Education Week - May 29, 2024 - 6

Why Chronic Absenteeism
Is a Budget Problem, Too
Chronic absenteeism has serious
academic consequences. It also
comes with a price tag
By Mark Lieberman
Chronic absenteeism skyrocketed
during the pandemic, creating headaches
for teachers and school administrators
eager to bring students back
to regular classroom routines.
But for many schools, chronic absenteeism
is a source of financial
strain as well.
For schools in six states, which collectively
enroll more than 13 million of
the nation's 50 million public school
students, lower attendance translates
to less funding from the state.
One of those states, Mississippi, earlier
this May approved a new funding
formula that will no longer calculate
funding based on attendance.
But the remaining five-California,
Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas-
have no such changes on the horizon.
In fact, some states are doubling
down on attendance-based funding.
Idaho, for instance, recently returned
to that model after giving districts a
reprieve from it during the height of
the pandemic, costing schools a projected
$162 million in the process. And
Michigan has maintained its policy of
docking state funds from districts anytime
their overall daily attendance dips
below 75 percent of enrolled students.
Districts and states are also investing
thousands of dollars in efforts to
find chronically absent students, or
to hire firms to do that work for them,
creating another cost. Last summer,
the Wichita, Kan., school district invested
$70,000 in Title I funds to hire
an outside company, EveryDay Labs,
to help reduce the district's rate of
chronically absent students, which at
that time was close to 50 percent.
Beyond the immediate fiscal impacts,
students who are chronically
absent are likely to struggle academically,
which means schools need more
resources to serve them. And schools
with a large number of chronically
absent students may have lower test
scores that dent the district's reputation
and discourage families from enrolling
in the future.
All these issues are arising at the same
time as many districts across the country
are already experiencing a downward
trend in enrollment, brought on
largely by lower birthrates as well as
growing interest in private and homeschooled
options, and a phenomenon
of thousands of missing children that is
still puzzling researchers.
" Districts are experiencing a double
hit when they do their projections because
they're having to project fewer
students and higher absences among
students that do come, " said Carrie
Hahnel, a senior associate partner at
the research and advocacy nonprofit
Bellwether, who has conducted extensive
analysis of attendance-based
funding policies. " It's just compounding
the pressures they're facing. "
Funding challenges when
students don't show up
Most states allocate funds to districts
each year based on the number
of enrolled students.
But roughly 10 percent of states,
including the two largest, use a different
metric: average daily attendance.
Typically, states calculate the number
of days students were present during
the school year, and divide that by the
number of days.
More than 1 in 4 students nationwide
were chronically absent-missing at
least 10 percent of school days-during
the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years.
Those figures represented a marked
increase over pre-pandemic levels.
Even small drops in absenteeism in a
"
If money's taken
away because kids
are absent, it's
leaving less money
to tackle the
problems.
ERICKA WEATHERS
Assistant professor of education policy,
University of Pennsylvania
state that distributes school aid based
in part on attendance rather than enrollment
can make a big difference
for school budgets. The Keller district
in Texas loses $2.4 million for each
percentage-point decrease in average
daily attendance, Cory Wilson, the
district's area superintendent of educational
support, told the Keller school
board earlier this year. That's $70 for
each of the district's 34,000 students.
Chronic absenteeism is causing financial
headaches for districts even
in states where attendance numbers
don't determine funding.
The Peabody district in Massachusetts
serves 6,000 students in 10 schools.
More than half are students of color.
During the 2021-22 school year, 46
percent of Peabody students missed
more than 10 percent of school days.
As the acute effects of the pandemic
receded, that percentage dropped to
6 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 29, 2024 | www.edweek.org
31 percent the following year, and so
far this school year, it's dropped again
to 22 percent.
Even with the year-over-year improvements,
those numbers worry
Sam Rippin, the district's business
manager.
He's observed a substantial increase
in the number of students who require
costly remediation and special education
services. He believes some of
those referrals stem from persistent
absenteeism.
