What’s Missing From Our Early Education Classrooms? An Awful Lot of Disadvantaged Kids Who Should Be There

“Whoa”

That’s a reasonable response on reading the new National Center for Children in Poverty report on chronic school absenteeism in the early elementary grades, which finds that roughly 1 in 10 kindergarten and first graders miss at least 10 percent of school days each year (18 days for a typical 180-day school year), and in some urban districts the rate of chronically absent children in grades K-3 is as high as 1 in 4. We’re used to hearing about high truancy rates for urban high school students, even middle schoolers. But the fact that way too many elementary school students are missing a lot more days of class than they should be is unexpected. It’s also a serious obstacle to ensuring all children achieve proficiency in reading and math by third grade–a strong predictor of later academic success or failure.

The NCCP report, written by Hedy N. Chang and Mariajose Romero, also show that chronic absenteeism in the early grades is strongly predictive of poor academic performance later in elementary school. Children who were absent more than 10 percent of the time in kindergarten performed much worse than their peers on tests of reading, math, and general knowledge in first grade. And the impacts of chronic absences are particularly severe for poor children, whose families are the least likely to have resources to help them make up for lost school time–but who are also much more likely than more affluent peers to be chronically absent, due to a variety of factors including residential mobility, lack of access to health care, chaotic family life, lack of access to reliable transportation, and the fact that poor children are more likely to be enrolled in poor quality or unsafe schools. Yet another incidence of the Matthew principle rearing its ugly head in education.

Chronic absenteeism is bad for kids who are chronically absent, but it’s also has detrimental effects for whole schools and non-absent students who attend them, because chronic absence can lead to a chaotic environment in when no one knows who is and isn’t going to be there that day, and forces teachers to devote substantial time to reviewing previously covered topics. These effects can persist for years, as chronically absent children arrive in the next grade with gaps in their knowledge that impede their ability to master new content.

Fortunately, the NCCP report offers several eminently practical recommendations for steps that school officials and policymakers can take to reduce rates of chronic absenteeism in the early grades, including detailed guidance for school and district officials on how to identify and track rates of chronic absenteeism, as well as examples of local efforts that have been effective in reducing rates of chronic absenteeism in the early grades. The report also offers several recommendations for a comprehensive policy level approach to reducing chronic absenteeism. We were struck by the fact that many of these recommendations are already part of a broader PK-3 agenda for improving education in the preschool and early elementary years, such as “prepare children for entry into school through high quality early care and education experience,” “offer a high quality education that responds to divsere learning styles and needs of students,” and “engage families of all backgrounds in their childre’s education,” but these recommendations also extend beyond education to call for other comprehensive services, such as improved health care access for young children and supports for families in crisis, to help address non-educational causes of chronic absenteeism.

High-quality early education and pre-k programs, in particular, are viewed as an important part of the strategy to reduce early grades absenteeism. NCCP’s analysis shows that children who spend the year prior to kindergarten in preschool or center-based programs are less likely to be chronically absent than those cared for by family members, in part because early education experiences get families and children used to the routine of going to school before they get to kindergarten, and also because high-quality early education equips youngsters with social and cognitive skills that make schooling a more positive experience for them (here we can apply the Matthew principle to good effect). But too many low- and moderate-income families still lack access to high-quality early education programs that could provide these benefits to their children.

NCCP is doing a valuable service in calling attention to the often overlooked problem of chronic absenteeism among our youngest students, and the last negative consequences this problem has for our youngsters and schools. Curbing early absenteeism–by building positive relationships between schools and families, improving the quality of K-3 programs, and expanding access to preschool and pre-k education, must be a central part of a PK-3 reform agenda.

Hat tip: Richard Colvin and Ed Week’s Linda Jacobson.