Tag: Chronic

  • How are education leaders combating chronic absenteeism?

    How are education leaders combating chronic absenteeism?

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — In Maryland’s Baltimore City Public Schools, educators are making home visits to determine families’ barriers to school attendance.

    In Virginia, a state-level task force is helping pediatricians and school nurses educate parents on the importance of school attendance and when to keep students home if they are truly too sick to attend school.

    And several states are prioritizing attendance campaigns through accountability measures, additional funding, data-informed decision-making and elevated attention within governors’ offices.

    These are some of the school attendance approaches school system leaders shared during a Thursday event focused on combating chronic absenteeism. The event was hosted by Attendance Works, EdTrust and American Enterprise Institute.

    “If we don’t have our students there, we will not see the outcomes that we’re looking for,” said Charlene Russell-Tucker, commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education.  

    Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and deputy director of education policy studies at AEI, said that while data shows the national chronic absenteeism rate is improving, there’s much more work to do to get school attendance back to pre-COVID-19 levels.

    In 2024, the national chronic absenteeism rate was 23.5%. That’s an improvement from a high of 28.5% in 2022, but still higher than the 13.4% recorded in 2017 and 15.2% in 2018, Malkus said. Chronic absenteeism is measured as missing 10% or more days in a school year — or about 18 days — for any reason. 

    In 2022, “almost every district in the nation saw [chronic absenteeism] increases, most of them sizable,” Malkus said. Although overall attendance improved in 2023 and 2024, the increases weren’t as high as the education field had hoped, he said.

    “This is a long-haul game” to get schools operating with consistent attendance “for our educational and economic future,” Malkus said.

    He commended 16 states and Washington, D.C., for committing to reduce chronic absenteeism by 50% over five years. At an event last year, the three organizations called on all states to make this commitment. 

    “States and districts have made progress, and we should be happy for that,” said Malkus, adding that improvements in attendance show “progress on this front is doable, and that the goals are achievable.”

    Trying different solutions

    Stephen Dackin, director of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, said that his state has committed to the 50% reduction in chronic absenteeism. Ohio hit a high of 30% in 2021-22 but is now down to 25.6%.

    Dackin said what has helped improve attendance is the use of a multi-tiered system of supports that provides increased levels of interventions where needed and an integrated review of students’ academic and behavioral data in developing interventions.

    “That is a game-changer, if we do it well in Ohio,” Dackin said.

    Emily Anne Gullickson, superintendent of public instruction in Virginia, said the state had a peak chronic absenteeism rate of 20.1%, which a case study by Attendance Works shows occurred in 2021-22. As of spring 2024, the rate was 15.7%. More recent attendance data is expected to be released soon, Gullickson said.

    A state-level task force launched the ALL (Attendance, Literacy and Learning) Initiative in September 2023. The state board of education incorporated chronic absenteeism into its accountability system and included it as part of a readiness indicator for elementary, middle and high schools, Gullickson said. Additionally, Virginia is studying model programs and looking at how to scale those practices.

    In Connecticut, Russell-Tucker said the chronic absenteeism rate was at a high of 23%, which state data shows occurred in 2021-22. Now, it’s at 17.2%. The state board of education set a goal of 6% by 2028.

    To help better understand the problem and to implement solutions, the attendance data is collected at the state level monthly. That data is then disaggregated by student subgroups. That data helps the state work with the districts so they can intervene immediately, Russell-Tucker said. Additionally, the state has a line item in its budget addressing student attendance.

    She called the need to improve school attendance an “all hands on deck” moment.

    The state’s Learner, Engagement and Attendance Program — or LEAP — supports home visits to strengthen school-family relationships and to reduce school attendance barriers for students, Russell-Tucker said.

    Evaluation studies of LEAP show that six months after the first LEAP visit, student attendance rates improved by about 10 percentage points for students in K-8, and nearly 16 percentage points for students in grades 9-12, she said.

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  • K-12 Chronic Absenteeism Rates Down From Peak, But Remain Persistently High – The 74

    K-12 Chronic Absenteeism Rates Down From Peak, But Remain Persistently High – The 74


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    Since hitting a record high in 2022, national chronic absenteeism rates have dropped modestly — by about five percentage points — according to the most recent available data, but still remain persistently higher than pre-pandemic levels. 

