This page links you to available reports discussing the issue of chronic absence nation-wide and in selected communities. Feel free to post a comment linking readers to other relevant reports.
Chang, Hedy & Romero, Mariajose, Present, Engaged & Accounted For: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades, National Center for Children in Poverty: NY: NY, September 2008.
This report documents the consequences, prevalence, potential causes and possible solutions to children missing extended periods of school in grades K-3rd. Although students must be present and engage to learn, thousands of this country’s youngest students are academically at-risk because of extended absences when they first embark upon their school careers. Nationally, an estimated one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students are chronically absent (i.e. miss nearly a month or more of school over the course of a year). Absenteeism in the early grades can reach even higher levels in particular schools and districts. The good news is that chronic early absence can be significantly reduced when schools, communities and families join together to monitor and promote attendance, as well as to identify and address the factors that prevent young students from attending school every day.
Allensworth, E. M., & Easton, J. Q. (2007). What Matters for Staying On-track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools: A Close Look at Course Grades, Failures, and Attendance in the Freshman Year.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, Consortium on Chicago School Research. Retrieved November 8, 2008
In this study of the freshman year of high school, researchers found that attendance in this pivotal transition year was a key indicator of whether students would finish high school. A high rate of absenteeism, described as missing 10 percent or more of the school year, was identified as a key warning sign for freshmen. The study also found attendance and studying more predictive of dropout than test scores or other student characteristics. In fact 9th grade attendance was a better predictor of dropout than 8th grade test scores.
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Balfanz, Robert, Lisa Herzog and Douglas J. MacIver. Preventing Student Disengagement and Keeping Students on the Graduation Path in Urban Middle-Grades Schools: Early Identification and Effective Interventions,EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 42(4), 223–235 Copyright 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
This article considers the practical, conceptual, and empirical foundations of an early identification and intervention system for middle-grades schools to combat student disengagement and increase graduation rates in our nation’s cities. It offers data revealing how four predictive indicators reflecting poor attendance, misbehavior, and course failures in sixth grade can be used to identify 60% of the students who will not graduate from high school. Fortunately, by combining effective whole-school reforms with attendance, behavioral, and extra-help interventions, graduation rates can be substantially increased.
Basch, Charles Healthier Students Are Better Learners: A Missing Link in Efforts to Close the Achievement Gap, March 9, 2010 Equity in Education Forum Series, Spring 2010
Teachers College, Columbia University. This report concludes that “six educationally relevant disparities”—vision problems, asthma, teen pregnancy, aggression and violence, physical inactivity, poor nutrition, and concentration problems—have negative academic outcomes for minority students in urban settings. The piece hits also on data about the relationship between health and school attendance: “Compared with children without the condition, some studies have also found, children with asthma tend to have more problems with concentration and memory, to have their sleep disrupted, and to miss more days of school. One 2003 estimate, in fact, blamed the disorder for 12.8 million school absences across the country that year.”
Durham, Rachel and Plank, Stephen B., Maintaining High Achievement in Baltimore: An Overview of the Elementary School Trajectories of Four Recent City Schools First Grade Cohorts, Baltimore Educational Research Consortium, March 2010
The results from this study of four elementary schools show increased academic achievement and reduced chronic absence. It suggests that many recent reform efforts–amongth them improveddevelopment conditions from birth to age 5, universal preK, reduced class sizes in the early grades and standardized curricula–are succeeding in keeping Baltimore students on track for succes in the middle grades and beyond. Continuing research should attempt to disentangle these various inputs to education and investigate the relative returns on investment when resource are directed to the programs and conditions that affect alteraitvely (A) students’ levels of readiness and (B) the learning settings and opportunitis students experience in first grade and beyond.
Epstein, J. L. & Sheldon, S. B. (2002). Present and accounted for: Improving student attendance through family and community involvement. Journal of Educational Research, 95, 308-318.
This study discusses the results of an analysis of longitudinal data collected on schools’ rates of daily student attendance and chronic absenteeism and on specific partnership practices that were implemented to help increase or sustain student attendance. Results indicate that several family–school–community partnership practices predict an increase in daily attendance, a decrease in chronic absenteeism, or both. The data suggest that schools may be able to increase student attendance in elementary school by implementing specific family and community involvement activities.
Gottfried, Michael A., Evaluating the Relationship Between Student Attendance and Achievement in Urban Elementary and Middle Schools: An Instrumental Variables Approach, American Educational Research Journal, June 2010, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 434-465.
This study evaluates the connection between student attendance and positive learning outcomes. The researcher uses a comprehensive data set of elementary and middle schools in the Philadelphia school district to explore the causal impact of attendance on multiple measures of achievement, including grade-point average and standardized test scores. He controlled for student and neighborhood characteristics, as well as school, grade and other elements. The study showed a direct and consistent causal relationship between good attendance and good academic school outcomes in the K-5 and 6-8 schools.
