Editor’s note: This essay is an entry in Fordham’s 2024 Wonkathon, which asked contributors to answer this question: “How can policymakers and practitioners radically reduce chronic absenteeism—at least below pre-pandemic levels and preferably much further?” Learn more.
Millions of students are chronically absent in the United States, and many are asking the question: What can we do to improve chronic absenteeism rates? The truth is that the vast majority of resources to address this challenge are focused on just a small fraction of those students. From partnerships with over sixty school districts, interviews with over fifty attendance-focused staff members, and professional development sessions with hundreds of school and district team members, we at EveryDay Labs, where I’m Head of Research & Development, have observed that many staff spend their time supporting a handful of students experiencing the most severe absenteeism (missing over 20 percent of school days). While these students undoubtedly need support, this article posits that by focusing on a small minority of severely absent students, we are failing to reduce overall chronic absenteeism rates. The key to lowering chronic absenteeism is directing more efforts towards the majority: at-risk and moderately chronically absent students.
What does chronic absenteeism look like and why does it matter?
When most people think of chronic absenteeism, they are likely thinking of students who are rarely in school. However, most chronically absent students are easy to miss. Through our partnerships, we’ve gathered data on the attendance behavior of over 1.5 million students across the United States, representing districts large and small, urban, suburban, and rural. At the end of the 2023–24 school year, the majority of chronically absent students had absence rates between 10–20 percent. This amounts to just two to four days absent each month, on average.
Exhibit 1. Distribution of absence rates by tier for SY23–24
Exhibit 2. Overall distribution of absence rates for SY23–24
Missing just a few days per month adds up to a significant amount of lost learning time, contributing to adverse educational outcomes for students. A student missing 10 percent of school each year will miss over a year’s worth of learning during their educational career. We also see significant declines in both math and reading outcomes at that 10 percent threshold, as well as at the 5 percent threshold, showing us that getting students back into the classroom is critical for student academic success.
Exhibit 3. Attendance and NWEA MAP mid-year outcomes from a large, urban district
Note: math (N= 97,802), reading (N=79,043)
Changing absenteeism during the school year
Importantly, absenteeism is not constant throughout the year. Our data show that the average absence rate increases over the course of the year, demonstrating the necessity for early identification and intervention.
Exhibit 4. Average student absence rate from September 2023–June 2024
Of students who were considered extremely chronically absent at the end of October, just 1 percent ended the school year not chronically absent. This makes sense mathematically, as all it takes is two months of being extremely chronically absent to surpass the eighteen-day threshold for ending the year chronically absent. While it is important to support these extremely chronically absent students as their absences are likely an indicator of significant challenges, this will not meaningfully shift the overall chronic absence rates given the small fraction of the student population that they represent.
Conversely, there is a large proportion of students who have a much better chance of ending the year not chronically absent. Of students who were moderately chronically absent in October (missing 10–20 percent), half were still moderately chronically absent at the end of the year, and about 17 percent became severely or extremely chronically absent. With additional intervention, they might have been able to end the year not chronically absent. Additionally, of students who were at risk of chronic absenteeism (missing 5–9 percent) in October, about 27 percent ended the year chronically absent. With more intervention, they might have stayed under the threshold for chronic absenteeism. Successfully working with these students to end the year not chronically absent could shift overall chronic absence rates by approximately 15 percentage points. We’ve seen with our own district partners that sending strategic mail and text nudges to these student populations can either move them to a better attendance tier or prevent their attendance from worsening.
Why districts focus on more extreme absenteeism
In short, the more absences a student has, the easier they are to identify. Schools have limited tools to identify absenteeism. Often, they rely primarily on two sources: (1) daily absence lists and (2) teacher referrals. With both sources, attendance staff come to recognize “frequent flyers,” students whose names they see often or consecutively. These top-of-mind students then become the focus of intervention efforts.
Meanwhile, students who are moderately chronically absent are missing just two to four days of school each month, and these students often fly under the radar.
