Adding the Absences and Coming Up Short

The school year has begun, and teachers once again stand ready to greet students as they file into classrooms, eagerly watching as desks abandoned during the summer are reclaimed. After conducting their first roll call, teachers are encouraged to see a check next to each name on the roster. Unfortunately, as the year progresses, the check marks gradually become fewer and the desks emptier. In fact, some students could be missing as much as 27 days each year, about a month of school, according to a recent report from Attendance Works.

Absences Add Up: How School Attendance Influences Student Success reveals some unsettling statistics on absenteeism and discusses the consequences of missing so much school. Researchers found that nearly one in five students in the United States misses three or more days of school in a single month. Many of these absences occurred early in the year, which may seem insignificant at first. But as the authors of the report explain, attendance in the first month of school can predict students’ absenteeism for the entire year. These absences come at a high cost – especially for low-income early learners.

Using the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, researchers have found, unsurprisingly, that chronically absent students are struggling with basic academic skills. Researchers have also found that regardless of socioeconomic status, chronic absence is correlated with a drop in student performance of one to two grade levels. While middle to high-income chronic absentees suffer the same consequences as their lower-income counterparts, absenteeism remains far more prevalent among students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch (a common measure of low-income status). Students living in poverty face a number of challenges with getting to school, ranging from transportation barriers to a lack of healthcare access. Some students may also face the difficult choice of going to school or taking on a job or extra responsibility at home to support the family.

As discussed in Absences Add Up, while absenteeism at all grade levels has been linked with lower academic performance, missed days in preschool and kindergarten often result in significant pitfalls in fundamental math and reading skills. These deficits leave students behind as they enter third grade – a critical benchmark for reading and math development. Intervening to address chronic absences in preschool and kindergarten, as well as missed days earlier in the school year, may greatly improve student learning and academic grit.

According to the authors of the report, the first step in elevating the discussion about absenteeism includes implementing a standard definition for the terms being used. Researchers have typically defined “chronic absenteeism” as missing more than 10 percent of the school year, but state calculations vary widely. Secondly, the authors note that “excused” and “unexcused” labels can muddle the discussion and detract from the fact that students are missing school, regardless of whether the reason is valid. Understandably, these distinctions are necessary for teachers and administrators who need to track the legal consequences of truancy. But if schools were to also report total days missed, researchers and policymakers would have comparable data to study and could address trends in absenteeism and student outcomes.

Better data at the school, district, city, and state levels could shed much-needed light on potential barriers to regular attendance and could offer insight into how these barriers should be addressed. For instance, the authors of the report suggest that these data be used to inform decisions about how to allocate limited resources like funding for after school programs or health centers, both of which have been shown to improve attendance rates in at-risk communities.

Sharing absenteeism data and research with principals, teachers, and parents would ensure that all those involved understand the importance of good attendance. This is especially critical in the early years: Highlighting the significant risk of third-grade retention for chronically absent preschool and kindergarten students and working with parents to identify solutions could prevent costly learning deficits from taking hold. Those early intervention efforts to work with parents would also preempt the need for counterproductive truancy fines and other punishments that have proven ineffective.

Improving access to preschool and kindergarten and elevating teacher quality are important but so is getting early learners into the classroom. As we have noted in previous blog posts, high absenteeism can impact teachers’ ability to offer quality instruction when they’re forced to review past lessons for students who missed a few days. Addressing early absenteeism in a thoughtful way will be a critical first step in keeping early learners on track up through third grade.