Gunderson, Jessica et al, Getting Teenagers Back to School: Rethinking New York State’s Response to Chronic Absence, The Vera Institute, New York, NY October 2010
This policy brief looks at one response to the statewide problem of chronic school absence in New York State: reporting parents to the child protective system, which handles allegations of child abuse and neglect. It determines that the system is ill equipped to deal with school attendance and that punitive approaches fly in the face of research on adolescent development. The report concludes that the first step toward more effectively addressing chronic absence among teens may be to remove them from the jurisdiction of the child protective system, while simultaneously creating a less adversarial set of interventions to keep youth connected to schools. This would allow the child welfare system to focus on the most vulnerable abused and neglected children in the state.
Mac Iver, Martha A., Gradual Disengagement: A Portrait of the 2008-2009 Dropouts in Baltimore City Schools, Baltimore Education Research Consortium, August 2010
The majortiy of students who eventually drop out of high school enter 9th grade with a pattern of chronic absenteeims that goes back at least several years, the study shows. Many have been retained and are behind at least one grade. It is critical to begin interventions in middle school. For those already in high school who have become entrenched in patterns of chronic absenteeism and course failture and have not succeeded in earning many high school course credits, it appears that more non-traditional options for earning a diploma would be helpful. At the same time, a more intenstive focus on intervention and prevention during the middle grades is one of the most crucual directions for reducing the dropout rate.
Nauer, Kim, White, Andrew & Yerneni, Rajeev. Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families: Community Strategies to Reverse Chronic Absenteeism in the Early Grades and Improve Supports for Children and Families. Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. October 2008In 2008, The Center for New York City Affairs at The New School conducted its own an analysis of chronic absence in New York City public schools. It found that more than 90,000 children in grades K through 5 (more than 20 percent of enrollment) missed at least one month of school. In high poverty neighborhoods, the number was far higher, approaching one-third of primary grade students. The implication for these students’ long-term success is enormous, but this is only part of the story. This report also describes how chronic absenteeism at an early age can result from problems at home, and how strong partnerships between public schools, community organizations and other institutions can make a difference.
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Ready, Douglas D., Socioeconomic Disadvantage, School Attendance, and Early Cognitive Development, The Differential Effects of School Exposure, Sociology of Education, October 2010
Over the past several decades, research has documented strong relationships between social class and children’s cognitive abilities. These initial cognitive differences, which are substantial at school entry, increase as children progress through school. Despite the robust findings associated with this research, authors have generally neglected the extent to which school absenteeism exacerbates social class differences in academic development among young children. Using growth-curve analyses within a three-level hierarchical linear modeling framework, this study employs data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K) to examine the links between children’s social class, school absences, and academic growth during kindergarten and first grade. Results suggest that the effects of schooling on cognitive development are stronger for lower socioeconomic status (SES) children and that the findings associated with theories of summer learning loss are applicable to literacy development during early elementary school. Indeed, although they continue to achieve at lower absolute levels, socioeconomically disadvantaged children who have good attendance rates gain more literacy skills than their higher SES peers during kindergarten and first grade.
Sheldon, Steven B., Improving Student Attendance with School, Family and Community Partnerships, Journal of Educational Research, January 2007
Researchers and policy makers have questioned the efficacy of family-involvement interventions. They believe that more studies are needed to compare outcomes of students whose families received a partnership intervention with those who did not. The author used data from the state of Ohio to compare student attendance in elementary schools that developed school-wide programs of school, family, and community partnerships with the attendance of students in schools that did not develop the programs. Analyses showed that in schools working to implement school, family, and community partnerships, student attendance improved an average of .5%, whereas in comparison schools, rates of student attendance declined slightly from 1 year to the next. Further analysis suggested that school outreach to families was the driving mechanism that caused this effect.
Silver, David et al, What Factors Predict High School Graduation in Los Angeles United School District, California Dropout Research Projet Report #14, June 2008
In collaboration with LAUSD, the authors of this study analyzed district data to track the educational progress of all first-time 2001-02 9th graders from the 6th grade through to their expected graduation in the spring of 2005. This group consisted of 48,561 students who attended 163 LAUSD middle and high schools. The analysis of transcript records, standardized test scores, and a broad database of student and school characteristics exposes troubling rates of academic failure, but it also offers reasons for hope, demonstrating that academic experiences and school factors play a much larger role than student demographics in determining graduation rates.
Lost Days: Patterns and Levels of Chronic Absence Among Baltimore City Public School Students 1999-00 to 2005-06.Produced by the Baltimore Education Research Consortium, this brief reveals that chronic absenteeism presents a significant challenge to classroom instruction and learning rates in the primary grades (1st – 5th) in Baltimore City Schools. Roughly a third of students in the first grade cohort were chronically absent at least once during their first five years. By the early secondary grades (6th and 10th), chronic absenteeism reached epidemic levels with missing significant amounts of school becoming a norm. Not surprisingly, there was a strong connection between chronic absenteeism and dropping out.
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For more in-depth information about chronic absence in elementary school, also see First Grade and Forward.
Click here to download the article.
Additional information on attendance issues and potential strategies in Baltimore, you can also see the work of the Baltimore MD Attendance Initiative supported by the Open Society Institute.