In the era of Bush-Obama education policy, it became conventional wisdom to blame schools for the effects of poverty. Civil rights lawyer Wendy Lecker explains that the test-and-punish regime continues by blaming schools and punishing them for chronic absenteeism.
She writes:
NCLB measured school quality based on standardized test scores and relied on sanctions such as school turnaround, takeover and privatization. After almost two decades under NCLB, and the acknowledgment that the metric was inaccurate and the prescriptions were ineffective, the federal government decided to try a tweaked version of its failed test-and-punish regime.
The ESSA system employs multiple “indicators” of school quality. Each indicator provides schools and districts with points that together dictate what types of sanctions are imposed. The dashboard showing the schools’ and districts’ points for each indicator are also published online.
Nowhere on this dashboard is the state graded for whether or not it adequately funds Connecticut public schools, even though nationwide evidence proves a causal connection between school spending and student achievement.
One indicator under Connecticut’s ESSA plan is chronic absenteeism. The rationale Connecticut provides for including this indicator is the research and data demonstrating an association of chronic absenteeism to student academic achievement and high school graduation. What the ESSA plan does not detail are the causes of absenteeism.
A new study from Wayne State University tracks the incidence of chronic absenteeism across U.S. cities. The researchers found that nationwide, certain factors are significantly correlated with chronic absenteeism, namely: long-term population change, asthma rates, poverty and unemployment rates, residential vacancy rates, violent crime rates, average monthly temperature, and racial segregation.
Thus, although under Connecticut’s accountability system, chronic absenteeism is an indicator of school quality, and can contribute to a school or school district being subjected to increasingly draconian sanctions, none of the factors listed above that are significantly correlated with chronic absenteeism has anything to do with school.
Common sense in federal education policy would be nice for a change.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Tennessee now rates schools in a 1-5 scale, 5 being the best. Like other rating systems, it means that individual school bounce up and down on the ratings wildly, going from a 5 one year to a 1 the next. Much of the volatility of this scale can be laid to things like absenteeism. As a result, schools are scrambling to do things that appeal to students who are not really interested I learning, and whose parents are not in shape to be responsible.
I think the standardized tests that destroy the abilities of teachers to teach is also partially responsible for absenteeism. Who would want to go to school when the only thing that matters is test scores?
If a school is repeatedly failing why would anyone want to show up? That includes teachers who are working as hard as possible and then get demeaned by a low score.
Standardized testing measures nothing but the educational and economic level of the parents. It is totally demoralizing to both the children, the teachers and the administrators.
I didn’t miss many days of school. Now, I wonder about whether or not I’d want to show up.
the school and teachers and students are not “bad” or “broken” or “failing,” but the endless abusive buy-in from politicians/journalists/district leaders that these words have meaning has demoralized entire systems
“Standardized testing measures nothing.”
That’s all that needs to be said. Unfortunately most won’t listen.
I agree. I think ed reform has gone WAY too much in the direction of blaming public schools for everything, and in a way that also serves to not hold their parents responsible for anything.
Families who are homeless or in poverty have real difficulty getting kids to school, but the rest of us ought to be able to manage it.
It is not actually the school’s responsibility to get my kid up and around and to school. We have middle income people in my district where their kids are missing school 5 days a month. In my opinion, they cannot complain about the school if they aren’t willing to do even the minimum- get them there. It isn’t an amusement park. Sometimes their kids will not want to go. That’s understandable in a kid but why are the parents allowing it and how is that possibly the fault of public schools?
The emails from the public schools stress that it is important to keep your child/children home if they are sick. They stress that they don’t want the spread of illness to infect other students or the teachers. Like a good parent, I have kept mine home when ill and emailed the school health line to let them know of the absence. On day 2 they are calling to find out why I haven’t sent my child back into school and on day 3 they are downright nasty and indignant about it. Yes, your child can be sick….but only for 1 day…..then they better pick themselves up and out of bed with a fever and drag themselves into school to sit for hours of Common Core drivel test prep. So glad I’m done with public school this year! Child #2 attends private school and they send the same letter/email about illness….except that they trust you as a parent about the health of your child and they don’t call and demand the attendance of a sick child. Isn’t school supposed to be about what is good for the children?….nope…it’s all about the ratings.
Thanks to Wendy Lecker for research on the ESSA policy that requires states to hold schools accountable for one measure of “school quality or student success)” (ESSA 2015, 111-31).
At last count, 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico had ESSA plans using chronic absenteeism as one school quality or student success indicator. These plans had to be approved by the US Department of Education, and with Trump/DeVos in charge, that process was slow and a number of think tanks were jumping in with ideas for ESSA accountability.
