The biggest threat to students isn’t curriculum or AI. It’s chronic absence
Keeping kids in school. Regardless of differing views on what’s taught in classrooms, the mission to keep kids there is bipartisan.
The problem of truancy had been getting worse for years, and COVID-19 turned it into a crisis. Multiple studies have shown absence to be one of the most detrimental things a kid can do to their academic career. To fight back, states are implementing new laws to combat what’s known as chronic absence.
“It means missing so much school that you are at risk in some way,” Hedy Chang, CEO of Attendance Works, told Straight Arrow.
Chronic absence is generally defined as missing 10% of a school year.
“For example, in a typical 180-day school year, that’s missing 18 days,” Jeremy Singer, assistant professor of education at the University of Michigan, told Straight Arrow.
The causes of chronic absence
There are many reasons why kids end up missing large chunks of school.
“It depends on the age group of the student,” Rebecca London, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told Straight Arrow.
Chang’s organization breaks it down into four different reasons known as barriers, aversion, disengagement, and misconceptions.
Barriers tend to mostly impact students in impoverished areas.
It includes things like poor transportation, unstable housing, lack of food, lack of access to technology, violence in the community and more.
“Those are all barriers to actually being in learning,” Chang said.
Aversion refers to an unwelcoming school climate. For example, when disciplinary action actually pushes the students away or gives them anxiety about being in school.
Disengagement refers to a lack of meaningful relationships with the adults in their lives.
Misconceptions are what they sound like: missing school for a period of time, thinking it won’t impact learning.
“Particularly post-COVID, there’s an assumption you stay home for any symptom of illness,” Chang said. “One of the challenges we’ve seen is as anxiety among kids has risen more generally, a lot of times, when kids feel anxious, they have a stomachache or a headache and staying home from school isn’t a cure for anxiety. But then people think it’s a symptom of illness, and they keep them home.”
State laws
To combat this issue, several states have passed new laws and that has picked up since the pandemic.
“In Connecticut, they’ve had this long-standing investment now since COVID in something called the Learner Engagement Attendance Program,” Chang said. “It’s a multi-family home visiting program that really ensures that there’s outreach and support going to kids who are chronically absent.”
At least seven states are actively working, or have recently passed, legislation.
Oregon now requires every public school district and charter school to collect and report attendance data on students who are chronically absent.
They must then publish the information statewide, with the goal of improving transparency and helping educators identify trends before attendance problems worsen.
In Utah, lawmakers approved legislation to create a statewide system to monitor student attendance.
Under the law, parents of students in grades 1-6 would receive a notice after five unexcused absences. If they fail to meet with school officials to address the problem, they could face a Class B misdemeanor charge.
The prevention part of the issue is something experts Straight Arrow spoke with agreed could help.
“The bigger picture, in my view, is trying to address the deeper, underlying issues, root causes at the core of absenteeism, and so that means intervening in financial instability, healthcare access, transportation systems, and so on,” Singer said.
When it comes to charging parents with crimes, that’s where the experts weren’t sure it would work.
Vermont is another state that’s put punishment on the table, saying prosecutors may seek fines of up to $1,000 against parents of chronically absent children.
“Relaxing those truancy laws and making it not criminal to miss school, it actually is, ironically, helping to improve the ecosystem of chronic absenteeism as reaching out proactively with services because families aren’t afraid they’re going to be pulled into court,” London said.
Most state legislation does focus on prevention and tracking those students, including Mississippi, Tennessee, New Jersey and more.
“Really understanding what’s working, what laws you have in place, and where you need to make modifications is really important to do,” Chang said.
The issue of chronic absence
Nearly a quarter of students across America would be classified as chronically absent during the last school year.
That’s more than 10 million kids.
It’s escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Chronic absenteeism rates spiked during the pandemic,” Singer said. “They were already high, especially in places with high levels of poverty.”
According to the U.S. Department of Education, approximately 31% of students nationwide were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year.
Things improved the next year but only marginally, and the numbers have still not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
It also, once again, depends on the location.
“Places where there were high absenteeism rates before the pandemic are also where there are high absenteeism rates now,” Singer said. “So, just because, on average, more students are missing a few more days doesn’t mean that attendance is radically worse in, say, affluent communities.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