    States that joined a national pledge led by three high-profile education advocacy and research groups to cut chronic absenteeism in half over five years fared better. The 16 states and Washington, D.C. posted results “substantially above the average rate” of decline, though exact numbers are not yet available, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the trio.

    The national chronic absenteeism average dropped from 28.5% in 2022 to 25.4% in 2023, and fell an additional two points to 23.5% in 2024. Virginia, which is among the 16 participating states, cut its chronic absenteeism by 4.4 percentage points, year over year, to 15.7%, as of spring 2024.

    Speaking of the states collectively, Malkus told The 74, “That’s good but it’s not as good as we need it to be. I think it points to the need for sustained pressure and a sustained campaign to bring absence rates down and to bring more students back to consistent attendance.”

    Last July, AEI and EdTrust, right-and left-leaning think tanks, respectively, and the national nonprofit Attendance Works joined forces to launch The 50% Challenge. This week, the organizations hosted an event in Washington, D.C., to report on their progress, re-up the call to action and hear insights from state, district and community partners on how they are improving student attendance and engagement.

    With California and Georgia recently joining, the 16 states and D.C. who signed on to the pledge account for more than a third of all students nationally. While Malkus doesn’t necessarily attribute their better results to the pledge itself, he noted that their participation shows a willingness to commit to the cause and be publicly accountable for their results. 

    “I will hold their feet to the fire on this goal,” he added during his opening remarks in D.C.

    While felt most acutely by students of color and those in poorer districts, the spike in chronic absenteeism — students missing more than 10% of school days a year — cut across districts regardless of size, racial breakdown or income. Chronic absenteeism surged from 13.4% in 2017 to 28.5% in 2022 before beginning to drop in 2023.

    Only about one-third of students nationally are in districts that are on pace to cut 2022 absenteeism in half by 2027, according to an AEI report, and rates improved more slowly in 2024 than they did in 2023, “raising the very real possibility that absenteeism rates might never return to pre-pandemic levels.

    AEI

    Research has shown that students with high rates of absenteeism are more likely to fall behind academically and are at a greater risk of dropping out of school. About 8% of all learning loss from the pandemic is attributed just to chronic absenteeism, according to soon-to-be-released AEI research.

    The continued disproportionate impacts of chronic absenteeism were confirmed by recent RAND research, which found that in roughly half of urban school districts, more than 30% of students were chronically absent — a far higher share of students than in rural or suburban school districts.

    RAND also found that the most commonly reported reason for missing school was sickness and one-quarter of kids did not think that being chronically absent was a problem.

    SchoolStatus, a private company that works with districts to reduce chronic absenteeism, also released new numbers this week for some 1.3 million K-12 students across 172 districts in nine states. Districts using proactive interventions, the company reports, drove down chronic absenteeism rates from 21.9% in 2023–24 to 20.9% in 2024–25.

    At this week’s event, numerous experts across two panels emphasized the importance of a tiered approach to confronting the issue, which has resisted various remedies. Schools must build enough trust and buy-in with kids and their families that they are willing to share why they are absent in the first place. Once those root causes are identified, it is up to school, district and state leaders to work to remove the barriers.

    And while data monitoring must play a significant role, it should be done in a way that is inclusive of families.

    “We need to analyze data with families, not at them,” said Augustus Mays, EdTrust’s vice president of partnerships and engagement.

    Augustus Mays is the vice president of partnerships and engagement at EdTrust. (EdTrust)

    It’s imperative to understand the individual child beyond the number they represent and to design attendance plans and strategies with families so they feel supported rather than chastised.

    “It’s around choosing belonging over punitive punishment,” Mays added.

    One major and common mistake schools make is “accountability without relationships,” said Sonja Brookins Santelises, the superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools.

    “You can’t ‘pull people up’ if you don’t have enough knowledge of what they’re really going through,” she said.

    Panelists were transparent that all this would require immense funding, staff and community partnerships.

    Virginia achieved its noteworthy drop in chronic absenteeism after launching a $418 million education initiative in the fall of 2023, in part after seeing their attendance data sink, with about 1 in 5 students chronically missing school. At least 10% of those funds are earmarked to prioritize attendance solutions in particular, according to panelist Emily Anne Gullickson, the superintendent of public instruction for the Virginia Department of Education. 

