Students who are chronically absent from class suffer lower grades, feel less connected to peers and the school community, and hurt their chances of completing high school, according to an article in Education Week. And frequent absences by a large part of the student body also negatively affect students who attend regularly.
More than 25 percent of students nationwide were chronically absent (missing at least 10 percent of school days) during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, according to an analysis of federal data by the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University and the organization Attendance Works. This was a notable increase above pre-pandemic levels. Classroom churn created by high levels of chronic absenteeism make it harder to teach and establish classroom norms – making it more challenging for students who show up every day to learn. Chronic absenteeism can spread to other students who pick up the habits of peers. Absences have also contributed to national declines in math and reading in recent years, according to research.
Here are practical ways to combat chronic absenteeism and get more kids back in class:
1) Understand why students are absent
- Work to design engaging programs and build relationships (through participation in clubs and extracurricular activities) must be intentional. “Honestly, I thought that if we just spend a semester or a whole year in a classroom, we would immediately or automatically build positive relationships,” said Sharon Bradley, the director of student, family, and community services in Plano, Texas, in an Education Week webinar.
- School and district leaders must first understand the reasons their students are missing class, said Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, the co-founder of the International Network for School Attendance, an organization that works with school districts to improve attendance.
- Distinguish between different types of absences when exploring how to help families. Students may be absent because their parents can’t manage their work and other obligations and get their kids to school. Or students miss school to go on college visits. Sometimes, a student is anxious and school-avoidant. They may have to work to support their family.
- School systems have not been effective in tracking these differences, making it difficult for attendance officers, counselors or teachers to know how to offer support to parents,” Gentle-Genitty said.
2) Communicate the school’s attendance goals to parents
- Explain to parents why attending school consistently matters, and the point at which missing days becomes problematic, the panelists said.
- Families often overestimate their children’s attendance because they don’t track it as closely as schools do, said Lesleigh Dye, leader of the Ontario North East school system in Canada. Consistently share students’ actual numbers of absences with their families can bring about better awareness.
- Parents must understand schools’ attendance goals, said Bradley. Her district aims for an average attendance rate of 96 percent or higher. When she talks with parents and says their child’s attendance rate is perhaps 80 percent, they don’t understand that’s a problem because they don’t know the school’s goal.
- Communicate goals in very clear terms and explain if a child missed two days a month every month from kindergarten to high school, they can literally miss over a year’s time of instruction, which can cause falling behind in reading and math, according to Bradley.
- Families should also be aware that on days when their children aren’t in school, they don’t have access to mental health services, meals, the school nurse and also support services.
3) Emphasize physical and emotional safety at school
- Parents and students today have obvious safety concerns. Dye said schools in her district have designated an “attendance contact” for parents to contact to discuss barriers to attending class. The attendance contact is a staff member, not necessarily an administrator, but someone who is willing to answer phone calls and discuss parents’ concerns. This allows the parent of a child who felt upset or bullied the day before to call and discuss the problem, and the attendance contact can offer resources to help, and pass along any ongoing problems to other staff members as needed.
- School leaders must establish clear expectations about behaviors and attitudes in the building – how people should treat each other. Expectations can be called “agreements,” and developed in partnership with students and their parents, and communicated routinely throughout the year. When kids feel safe that’s when they can best learn.
Education Week