There is no single solution to address chronic absenteeism
When it comes to absenteeism, the solutions needed are varied. Last year, we provided resources to over 60,000 families to help them overcome barriers to attendance such as transportation, wellness, and food, while others had more niche needs. This is consistent with what we’ve heard anecdotally from staff, who often mention transportation needs as well as challenges like inappropriately timed family vacations. In a survey of almost 400 families, families reported facing five attendance barriers on average, with the most common barrier being their child’s physical and mental health.
A student facing health challenges needs very different support than a student without reliable transportation or a student who goes on multiple family vacations, just as a student missing 40 percent of school days needs different support than a student missing 11 percent of days.
What can be done
Educators need evidence-based, effective solutions, but how these solutions are applied is even more critical. Unlike many other education outcomes, attendance is something we can measure and act on in real time. Unfortunately, too many staff lack access to tools that can help them do that.
As discussed earlier, students with moderate absenteeism (missing 10–20 percent of days) and those at risk (missing 5–9 percent) are the largest groups among chronically absent students. To effectively reduce overall absenteeism rates, we need to focus on these groups with strategic interventions.
1. Mix of low to high touch strategies:
High-touch interventions like home visits are time-consuming and best reserved for students with the most severe absenteeism. Our survey of over 900 attendance staff revealed that they typically work with about five students and/or seven families each week. At this rate, applying high-touch strategies to all students would be impractical and ineffective. Therefore, we must pair these intensive solutions with school-wide strategies and lower-touch options, such as chronic absence nudges and incentive programs, which can be implemented for the majority of students with moderate absenteeism. These lower-touch interventions can help prevent students from escalating to more severe levels of absenteeism.
2. Data tools to enable strategic intervention:
To ensure that interventions are effectively targeted, schools need robust data tools that allow staff to:
- Easily view cumulative absence data, helping to identify whether a student’s absenteeism is worsening or improving.
- Group students by attendance tier, common barriers, or attendance patterns (such as those who extend school vacations or consistently miss the same day of the week).
- Identify students with concerning absenteeism as early as possible to prevent them from escalating.
- Track full-day absences, as well as period absences and tardies to get a holistic view of lost learning time.
- Identify broader attendance trends, like grade levels with high absence rates or dip days, in order to implement school-wide attendance promotion strategies.
Such tools enable staff to recognize and address absenteeism patterns early. For example, data showing that students with moderate absenteeism (10–20 percent) often remain chronically absent without intervention suggest that timely and targeted support could help these students improve their attendance.
By focusing on students who are moderately chronically absent and at risk of becoming chronically absent, and by equipping staff with the right data tools, we can shift our focus to a larger population of students who have a better chance of improving their attendance with timely and appropriate interventions. Additionally, chronic absenteeism doesn’t just affect the students who miss class, but even those who attend every day. When teachers spend more time catching students up and less time moving forward, everyone suffers. This strategic approach is essential for achieving a meaningful reduction in overall chronic absenteeism rates that supports all students.
Being data-driven works
For the last few years, we have provided these kinds of data-driven tools and services to numerous districts. In turn, they have been able to successfully lower their chronic absence rates.
Arizona, a state that has struggled with some of the worst chronic absenteeism, saw success with our partner, Tempe Elementary School District, reducing chronic absence rates by 11 percentage points (from 40 percent to 29 percent) in the last year. They achieved this through the work of strong school attendance teams who use actionable data to implement strategies that impact students across all absence rates. This holistic approach to attendance results in improvement across all student groups. This didn’t stop in Arizona: Other partners have reduced chronic absenteeism by seven percentage points over the last year. Longer-standing partners have seen rates drop by up to half in some cases. For example, over the last two years, chronic absenteeism in one California district dropped from 42 percent to 20 percent, and in a Georgia district, it went from 33 percent to 17 percent. This demonstrates that significant change is possible, but it requires strategies and tools that provide the right interventions to the right students at the right time.
