A recent evaluation by EdTrust provides insights on how 23 states, including California, are addressing chronic absenteeism.
Nationally, students who miss 10 percent or more of school days in an academic year are considered chronically absent regardless of whether the missed time is excused or unexcused.
Chronic absenteeism “is a clear warning sign that a student is disengaged from school or facing significant challenges at home, in their community, or within the education environment itself,” according to EdTrust. “Unfortunately, the national average of chronically absent students is at 23 percent and for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, those rates are higher than the national average.”
Though chronic absenteeism has been a longstanding issue, it was exacerbated by the pandemic. Some states are starting to find success in strategies that encourage attendance, but the rate of chronic absence is still well above the 16 percent observed in 2018–19. “This reality underscores the urgency that interventions to address chronic absenteeism are crucial to improve student engagement and academic outcomes,” according to EdTrust.
The organization says that accurate, timely data is critical to reducing chronic absenteeism as states and local educational agencies can use it to find patterns in attendance, conduct early interventions, know where to allocate resources and, overall, work to tackle the root causes that keep students from class. Evidence-based strategies must be used to see improvement.
The evaluation comes as EdTrust, Attendance Works and the American Enterprise Institute sponsor The 50% Challenge, which is “a call to action for states to make reducing chronic absenteeism a top priority. It also seeks to demonstrate that chronic absenteeism can be significantly reduced when states commit to data-driven, comprehensive approaches that begin with early prevention and focus on student groups that are most chronically absent.”
California is among the 16 participating states as is Washington, D.C. Participants committed to reducing chronic absence by 50 percent in five years.
California
In its evaluation, EdTrust considered attendance data systems and policies and investment strategies as well as discipline policies and practices. California was largely recognized for having highly supportive policies in these areas, such as its attendance monitoring system and adoption of evidence-based discipline guidance and policies. However, it was categorized as just “partially supportive” in regard to how often the state collects chronic absenteeism data from districts, its presentation of the related publicly available data, the financial sustainability of investments to reduce chronic absence and some discipline practices. More details on each are detailed in the report.
Based on data from 2022–23, “to meet The 50% Challenge, California’s overall rate of chronic absence would have to decrease from 27 percent to 14 percent, or 3 percentage points each year — that would mean 160,059 fewer students would be chronically absent each year.”
In 2022–23, students served under the Individuals with Disabilities Act and Black students had the highest rates of chronic absence in the state at 43 percent and 42 percent, respectively.
EdTrust created projections by student group through 2027–28 to demonstrate how progress could play out. Data is also available by grade, location and school district.
