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“90% of success in life is just showing up.”
― Woody Allen
But what happens when you don’t? It’s one of the least discussed, argued, and politicized issues in education. It has been labeled a hidden educational crisis.
Absenteeism has nearly doubled since the pandemic, and it’s not the case for the neighborhood truant officer.
When schools reopened their doors after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, eager to “return to normal,” millions of students didn’t show up. Teachers prepared their classrooms to welcome children back to in-person learning, but millions of desks were unfilled.
With an eye toward pandemic recovery, the government allocated billions of dollars to help students regain what they lost at the height of the pandemic. Still, many of them weren’t there to receive the aid.
WHERE ARE THEY
Many of them were absent — and still are.
Some of the latest absenteeism data reveals the staggering impact the pandemic has had on student attendance.
An unprecedented wave of chronic absenteeism has spread across the country. New U.S. Department of Education data show striking findings at the school level: In 2021-22, two-thirds (66%) of enrolled students attended a school with high or extreme levels of chronic absence. This means at least one of five students in their school was missing almost four weeks throughout the school year.
Despite increased attention to the topic, chronic absenteeism is not exactly new. However, what is new about chronic absenteeism is that it now affects students from various demographic backgrounds, from those in the suburbs and rural areas to those in cities.
WHY
The root causes of chronic absenteeism are vast. Poverty, illness and a lack of child care and social services remain contributors to poor attendance, and some communities continue to struggle with transportation challenges; the pandemic has brought on a youth mental health crisis that has caused students to miss school; parents have reframed how they think about illness, ready to keep their children home at the slightest signs of sickness.
“What we’re seeing is a large-scale failure for a substantial number of our students to reengage,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford economist and the Barnett Family Professor of Education. “And it’s a very serious problem because we’re in the middle of a very important effort to try to address the educational harm that has unfairly fallen on this generation of students.”
Students are considered chronically absent when they miss 10 percent or more of the school year for any reason. The average school year for most schools across the country is 180 days long, meaning a chronically absent student typically misses at least 18 days of school or at least two days per month. Those absences can be for any reason.
Chronic absenteeism and truancy are not interchangeable. Truancy only measures unexcused absences, while chronic absenteeism measures unexcused and excused absences.
BEFORE YOU KNOW IT
“People don’t realize how easily absences can add up. When we think about a kid who misses school often, we might think about the kid who missed a week or two,” said Hedy Chang, founder and Executive Director of Attendance Works, a national and state-level initiative to advance student success by addressing chronic absence.
According to Attendance Works, reasons for missing school fall into four categories: “barriers,” “aversion to school,” “disengagement,” and “misconceptions about the purpose of attendance.”
“What we’re not always thinking about is the kid [who misses] one day here and another day here. And by the end of the year, you’ve added up to so much time lost in the classroom that you’re academically at risk.”
IN THE END
Chronic absenteeism worsens existing problems and can lead to poor academic and long-term economic outcomes for all grade levels. Students who are chronically absent in early grades can set off a domino effect of negative consequences: Chronically absent preschoolers are more likely to have difficulty reading on grade level by the second grade.
Constant absences create chaotic classroom environments, with teachers needing to help students make up missed work or missing students, disrupting the balance of classrooms that might be necessary for specific lessons. Chronic absenteeism increases educational inequality since it has risen more among disadvantaged students, particularly those with disabilities and those from lower-income households.
A NO-SHOW
Other, less explored areas regarding the impact of absences exist. “We need to talk more about what this means for the trajectory of students beyond their time in K-12,” said Dr. Joshua Childs, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas. “What might their post-secondary education look like, or how will this affect their ability to get and keep a job?”
If families don’t understand the impact of even a few absences, school attendance will not be prioritized at home. Some parents might think missing two school days each month is no big deal or that attendance only matters at higher grade levels. Others might believe that excused absences don’t matter, unaware of how broader absence patterns form.
Someone needs to attend to attendance.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder/CEO of the non-profit The Student Success Project. He can be reached by email at ritchie@studentsuccessproject.org and on Facebook as The Student Success Project.
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