In the 2022–23 school year, an estimated 26 percent of public school students were chronically absent—a rate almost 10 percentage points higher than pre-pandemic. Though student attendance has rebounded slightly in some states from the Covid-driven absenteeism, it remains a serious issue in schools across the country.
Considering the negative associations between chronic absenteeism and a range of short- and long-term student outcomes (including test scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment), developing a stronger understanding of the factors that impact student attendance is essential. A recent study by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, North Carolina State University, and Ohio State University contributes to this understanding by investigating the relationship between teacher experience levels and early elementary student attendance.
Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the researchers looked at the reported absenteeism of a nationally representative sample of approximately 18,170 students during their kindergarten (SY 2010-11) through second grade (SY 2012-13) years. (Yes, these data are quite old; more on that below.) The sample included 1,400 “novice” (less than three years of experience) teachers and 16,770 “experienced” (three or more years) teachers.
The authors used regression analysis to determine the relationship between teacher experience and student absenteeism, controlling for several factors, including student and classroom demographics as well as household characteristics. They created child-level fixed effects models to examine within-student variation, or differences in the absenteeism rates of the same students between school years, for students who switched from a novice to experienced teacher (or vice versa). This allowed the researchers to address the possibly of bias being introduced into the results if principals assigned students to novice and experienced teachers in a non-random way (e.g., intentionally assigning more chronically absent students to novice teachers). Each regression was run twice, once with the outcome measure being the number of days missed, and a second time with a binary outcome variable indicating whether a student was chronically absent, accounting for the teacher’s experience level.
Perhaps surprisingly, statistically significant results showed that K–2 students with novice teachers missed fewer days and were less likely to be chronically absent. In addition, the researchers found these effects to be consistent across students with various individual, family, and teacher characteristics, including student English learner status, family poverty level, and teacher race, among others. However, results were stronger for students on the cusp of being considered chronically absent. In addition, to check for robustness, the authors used actual years of experience in place of the “novice versus experienced” distinction as a measure of teacher experience and found that years of experience did not significantly predict student attendance like novice teacher status did.
The authors suggest possible reasons for these outcomes. First, novice teachers may be able to relate better to parents of early elementary students due to a higher likelihood that they are of similar ages. Considering the important role that parents play in early elementary attendance, this ability to build closer connections with parents may facilitate decreases in student absenteeism. Novice teachers may also have received training that focused on newer accountability structures that include indicators like attendance, and on culturally relevant practices that may better engage students.
Despite the inclusion of these possible mechanisms driving the study’s findings, the results remain surprising and should be interpreted with caution. Not only do the findings run counter to the intuitive notion that more experienced teachers are more capable of producing positive outcomes for students, but they also differ from the findings of an earlier study on teacher experience and student absenteeism, creating some grounds for skepticism. In addition, the current study’s data were collected nearly a decade before the pandemic's dramatic impact on student attendance; as such, the insights to be drawn from the study’s results may be less relevant to post-pandemic education.
Nonetheless, the study’s results have important implications for schools hoping to increase attendance rates among early elementary students. First and most importantly, the results suggest that teacher experience itself may not actually impact student attendance rates. However, certain teacher practices or classroom contexts may significantly impact student attendance. Due to the limitations of the data set’s time frame, this relationship should be reanalyzed using more current data to confirm or refute this conclusion. Further research, such as an investigation of the relationship between teacher age and student attendance, or a study focused on the impacts of specific teacher preparation courses or professional development programs attended by teachers on their students’ attendance rates, may also provide important context for the current study’s results and more actionable information for policymakers and school leaders.
SOURCE: Michael Gottfried, Michael Little, and Arya Ansari, “Novice Teachers and Student Attendance in Early Elementary School,” Educational Policy (March 2024).