    These strategies are far-reaching, she noted: Because parents had been told throughout the pandemic to keep their kids home at the slightest sign of illness, schools partnered with pediatricians and school nurses to help counter the no-longer-necessary “stay home” narrative.

    Hedy Chang is the founder and executive director of Attendance Works. (Attendance Works)

    Gullickson said she also broke down bureaucratic silos, connecting transportation directors and attendance directors, after realizing the role that transit played in chronic absenteeism. The state now has second chance buses as well as walking and biking “buses,” led by parents or teachers along a fixed route, who pick up students along the way.

    And they are “on a mission to move away from seat time and really deliver more flexibility on where, when and how kids are learning,” she said. 

    “This isn’t one strategy. It’s a set of strategies,” said Attendance Works founder and executive director Hedy Chang, who moderated the panel.

    In Connecticut, state leaders have launched the Learning Engagement and Attendance Program, a research-based model that sends trained support staff to families’ homes to build relationships and better understand why their kids are missing school. 

    Charlene Russell-Tucker is the commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education. (Connecticut State Department of Education)

    A recent study confirmed that six months after the program’s first home visits, attendance rates improved by approximately 10 percentage points for K-8 students, and nearly 16 percentage points for high schoolers, said Charlene Russell-Tucker, the commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education.

    Schools must also work to motivate kids to want to show up in the first place, panelists said, making it a meaningful place that students believe will support and help them in the long run. The only way to do this is to start with student and family feedback, said Brookins, the Baltimore schools chief.

    During the pandemic many parents saw up-close for the first time what their kids’ classrooms and teacher interactions looked like, “and I don’t think a lot of folks liked what they saw for a variety of different reasons,” Brookins said.

    “I think it opened up boxes of questions that we — as the education establishment — were unprepared to answer,” she added. But chronic absenteeism cannot be successfully fought without engaging in those uncomfortable conversations.

    Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to EdTrust and The 74.


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  • 7 insights about chronic absenteeism, a new normal for American schools

    7 insights about chronic absenteeism, a new normal for American schools

    Five years after the start of the pandemic, one of the most surprising ways that school has profoundly, and perhaps permanently, changed is that students aren’t showing up. Here are some insights from a May symposium at the American Enterprise Institute where scholars shared research on the problem of widespread absenteeism.  

    1. Chronic absenteeism has come down a lot from its peak in 2021-22, but it’s still 50 percent higher than it was before the pandemic.

    Roughly speaking, the chronic absenteeism rate nearly doubled after the pandemic, from 15 percent of students in 2018-19 to a peak of almost 29 percent of students in 2021-22. This is the share of students who are missing at least 10 percent, or 18 or more days, of school a year. Chronic absenteeism has dropped by about 2 to 3 percentage points a year since then, but was still at 23.5 percent in 2023-24, according to the most recent AEI data. 

    Related: Our free weekly newsletter alerts you to what research says about schools and classrooms.

    Chronic absenteeism is more than 50 percent higher than it used to be. There are about 48 million public school students, from kindergarten through 12th grade. Almost 1 in 4 of them, or 11 million students, are missing a lot of school. 

    2. High-income students and high achievers are also skipping school.

    Absenteeism cuts across economic lines. Students from both low- and high-income families are often absent as are high-achieving students. Rates are the highest among students in low-income districts, where 30 percent of students are chronically absent, according to AEI data. But even in low-poverty districts, the chronic absenteeism rate has jumped more than 50 percent from about 10 percent of students to more than 15 percent of students. Similarly, more than 15 percent of students in the highest-achieving school districts (the top third) are chronically absent, up from 10 percent in pre-pandemic years.

    “Chronic absenteeism affects disadvantaged students more often, but the rise in chronic absenteeism was an unfortunate tide where all boats rose,” said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at AEI.

    Related: The chronic absenteeism puzzle

    The data show strikingly large differences by race and ethnicity, with 36 percent of Black students, 33 percent of Hispanic students, 22 percent of white students, and 15 percent of Asian students chronically absent. But researchers said once they controlled for income, the racial differences were not so large. In other words, chronic absenteeism rates among Black and white students of the same income are not so disparate. 

