Chronic Absenteeism in a Post-Pandemic Era

By: Marley Loveman-Brown

Since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, numerous reports have highlighted significant deficits in students’ math and literacy achievement, socio-emotional and behavioral challenges, and widening gaps by race and school poverty across numerous domains.1-3 Substantial evidence on initial fallout from the pandemic has emphasized that learning losses are cause for serious concern, motivating federal, state, and local investments towards academic recovery. Still, more recent findings are turning public attention to the drastic and widespread rise in chronic absenteeism that threatens to compound learning losses and exacerbate disparities across racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic lines. 

Chronic absenteeism is a measure of how many students miss a certain percentage or number of days in a given school year, including excused and unexcused absences and suspensions. Researchers often track 10 percent of the school year, but there is no common definition among states. One recent study conducted by Thomas Dee at Stanford reported that data on school attendance among U.S. public schools in 2018-19 and 2021-22 reflects a 13.5 percent increase in chronic absenteeism which implies an additional 6.5 million chronically absent students.7 Another report found that for schools where three-quarters or more of students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, extreme chronic absenteeism almost tripled, from 25% to 69%, between the 2017-18 and 2021-22 school years.8 This research highlights the cyclical nature of disadvantage - in higher poverty areas already reeling from disproportionate learning losses during the pandemic, the sharper increase in chronic absences will likely leave an even deeper scar on the education landscape.

The existing body of research on chronic absenteeism suggests that these persistent trends in post-pandemic disengagement from school could contribute substantially to declines in test scores, an indicator that has been linked to broader long-term outcomes across academic, socio-economic, and health domains. Research conducted by the Chicago Longitudinal Study assessed chronic absenteeism in the early middle-grades as a warning of high-school non-completion and precursor to poorer eight-grade achievement. Analyses of high school attainment outcomes showed that chronic absence during this period was most strongly associated with reduced probability of four-year graduation, with larger effects for males and for children with lower levels of parent engagement.4 Beyond school dropout, absenteeism has been linked to a range of health concerns and harmful behaviors, including substance abuse.5,6 The myriad risks associated with chronic absenteeism, and the indication that elevated pandemic rates have been highly predictive post-pandemic trends, signal an urgent need to address the problem during the 2024 school year. 

In response to rising rates of absenteeism nationwide, states have begun to take matters into their own hands. Since the start of 2024, more than 50 bills have been introduced in 25 state legislatures that would establish new initiatives to identify, prevent, and address chronic absenteeism. Some bills, including those in Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, and New Jersey, would establish working groups to study chronic absenteeism and recommend state-level strategies to reduce it. Focusing efforts on increased family engagement is another strategy with great promise. An analysis by Learning Heroes found that during the pandemic, schools with strong family engagement experienced much smaller declines in chronic absenteeism and attendance. Further, a school’s pre-pandemic family engagement was significantly and positively related to engagement, learning, and school climate outcomes post-pandemic. These findings suggest that turning attention to evidence-based practices and policies that strengthen family engagement could be an important avenue in improving attendance and engagement.

Family-school partnerships and a focus on increased parent involvement can be achieved through a system of opportunities that reflect the needs of individual families in the school community including home visits, parent advisory groups, career, finance, and nutrition-focused workshops, and much more. Another recent study by Reynolds et al. compared outcomes of full-day vs. part-day preschool programming and found that full-day preschool boosted attendance and dramatically lowered chronic absenteeism at the end of preschool.9 Comprehensive full-day preschool services that prioritize family-school partnerships set the stage for a cyclical process of continued parent involvement and student engagement with the potential to protect against chronic absenteeism and its harmful sequelae. 

 

References

  1. Betthäuser, B.A., Bach-Mortensen, A.M. & Engzell, P. A systematic review and meta-analysis of the evidence on learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nat Hum Behav 7, 375–385 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01506-4
  2. Engzell, P., Frey, A., & Verhagen, M. D. (2020). Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ve4z7
  3. US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, “More Than 80 Percent of U.S. Public Schools Report Pandemic Has Negatively Impacted Student Behavior and Socio-Emotional Development,” press release, July 6, 2022, https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/07_06_2022.asp
  4. Smerillo, N. E., Reynolds, A. J., Temple, J. A., & Ou, S. R. (2018). Chronic absence, eighth-grade achievement, and high school attainment in the Chicago Longitudinal Study. Journal of school psychology, 67, 163–178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2017.11.001
  5. Allison, M. A., Attisha, E. (2019). The Link Between School Attendance and Good Health. Pediatrics, 143(2):e20183648. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-3648
  6. Gase, L. N., Kuo, T., Coller, K., Guerrero, L. R., & Wong, M. D. (2014). Assessing the connection between health and education: identifying potential leverage points for public health to improve school attendance. American journal of public health, 104(9), e47–e54. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2014.301977
  7. Dee, T.S. (2024). Higher Chronic Absenteeism Threatens Academic Recovery from the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.231224912
  8. All hands on deck: Today’s chronic absenteeism requires a comprehensive district response and strategy. Attendance Works. (2023, November 17). https://www.attendanceworks.org/todays-chronic-absenteeism-requires-a-comprehensive-district-response-and-strategy/
  9. Reynolds AJ, Smerillo NE, Ou S, Loveman-Brown M, Varshney N. (2023). School Performance in Third Grade After a Full-Day vs Part-Day Preschool Program. JAMA, 330(22):2214–2215. https://doi:10.1001/jama.2023.20010
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