This is a guest blog post by Lauren P. Bailes, University of Delaware; Henry May, University of Delaware; and Danielle Riser, American Institutes for Research
High rates of schoolwide chronic absence among elementary students have academic consequences for all students in the school, not just those who are chronically absent, according to new research.
In Absenteeism and Achievement in Early Elementary Grades: A Multilevel Organizational Analysis, researchers Henry May, University of Delaware; Lauren P. Bailes, University of Delaware; and Danielle Riser, American Institutes for Research examined the distribution of student-level and school-average absenteeism and their relationships with 3rd grade test scores at the student versus school levels.
Using a state administrative dataset of more than 50,000 K-3rd grade students in 109 schools in Delaware, the authors sought to find out whether school’s average number of days absent—an organizational-level characteristic—may have severe effects on instruction and therefore on all students’ learning rather than just the students who are absent or chronically absent.
They found that higher levels of school average absenteeism are associated with major decreases in Math and ELA scores. For example, schools with an average of only 5 days absent typically have at least 80% of their students scoring proficient in both Math and ELA, but an increase in a school’s average absenteeism up to 10 days is associated with a huge drop in proficiency rates, to below 20% of students scoring proficient in Math and ELA.
Prior research also supports the link between a group’s rates of absence and individual student outcomes: a 2019 study by Michael Gottfried found that high levels of school level chronic absence negatively impact individual student academic achievement. A 2022 study by Gottfried and Ansari also found that high chronic absence in a classroom negatively affects individual student performance in both academics and executive functioning.
In the new study, the researchers also found that individual students attending schools with the highest chronic absence rates missed more days on average than students in schools with lower levels of absenteeism. Among low-average absenteeism schools, very few students miss more than a few days each school year. Most students in these schools are never persistently or chronically absent. In the highest-absenteeism schools, the average student misses nearly two days of school per month, and at least five percent of students (1 out of 20) miss 50 or more days of school each year, the researchers found.
When a school has very high levels of absenteeism, it creates high levels of churn, and it disrupts the learning for students who are regularly in school, because teachers are almost constantly reteaching content missed by the students who are absent, the authors note.
“When chronic absence is at very high levels, it is not only a challenge to educators but creates a larger erosion to the effectiveness of the organization,” the authors write. “High levels of schoolwide chronic absence renders the organization less capable of persisting in its normal function, making it much more difficult to deploy resources to address learning loss due to absenteeism.”
The authors offer several recommendations for policy and practice:
• Attendance interventions must be selected with the understanding that absenteeism is particularly harmful among elementary students, students of color, and students who attend schools with high rates of school-level absenteeism.
• An intervention that includes an organizational (e.g., school-level) component should be tailored to the unique strengths and needs of the community in which the school is situated.