    3. Moderate absenteeism is increasing.

    Everyone is missing more school, not just students who are frequently absent. Jacob Kirksey, an associate professor of education policy at Texas Tech University, tracked 8 million students in three states (Texas, North Carolina and Virginia) from 2017 to 2023. Half had “very good” absentee rates under 4 percent in 2019. By 2023, only a third of students were still going to school as regularly. Two-thirds were not.  

    “A lot of students who used to miss no school are now missing a couple days,” said Ethan Hutt, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who noticed the same phenomenon in the North Carolina data that he studied. “That’s just become the norm.”

    4. Many students say they skip because school is ‘boring.’

    Researchers are interviewing students and families to try to understand why so many kids are skipping school. 

    Kevin Gee, a professor of education at the University of California, Davis, analyzed surveys of elementary, middle and high school students in Rhode Island from 2016 to 2024. He found that more students are reporting missing school for traditionally common reasons: not getting enough sleep and illness. 

    After the pandemic, parents are more likely to keep their kids home from school when they get sick, but that doesn’t explain why absenteeism is this high or why physically healthy kids are also missing so much school.

    Gee found two notable post-pandemic differences among students in Rhode Island. Unfinished homework is less of a reason to skip school today than it used to be, while more elementary school students said they skipped school because “it’s boring.” 

    Researchers at the symposium debated what to do about school being boring. Some thought school lessons need to be more engaging for students who may have shorter attention spans. But others disagreed. “I think it’s OK for school to be boring,” said Liz Cohen, a research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. “We need to adjust expectations that school should be as exciting as ‘Dora the Explorer’ all the time.”

    5. Mental health issues contribute to absenteeism.

    Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, has also analyzed surveys and noticed a “strong connection” between mental health struggles and chronic absenteeism. It was unclear if the increase in mental illness was triggered or exacerbated by the pandemic, or if it reflects anxiety and depression issues that began before the pandemic. 

    He’s interviewing families and teenagers about why they’re absent, and he says he’s seeing high levels of “disengagement” and mental illness. Parents, he said, were often very concerned about their children’s mental health and well-being. 

    “Reading the transcripts of these parents and kids who are chronically absent is really difficult,” said Polikoff. “A lot of these kids have really severe traumas. Lots of very legitimate reasons for missing school. Really chronic disengagement. The school is not serving them well.”

    6. Showing up has become optional.

    Several researchers suggested that there have been profound cultural shifts about the importance of in-person anything. Seth Gershenson, an economist and associate professor of public affairs at American University, suggested that in-person school may seem optional to students in the same way that going to the office feels optional for adults.

    “Social norms about in-person attendance have changed, whether it’s meeting with the doctor or whatever,” said Gershenson, pointing out that even his graduate students are more likely to skip his classes. “We’re going to be absent now for reasons that would not have caused us to be absent in the past.” 

    At the same time, technology has made it easier for students to skip school and make up the work. They can download assignments on Google Classroom or another app, and schedule a video meeting with a classmate or even their teacher to go over what they missed. 

    Related: Tracking student data falls short in combating absenteeism at school

    “It is easier to be absent from school and make up for it,” said USC’s Polikoff. In his interviews, 39 of the 40 families said it was “easy” to make up for being absent. “People like that everything is available online and convenient. And also, there is absolutely no question in my mind that doing that — which is well-intentioned — makes it much easier for people to be absent.” 

    The numbers back that up. Gershenson calculated that before the pandemic, skipping 10 days of school caused a student to lose the equivalent of a month’s worth of learning. Now, the learning loss from this amount of absenteeism is about 10 percent less; instead of losing a month of school, it’s like losing 90 percent of a month. Gershenson said that’s still big enough to matter.

    And students haven’t felt the most severe consequence: failing. Indeed, even as absenteeism has surged, school grades and graduation rates have been rising. Many blame grade inflation and an effort to avoid a high school dropout epidemic.