In 2016, the Brookings Institution was trying to shape state ESSA plans. In a paper titled “Lessons for Broadening School Accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act” writers for the Brookings argued that “chronic absenteeism” should be adopted as “a valuable indicator of school quality or student success.” https://www.hamiltonproject.org/papers/lessons_for_broadening_school_accountability_under_the_every_student_succee
In 2017, Attendance Works and Future Ed issued a report on state ESSA plans ‘ Who’s In: Chronic Absenteeism under the every Student Succeeds Act.” This report examines the extent of absenteeism, what counts as an “absence,” and how every ESSA state plan addressed this issue. That report included Connecticut’s policies as if these were “on the right track” in reducing absenteeism. https://www.attendanceworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/REPORT_Chronic_Absenteeism_final_v5.pdf
Readers of this blog should know that Attendance Works began as an initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and specifically, as a follow-on to the Casey Foundation’s (dubious) promotion of “read by grade three” that many sates adopted. Attendance Works is funded by about 17 foundations. It offers consultant services on how to address absenteeism.
In 2019, Attendance Works, again in collaboration with FutureEd, published “Attendance Playbook: Smart Solutions for Reducing Chronic Absenteeism.” Future Ed is a think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. It is funded by seven foundations and directed by Thomas Toch., a corporate-style reformist (who is worthy of a separate post).
This Playbook has nearly two dozen recommendations for schools and districts to follow regarding absenteeism, arranged in three “tiers of Interventions.” The report falsely assumes that few schools are addressing these methods of reducing chronic absenteeism. The report does not address the issues of cost and staffing of these interventions, or school liability for some “solutions” like having Uber pick up students.
Tier 1 Interventions are addressed in
–Effective Messaging and Engagement (Nudging Parents and Students, Home Visits, Positive Messaging, Incentives),
–Removing Barriers to Attendance (School-based Health Services Telehealth, School Buses and Public Transit, Safe Walks to School, Breakfast for All, Laundry at School) –Improving School Climate (Relevant—and Culturally Relevant—Curriculum, Threshold Greetings, Rethinking Recess, Restorative Discipline Practices)
Tier 2 Interventions focus on
–Effective Messaging and Engagement (Early Warning, Mentoring, Youth Engagement) and
–Removing Barriers to Attendance (Addressing Asthma, Targeted Transportation).
Tier 3 Interventions take you to Truancy Courts, Interagency Case Management, and Housing.
There can be no doubt that having a laundry at school is of potential use to some students, also menstruation supplies, also clothes, also nutritious snacks and take home food. Too many students who are faced with unconscionable conditions of poverty and well beyond the power of teachers and schools to address them.
Judging “school quality or student success” by absentee rates is not just unfair, but in some cases ridiculous. I taught in schools in Florida where weather up north brought students into and out of schools and raised havoc with attendance accounting. A significant number of students were also in families of migrant workers who moved from state to state tending crops.
These reports from the Brookings, Attendance Works, and Future Ed say nothing about funding and staffing for these interventions. They do not take up the persistent redlining of communities enabled by the billionaire-supported Great Schools.org website and Zillow’s purchase of school ratings thee. These reports do not mention other schemes like Tax Increment Funding for urban and suburban developments. These have been a disaster in Chicago and they are now being promoted in Cincinnati. They are known to reduce funding for schools, infrastructure, and social services for up to twenty-five years. Corporate welfare the form of tax rates is rampant.
There is a problem with chronic absenteeism, but threatening school personnel and rating schools on rates of attendance is bad policy.
What Laura’s well researched and informative (as always!) post tells us is if there’s a way for consultants to make a buck from it, it will become a measure of school “quality”.
Here a some other ways the absentee metric disproportionally affects kids in poor school districts: a lack of adequate public transportation, unhealthy school buildings which are in disrepair, lack of preventative health care, lack of support for families where English is not the home language and the inexorable presence of the ICE gestapo on immigrant communities.
In Boston kids from grades 7-12 rely on public transportation to get to school. Previously, that was only for high school students, but in an austerity measure, the limit was extended downwards. The T is a daily disaster, due to chronic underfunding from our Republican governor, whose friends the Kochs don’t want a viable transit system. As a result, kids’ first challenge of the day is getting to school safely, and owning a car is prohibitively expensive for many of our families.
I worked in a school building with problems such as rodent and insect incursions, mold, leaks and bad HVAC systems. I had asthmatic students transfer from a school with an extraordinarily high achievement rate because they were sick all the time. For the 12 winters I taught there, I was sick for 6-8 weeks with respiratory infections that miraculously disappeared during school vacations and returned within 2 days of classes resuming.
When kids have no regular medical care, small problems snowball into large ones and complications ensue that can mean extended absence. Or kids come to school sick and share their germs liberally about. Neither is good for learning.
Parents who don’t speak English well often rely on their kids to translate for them. If a parent needs to interact with the court, the school system, the welfare system or a medical clinic or hospital, their child is pulled from school to be the go-between.
When ICE is out hunting in our immigrant communities, fear sets in. Children are worried about their undocumented parents being detained at a traffic stop, or at work, or coming out of court. Parents worry their undocumented kids are vulnerable waiting for a school bus to pick them up on a corner. Some schools have staff who are openly hostile to undocumented kids, unfortunately.
When you look at all these factors, it becomes clear that much absenteeism is due to the usual suspect: poverty.
Christine Langhoff: Well written comment by someone who knows what is happening in poverty schools today.