The ongoing problem of chronic absenteeism

According to the most recent Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) compiled by the U.S. Department of Education,[1] an alarming 6.5 million American students, more than 13 percent nationwide, were chronically absent—defined as missing 15 or more days of school— during the 2013-14 school year. Of these students, more than half are enrolled in elementary school, where truancy can contribute to weaker math and reading skills that persist into later grades. Chronic absenteeism rates are higher in high school: Nearly 20 percent of U.S. high school students are chronically absent, and these teenagers often experience future problems with employment, including lower-status occupations, less stable career patterns, higher unemployment rates, and low earnings.  

The data get even more disconcerting when they’re disaggregated by location. The CRDC explains that nearly 500 school districts reported that 30 percent or more of their students missed at least three weeks of school during the 2013-14 school year. The idea that certain districts struggle more with chronic absenteeism than others caught the attention of Attendance Works (AW), an organization that aims to improve school attendance policies. To create a more in-depth picture of the problem, Attendance Works combined the CRDC data with statistics from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics and released a report with a stunning key finding: Half of the nation’s chronically absent students are concentrated in just 4 percent of districts.[2]

These 654 districts are located throughout 47 states and Washington D.C. and include cities, suburbs, towns, and rural areas. AW pays particular attention to two groupings within the 4 percent. The first is a group of large, mostly suburban districts with large numbers of chronically absent students; districts like Fairfax County, Virginia (12 percent of more than 180,000 students are chronically absent) and Montgomery County, Maryland (16 percent of more than 150,000 students are chronically absent), which are known for academic achievement but also their growing low-income populations. The second grouping is composed of “urban school districts with large populations of minority students living in poverty.” AW notes that half the urban districts with high numbers of chronically absent students are highly segregated by race and income: “At least 79 percent of the students in these districts are minority, and at least 28 percent of the children between ages 5 and 17 live in poverty.”

So how did Ohio fare on the AW report? During the 2013-14 school year, the Buckeye State had nearly 1.8 million students. 265,086 students (15 percent) were chronically absent—right around the national average. To illustrate their findings, Attendance Works developed interactive maps. Here’s a look at which Ohio districts hold a spot on one of the maps, in order from the highest percentage of chronically absent students to the lowest:

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It’s no surprise to see Cleveland with the highest percentage of chronically absent students: CEO Eric Gordon told the Plain Dealer in 2015 that over the previous three years, the district had averaged 57 percent of kids missing ten days or more in a year.

Attendance Works offers a list of six steps for states and districts to take in order to use the data to create an effective action plan. Each step has a variety of additional recommendations, such as adopting a multi-tiered system of support that addresses common attendance barriers and includes interventions like home visits and personalized outreach, developing tailored action plans, and mentoring.

The good news for Ohio is that many of these recommendations are already being considered. House Bill 410, which was introduced back in December 2015, is a common sense bill that aims to tackle the punitive roots of and the lack of clear and consistent data on student truancy in the Buckeye State. (See here for an in depth overview of the bill.) Unfortunately, the bill has yet to make it out of the Senate.

Recently, some Ohio education groups voiced concerns that many schools lack the required personnel and finances to properly support the absence intervention teams outlined in the bill. (These teams are responsible for developing an intervention plan tailored specifically to the student, with the aim of getting her back to—and keeping her in—school. Teams must include a district administrator, a teacher, and the student’s parent or guardian, and are required to meet certain deadlines.) They also questioned the “extensive reporting” the bill calls for. Given the heavy load of responsibilities that teachers and administrators already have, it would be wise for legislators to seek feedback about how to make absence intervention teams more workable without losing sight of their intended purpose. The same is true for reporting requirements, which could be streamlined but not erased completely.

There’s a growing sense that when lawmakers return to Columbus this fall, they will fine tune and then pass House Bill 410. That’s a good thing. Improving the data systems and intervention protocols for chronic absenteeism is low-hanging fruit, and the General Assembly should do its part to ensure that fruit is harvested and solid policies around student attendance are in place.