    7. Today’s absenteeism could mean labor force problems tomorrow.

    Academic harm may not be the most significant consequence of today’s elevated levels of chronic absenteeism. Indeed, researchers calculated that returning to pre-pandemic levels of chronic absenteeism would erase only 7.5 percent of the nation’s pandemic learning losses. There are other more profound (and little understood) reasons for why students are so far behind. 

    More importantly, the experience of attending school regularly doesn’t just improve academic performance, researchers say. It also sets up good habits for the future. “Employers value regular attendance,” said Gershenson. He said employers he has talked to report having trouble finding reliable workers. 

    “There’s much more than test scores here,” Gershenson said. “This is a valuable personality trait. It’s part of a habit that gets formed early in school. And we’ve definitely lost some of that. And hopefully we can bring it back.”

    Next week, I’ll be writing a follow-up column about how some schools are solving the absenteeism puzzle — at least with some students — and why the old pre-pandemic playbooks for reducing absenteeism aren’t working as well anymore. 

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].

    This story about chronic absenteeism was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • This New Jersey district tackled chronic absenteeism despite COVID

    This New Jersey district tackled chronic absenteeism despite COVID

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    SEATTLE — For almost a decade, Hamilton Township Public Schools in New Jersey has seen major gains in chronic absenteeism — despite the bumps that came with the COVID-19 pandemic.

    During the 2016-17 school year, 21 of the district’s 23 schools exceeded the state’s average chronic absenteeism rates, said Mary Beth Currie, coordinator of special projects at the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association. 

    With the help of a grant-funded initiative at the association’s Foundation for Educational Administration, Hamilton Township Public Schools eventually changed course. As of June 2025, only two of its 23 schools surpass the statewide average for chronic absenteeism, Currie said.

    Currie and Kisthardt Elementary School Principal Diana Vasil shared how the FEA’s partnership with Hamilton Township Public Schools contributed to a long-term drop in chronic absenteeism rates during a Friday session at UNITED, the National Conference on School Leadership in Seattle. 

    A team-based approach to boosting attendance

    In 2018, FEA received a $10,000 grant from the Princeton Area Community Foundation to create a plan to combat chronic absenteeism in the district, Currie said. Later on that year, FEA received an additional five-year $30,000 grant from the foundation to carry out the plan across all 23 schools at Hamilton Township. 

    FEA hired coaches to meet monthly with every school to help address their chronic absenteeism rates, Currie said. FEA trained the coaches beforehand on best practices in English language arts and math, legal knowledge on attendance, climate and culture, and data analysis, she added. 

    Then, FEA helped each school identify members for their own “Be There Team,” a group focused on school climate and attendance. The teams often included school leaders, nurses, counselors and teachers, Currie said. The FEA coaches met with these teams to identify student target groups and develop action plans based on Attendance Works’ tiered approach for combatting chronic absenteeism.

    During the first school year of the program’s implementation in 2018-19, Currie said, attendance soared while chronic absenteeism fell significantly. That trend continued into the first semester of the 2019-20 school year until the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. Once the pandemic hit, FEA modified its plan and shifted all of its meetings to be virtual gatherings with coaches and central office administrators.

    When students returned to in-person classes in 2021-22, attendance dropped in line with national trends, Currie said. But as the in-person coaching and team meetings picked back up, attendance began to rebound again in 2023-24 as did the district’s climate and culture, she added.

    In fact the district’s chronic absenteeism rate fell by 3.9% between the 2021-22 and 2023-24 school years — a decline from 18.4% to 15.2%, said Vasil. RAND Corp. and the Center on Reinventing Public Education estimated that 19% of students were chronically absent nationwide during the 2023-24 school year. 

    One elementary school’s approach

    Vasil, who was principal at Sayen Elementary School from 2019 to 2025, said her previous school’s Be There Team was already established before she was hired into the role. 

    As Vasil’s team explored how to address the school’s chronic absenteeism rates, she said, it was important to remember that fixing attendance isn’t just about getting students in the door. “It’s getting them to want to come tomorrow.”

    To better understand the root of the school’s attendance problem, Vasil’s team did a deep dive scoring their school’s climate using a rubric and found there was a lot of work needed to improve school culture. In 2019-20, the team identified three areas they needed to address: the school’s mission statement, its social-emotional learning programs and professional norms for staff, she said. 

