Stacy B. Ehrlich

Introduction to the Special Issue: Combating Chronic Absence

Missing school is damaging the growth and development of our nation’s students, particularly those entering school with the lowest skills (Ehrlich, Gwynne, Pareja, & Allensworth, 2014). It has been well established that having more absences is associated with lower grades and test scores (Gershenson, Jacknowitz, & Brannegan, 2017; Goodman, 2014; Gottfried, 2009, 2010), especially when those absences occur close to the test date (Gottfried & Kirksey, 2017). Additionally, students who more frequently miss school are more likely to drop out of high school (Rumberger, 1995) and less likely to be employed (Alexander, Entwisle, & Horsey, 1997; Broadhurst et al., 2005; Kane, 2006). There are also physical and socioemotional health concerns. Absent students are more likely to smoke, drink, and take drugs (Hallfors et al., 2002) as well as exhibit greater behavioral issues, such as alienation and disengagement (Gottfried, 2014). Recent national estimates suggest approximately 5–7.5 million students miss at least one cumulative month of school, translating to 150–225 million days of instruction lost annually (Chang & Davis, 2015). A growing research body indicates that high rates of absenteeism (and its consequences) emerge as early as pre-kindergarten (Connolly & Olsen, 2012; Dubay & Holla, 2015, 2016; Ehrlich et al., 2014), and approximately 25% of kindergartners are missing almost 3 weeks of school (Gottfried, 2017). Therefore, it no surprise that many policy makers have coined our current state of missing school as the “Absenteeism Crisis” (Harris, Habig, Krausen, Woo, & Sumner, 2015). Students are missing a lot of school, and these habits are forming early. In other words, the above-mentioned ramifications are very real and are hurting a significant number students at every stage of schooling. Given this crisis, it is no surprise that inertia around focusing onmeasuring and reducing absenteeism continues to grow fromwithin the policy realm. At present, the most prominent initiative has been intertwined with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Under ESSA, in addition to traditional achievement-based accountability metrics, most states across the country are proposing to hold schools accountable for school-level chronic absence (defined at the student level as missing at least 10% of school), a move supported by several organizations (Attendance Works, 2016; Schanzenbach, Bauer, & Mumford, 2016). As of September 2017, 37 states had plans that included chronic absence as their non-academic indicator (Jordan &Miller, 2017). As states move to hold schools accountable for chronic absence, it is a crucial time to take stock of what research has taught us to date with regards to the ability to measure the impact of attendance as well as to examine how schools and other stakeholders can contribute to reducing this damaging behavior. Armed with this information, policymakers and practitioners can determine next steps to best support schools’ efforts to reduce absences. This sets up the necessity for this special double issue focused on student absenteeism. This is the first known special issue exploring research and policy around school absenteeism and it brings together researchers with expertise in absenteeism in early childhood and K-12.