absenteism
Addressing Chronic Absenteeism
APRIL 13, 2014 Share
8
Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan via flickr (CC BY 2.0)
It is now late October. Have any of your students already missed more than a month of school? Are any on track to? Can you even know?
Educators understand the importance of school attendance -- as we often say, "You can't teach an empty desk." And schools have mechanisms in place to track it, including average daily attendance (ADA) and truancy. But neither of those measures addresses chronic absenteeism.
Chronic absenteeism is typically defined as missing 10 percent or more of a school year -- approximately 18 days a year, or just two days every month. And across the nation, 5 to 7.5 million students are chronically absent.
While this issue is more often discussed at the middle and high school level (and is quite important there, as chronic absence in middle school is a clear predictor of dropping out, and by ninth grade, attendance is a better predictor of dropping out than test scores), it surprisingly relevant to elementary schools -- and even preschools -- as well. Nationally, one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students miss the equivalent of a month of school -- in some schools and districts, it is as many as one in four. And new research out of Chicago indicates that the problem is even larger in preschool, with almost half of three-year-olds and more than one-third of four-year-olds chronically absent.
Missing school -- at whatever level -- has consequences for children. The Chicago research found that students who are chronically absent in preschool end the year with lower skills, as measured by the district's kindergarten readiness tool, than those who attend (and kindergarten readiness is linked to later academic success). Other research has shown that chronic absence in kindergarten and first grade leads to lower performance in third grade, which is tied to decreased attendance in sixth and ninth grade and an increased risk of
APRIL 13, 2014 Share
8
Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan via flickr (CC BY 2.0)
It is now late October. Have any of your students already missed more than a month of school? Are any on track to? Can you even know?
Educators understand the importance of school attendance -- as we often say, "You can't teach an empty desk." And schools have mechanisms in place to track it, including average daily attendance (ADA) and truancy. But neither of those measures addresses chronic absenteeism.
Chronic absenteeism is typically defined as missing 10 percent or more of a school year -- approximately 18 days a year, or just two days every month. And across the nation, 5 to 7.5 million students are chronically absent.
While this issue is more often discussed at the middle and high school level (and is quite important there, as chronic absence in middle school is a clear predictor of dropping out, and by ninth grade, attendance is a better predictor of dropping out than test scores), it surprisingly relevant to elementary schools -- and even preschools -- as well. Nationally, one in 10 kindergarten and first grade students miss the equivalent of a month of school -- in some schools and districts, it is as many as one in four. And new research out of Chicago indicates that the problem is even larger in preschool, with almost half of three-year-olds and more than one-third of four-year-olds chronically absent.
Missing school -- at whatever level -- has consequences for children. The Chicago research found that students who are chronically absent in preschool end the year with lower skills, as measured by the district's kindergarten readiness tool, than those who attend (and kindergarten readiness is linked to later academic success). Other research has shown that chronic absence in kindergarten and first grade leads to lower performance in third grade, which is tied to decreased attendance in sixth and ninth grade and an increased risk of