    Vasil said that the team was able to meet their goals during the pandemic by revisiting and tightening the school’s mission statement, consolidating the school’s many scattered SEL programs, and establishing a set of professional norms for staff meetings to ensure everyone has a voice. 

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  • Fake Citations Appeared in Federal Chronic Diseases Report

    Fake Citations Appeared in Federal Chronic Diseases Report

    The Department of Health and Human Services cited fake publications in a report on children’s health issues issued last week, The New York Times reported. 

    The Make America Healthy Again Commission claims its report—which blamed chronic disease in children on ultraprocessed foods, pesticides, lack of physical activity and excessive use of prescription drugs, including antidepressants—was produced with a “clear, evidence-based foundation.”

    However, some of the researchers it cited said they didn’t write the papers the report attributed to them. 

    In one example, the report cited a paper on the link between mental health and substance use in adolescents by Katherine Keyes, an epidemiology professor at Columbia University. But Keyes told the Times that she didn’t write the paper. And no paper by the title cited—written by anyone—appears to exist at all. 

    The report cited another paper about psychiatric medications and advertising that was allegedly published in 2009 in The Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology by “Findling, R. L., et al.” But the Times confirmed that Robert L. Findling, who is a psychiatry professor at the University of Virginia, did not author the paper. 

    The newspaper also found numerous other instances of mischaracterized or inaccurate summaries of research papers. 

    After both the Times and NOTUS reported on the false citations Thursday, the White House promptly updated the report with corrections. In response to questions from reporters about whether generative artificial intelligence—which is notorious for “hallucinating” information and failing to provide accurate citations—was used to produce the errant report, Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for HHS, did not provide an answer.

    Instead, she characterized the false citations as “minor citation and formatting errors,” according to the Times, and doubled down on the report’s “substance” as “a historic and transformative assessment by the federal government to understand the chronic-disease epidemic afflicting our nation’s children.”

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  • How much does chronic absenteeism cost communities?

    How much does chronic absenteeism cost communities?

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    Dive Brief:

    • For each student who is chronically absent in California schools, there’s a $5,630 economic burden to the community, according to a report released Wednesday by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education’s Center for Benefit-Cost Studies.
    • Each expulsion costs $70,870 in social burdens such as increased likelihood of dropping out, said the report, which was developed with the University of California, Los Angeles’ Center for the Transformation of Schools.
    • Using state, school and student data, researchers calculated the total economic burdens and gains resulting from factors such as graduation rates, school attendance and disciplinary infractions. To improve those factors and offset burdens, the report calls for more equitable opportunities for student success, as well as efficiency-based reforms like the use of a multi-tiered system of supports framework.

    Dive Insight:

    Like many other localities, California’s chronic absenteeism rate rose because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 2019-20 school year, the state’s chronic absenteeism rate for all students was 10%, compared to 30% in 2021-22, which was the same rate nationally. The report uses a common definition of chronic absenteeism, which is when a student misses 10% of the school year, or about 18 days.

    The report also calculates that each suspension costs $27,260 and each disciplinary restraint adds up to $6,040.  The economic burden for each student who does not graduate high school is $478,440.

    On the other hand, a 3 percentage point increase in California’s high school graduation rate would add almost $10 billion to state coffers and $3 billion in taxpayer savings.

    To calculate these financial burdens and gains, researchers used an economic model that accounts for all the resources that are needed or contributed to for each educational status over an individual’s working life. 

    For example, the lifetime social gain of an 18-year-old who graduates high school is $478,440, or $681,930 if the student enrolls in college, according to the report. A variety of factors are taken into consideration in this calculation, including the estimation of higher earnings with additional education and the assumption of reduced criminal activity, improved health status and less reliance on a social safety net.

    A. Brooks Bowden, an associate professor of educational policy at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Center for Cost-Benefit Studies of Education, said the study’s findings in California are an indication of potential economic burdens nationwide.

    “Addressing these challenges can lead to substantial savings and improved educational outcomes across the country,” said Bowden in a statement. 

    The report also said multi-tiered system of supports holds the promise of efficiency in education, because rather than schools delivering extensive support to all students, the MTSS framework provides resource-intensive supports to students with the highest need, as well as equitable services because interventions are individualized based on data.

