Bipartisan coalition calls for cutting chronic absenteeism in half as children continue to miss school

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From poor reading skills to chaotic classrooms, persistently high absenteeism rates make it difficult to address all of education's other problems. That has made improving attendance a rare point of bipartisan agreement.

A new coalition announced a campaign Wednesday calling on schools to cut their chronic absenteeism rates in half from the 2021-22 school year, when they peaked nationwide, by the 2026-27 school year.

The goal is to reverse what happened during the pandemic, when the proportion of children who missed a lot of school nearly doubled.

As part of the new campaign, the coalition plans to highlight examples of states and school districts that have successfully addressed the challenges of absenteeism.

While many schools have worked to curb chronic absenteeism — generally defined as children missing at least 10 percent of the school year, or about 18 days — the problem remains widespread and persistent. Setting aggressive goals and making concrete plans to achieve them is the only way to turn it around, the coalition said.

It could also be the key to addressing learning loss caused by the pandemic.

Children of all achievement levels, of all races, in all states, in all types of communities, have had higher rates of absenteeism in recent years, regardless of whether their schools have been closed for long periods of time or not.

“That kind of turnover just makes everything more difficult,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, referring to everything from establishing classroom routines to keeping lesson plans on track. “To me, that actually fuels the urgency of this problem.”

The trio leading the coalition — which held a rally in Washington, D.C., where Chang and others kicked off the campaign — is an unlikely pair. It consists of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank; The Education Trust, a leading civil rights group; and Attendance Works, a nonprofit with a long history of working on absenteeism issues.

“This is the real threat we’re looking at now: that chronic absenteeism will not go down, that it will become the new normal,” said Nat Malkus, deputy director for education policy at the American Enterprise Institute. “It’s a huge problem, and we’re going to need a concerted effort to counter it.”

Denise Forte, who heads The Education Trust, said the idea to join forces came to her after she and Malkus raised similar concerns about student absenteeism before the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee in January.

“I thought, this is a unique opportunity with two organizations and two people who don’t always think the same about many things, but we could come together on this one,” Forte said.

Education officials from Virginia and Rhode Island who participated in the event said their states had seen strong links between who was chronically absent and who was struggling in school.

Lisa Coons, Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, said that when her staff reviewed state test score data last year to understand why they weren’t seeing more recovery in learning loss, one consistent factor stood out. In grades 3 through 8, if a student was chronically absent, they scored 18 percent lower on average in reading and 25 percent lower in math.

“Kids don’t know work, they don’t want to go to school, they feel like they’re behind, and that just sets them back even further,” Coons said. “We have to break that cycle.”

Schools across the country have been trying to implement new attendance-tracking systems, hire door-knockers and give away prizes to help students re-engage. And while many states have recently reduced their chronic absenteeism rates, they remain generally higher than before the pandemic.

Chang said the ongoing work to reduce chronic absenteeism will look different across the country, especially as COVID relief dollars that many school districts had relied on to pay for their attendance campaigns dry up at the start of the new school year.

“The challenge with chronic absenteeism is that there are multiple issues and reasons that cause children to be chronically absent,” she said. “You have to use local knowledge of children, families and data to really determine what is going to make the biggest difference in the community.”

The coalition highlighted work being done in Rhode Island, which reduced its chronic absenteeism rate by 5 percentage points during the 2022-23 school year. There, state officials posted “We Miss You” signs to grab students’ attention and put together a public dashboard that tracks the daily attendance rate for schools across the state.

Officials use it to monitor attendance at middle and high schools, for children who have been chronically absent for three years and for children who began being absent a lot when they were young, said Angelica Infante-Green, the state's education commissioner.

A parent task force helps inform the state's assistance initiatives, whether by determining which grocery stores and laundromats should post informational flyers or recommending trusted community members who can knock on families' doors.

“This is everyone’s responsibility,” he said.

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Related:
Addressing student absenteeism with teacher professional development
Addressing the root causes of chronic absenteeism in primary and secondary education
For more news on chronic absenteeism, visit eSN's Education Leadership Center