A new report from UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools examines the economic consequences of students’ that did not graduate high school, chronic absenteeism and disciplinary policies. The Ten Billion Dollar Deficit: The Economic Burdens of Inequities Across California Schools was produced in collaboration with the center’s CA Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) Research Consortium and the Penn Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education. Using state-, school- and student-level data, researchers calculated the total economic burden of the three focus areas and found “substantial economic burdens from high non-completion rates, chronic absenteeism, and disciplinary sanctions.”
“For example, from a social perspective, the economic burden for each student who does not complete high school is $478,440,” the report states. “If California’s high school graduation rate were to increase by 3 percentage points — to match the national average of 90 percent — this would translate into an additional $9.57 billion in economic benefits statewide. Similarly, large economic consequences result when students are absent, suspended, or expelled. These burdens are borne primarily by students and their families — particularly disadvantaged and minority families — but taxpayers and residents of California at large also suffer significant consequences.”
For each student who is chronically absent, the burden is $5,630 and for disciplinary policies, such as suspensions and expulsions, the burden is $70,870.
Graduation rate
With a graduation rate of 87 percent, the report estimates that there are more than 75,000 high schoolers that do not graduate each year. While there are many contributing factors to a student not completing high school, “most will struggle to become economically secure and may need to rely on government supports. Thus, there is a clear economic burden from failure to complete high school, and this burden is likely to be especially significant for minority students and disadvantaged groups,” according to the report.
Chronic absenteeism
Defined as missing 10 percent or more of school days, chronic absentee rates are still recovering from the pandemic disruption on schedules. This report uses data from the 2021–22 school year when 30 percent of students were chronically absent. (This rate came down to 20 percent in the 2023–24 year.) Rates of absenteeism were even higher for marginalized groups such as African American and Latino students, students from families with lower incomes, English learners and youth experiencing homelessness or in foster care.
“By definition, absentee students are failing to receive educational opportunities; chronically absent students have lower achievement levels in math and English language arts and are more likely to not complete high school (Liu, Lee, & Gershenson, 2021). Similarly, these students will face diminished economic opportunities in adulthood. School resources are also needed to ameliorate absence (and to ensure attendance). It is important to catalog these various burdens of absenteeism,” the report states.
Disciplinary policies
“Disciplinary sanctions are also common across California’s public school system. These sanctions are grouped into suspensions, restraints (physical and mechanical), and expulsions (plus seclusions). Each year, 233,800 students (almost 4 percent) are suspended, 7,300 students are restrained, and 3,300 are expelled. There are also a small number of seclusions—although this disciplinary status is relatively new — and mechanical restraints (860 and 120, respectively),” according to the report.
Like the other measures, these policies disproportionately affect African American students who experience suspension rates at four times the level of any other racial group, males who are suspended at double the rate as females, and disadvantaged students, with 25 percent of foster youth and 8 percent of homeless youth suspended each year.
“Each of these disciplinary sanctions — suspensions, restraints, and expulsions — impairs learning opportunities for disciplined students. Disciplined students are less likely to complete school; less likely to participate in the labor market; and more likely to be system-involved, including within the carceral system,” the report finds.
Addressing the challenges
The report suggests MTSS framework as one way to begin to effectively address these challenges. This framework has four components: screening of students’ needs; monitoring progress; data-based decision-making; and a multi-level prevention system.
California has also attempted to address some of the disproportionality through the Local Control Funding Formula, which provides extra funding for identified vulnerable student groups. The researchers conclude that, “even as these changes are effective, they are likely to be inadequate to fully offset inequity burdens.”
It also calls out the need to accurately target supplemental and concentration funding to address the “concentration of inequity within schools.”
“One reason targeting is inaccurate is that the funding formula does not adequately recognize peer effects: absenteeism and disciplinary sanction impose resource burdens across all students, not just those who are absent or disciplined,” the report states. “These peer burdens are substantial, and yet they are only weakly incorporated into California’s concentration grants. Another source of inaccuracy is that compensatory funding is mostly allocated at the district level and is not directly targeted to schools according to their proportion of high-need students.”
