend on travelers. The nation's skies were empty of commercial flights for three days after the hijackings. And when flights returned to normal, many people were too afraid to fly. Thousands of hotel workers and others in the travel industry lost their jobs. The shock and sadness of the 9-11 attacks brought Americans together less than a year after the disputed presidential election. In a show of patriotism, more and more American flags began to appear on homes, cars, and businesses. Small American flagpins were worn by many Americans. The attacks pointed to the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization. On September 20, President Bush went before a joint session of Congress to declare a war on terror. Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world.