    The MTSS framework has been used by districts across the country to address stubborn absenteeism rates. This approach — which begins with universal supports and increases the intensity of interventions based on student needs — is also promoted by Attendance Works, a nonprofit that provides school attendance resources.

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  • Punishing Parents for Chronic Absenteeism – The 74

    Punishing Parents for Chronic Absenteeism – The 74


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    As educators nationwide grapple with stubbornly high levels of student absences since the pandemic drove schools into disarray five years ago, Oklahoma prosecutor Erik Johnson says he has the solution. 

    Throw parents in jail.

    This week, I offer a look at chronic absenteeism’s persistence long after COVID shuttered classrooms, plunged families into poverty and led to the deaths of more than 1 million Americans. Lawmakers nationwide have proposed dozens of bills this year designed to curtail student absences — with radically different approaches.

    While a proposal in Hawaii would reward kids’ good attendance with ice cream, new laws in Indiana, West Virginia and Iowa impose fines and jail time for parents who can’t compel their children to attend class regularly. In Oklahoma, where Johnson has ushered in a new era of truancy crackdowns, state lawmakers say parents — not principals and teachers — should be held accountable for students’ repeat absences.

    “We prosecute everything from murders to rape to financial crimes, but in my view, the ones that cause the most societal harm is when people do harm to children, either child neglect, child physical abuse, child sexual abuse, domestic violence in homes, and then you can add truancy to the list,” Johnson told me this week. 

    “It’s not as bad, in my opinion, as beating a child, but it’s on the spectrum because you’re not putting that child in a position to be successful,” continued Johnson, who has dubbed 2025 the “Year of the Child.”

    In the news

    Books are not a crime — yet: Under proposed Texas legislation, teachers could soon face jail sentences for teaching classic literary works with sexual content, including The Catcher in the Rye and (unironically?) Brave New World. | Mother Jones

    Mass layoffs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week could have devastating consequences for the health and well-being of low-income children. | The Associated Press

    Ten days or else: The Education Department demanded Thursday that states certify in writing within the next 10 days that K-12 schools are complying with its interpretation of civil rights laws, namely eliminating any diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or else risk losing their federal funding. | The New York Times

    A Texas teen was kneed in the face by a school cop: Now, with steep cuts to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, her case is one of thousands that have been left to languish. | The 74

    Students’ right to privacy versus parents’ right to know: The Trump administration has opened an investigation into a California law designed to protect transgender students from being outed to their parents, alleging violations of the federal student privacy law. | The New York Times

    • A similar investigation has been opened against officials in Maine, where the feds claim district policies to protect students’ privacy come at the expense of parents’ right to information. | Maine Morning Star
    • “Parents are the most natural protectors of their children,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement after a similar federal investigation was launched against Virginia educators. “Yet many states and school districts have enacted policies that imply students need protection from their parents.” | Virginia Mercury
    • A little context: In a recent survey, more than 92% of parents said they were supportive of their child’s transgender identity. | Human Rights Campaign
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    The Student Press Law Center joined a coalition of free speech and journalism organizations in denouncing the recent ICE detention of Tufts University international student Rumeysa Ozturk over opinions she expressed in an op-ed in the student newspaper. 

    • “Such a basis for her detention would represent a blatant disregard for the principles of free speech and free press within the First Amendment,” the groups wrote in their letter. | Student Press Law Center
    • The Turkish doctoral candidate is one of several students who’ve been rounded up by immigration officials in recent weeks based on pro-Palestinian comments. | The New York Times

    Florida lawmakers have a plan to fill the jobs of undocumented workers who are deported: Put kids on the overnight shift. | The Guardian

    Minority report: Following bipartisan opposition, Georgia lawmakers have given up on efforts to create a statewide student-tracking database designed to identify youth who could commit future acts of violence. | WABE

    A majority of school district programs focused on protecting student data are led by administrators with little training in privacy issues, a new report finds. | StateScoop

    Washington students’ sensitive data was exposed. The culprit? A student surveillance tool. | The Seattle Times

    ICYMI @The74

    Emotional Support

    Annie, who lives with The 74 social media guru Christian Skotte, is the cutest regular at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. You won’t convince me otherwise. 


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