Peabody is also spending money to address
its chronic-absenteeism problem.
The district hired a former high school
principal to serve as a reengagement
coordinator to visit families' homes and
help students get reacquainted with
attending school regularly. He'll earn
$60,000 over six months-$10,000
from a state grant and the remainder
from federal COVID-19-relief dollars,
which expire later this year.
" We were just lucky, " Rippin said.
" It's worked for us so far. "
South Dakota also offered grants
for districts to spend on efforts to reduce
chronic absenteeism. The state
offered those funds from its allocation
of federal Bipartisan Safer Communities
Act dollars, which Congress
approved to help districts improve
security in the wake of the fatal mass
shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Administrators in the 200-student
Leola district in South Dakota began
investing in Positive Behavioral Interventions
and Supports, or PBIS,
as chronic absenteeism grew during
the pandemic. PBIS involves identifying
students at high risk of failing or
dropping out and developing systems
to support them.
Without additional funds, the small
district could only do so much with
PBIS, though. With a nearly $200,000
grant from the state, the district hired
a full-time employee who works with
students on credit recovery and develops
programming to help reduce
absenteeism, said Leah DeMent, a
school counselor for the district who
wrote the grant application.
The grant also helped pay for three
staff members to participate in a
" check and connect " mentoring program
that pairs adults with students to
help them return to regularly attending
school, DeMent said.
Efforts like those can be powerful
tools in the fight against chronic absenteeism,
said Sarah Lenhoff, an associate
professor of educational leadership
and policy studies at Wayne State University
who has conducted extensive
research on chronic absenteeism. But
they take time, effort, and money.
By contrast, research shows that
lower-lift approaches like luring students
to school with pizza parties
don't tend to work well, Lenhoff said.
" A lot of the things schools are able to
do with their limited funds are these lowcost
things that don't have a strong evidence
base, " Lenhoff said. " The things
that have some emerging evidence that
they work are extremely expensive. "
Getting students back on track
is no small feat
A growing body of research shows
that chronic absenteeism often stems
from challenges students and families
face that the school district can't control,
such as difficulty accessing transportation
and child care. But schools
are still expected, and often obligated,
to contribute to solutions.
Failing to do so can be costly for districts.
An obscure policy in Michigan, for
instance, requires districts to add a day
to the school calendar for every day in
which fewer than 75 percent of their students
show up to school. If they don't add
a day, the state docks an amount of state
aid proportional to the amount by which
attendance fell short of 75 percent.
Lenhoff said districts like Detroit
that fear dipping below that 75 percent
threshold sometimes proactively
close schools when they anticipate
high absenteeism-around holidays
or when temperatures are very high or
very low, for example.
" It really comes down to giving districts
that are serving more children
in poverty less money to serve them, "
she said.
Punishing districts where students are
chronically absent only makes the problem
more likely to recur, Lenhoff said.
Instead, she'd prefer to see states require
districts to allocate a certain amount toward
evidence-based programs that address
chronic absenteeism.
That approach would improve
upon existing state policies that aim
to discourage chronic absenteeism
but might end up exacerbating it, said
Ericka Weathers, an assistant professor
of education policy at the University
of Pennsylvania.
Some states have truancy laws that
require that students be suspended or
that parents go to court or even jail if
their children don't show up to school.
Taking children away from school, or
taking away the option for parents to
take their children to school, could end
up costing the district in future years.
" If money's taken away because
kids are absent, it's leaving less money
to tackle the problems in a more restorative,
preventative, and less reactive
approach, " Weathers said.
The efforts backed by evidence
can take time, and they're likely to
remain necessary. In California,
chronic absenteeism is particularly
high among younger students, researchers
have found. Younger students
who are chronically absent
tend to continue to be chronically
absent later in their K-12 careers.
During her research, Lenhoff has observed
district workers who are able to
make progress on two or three chronically
absent students a day-helping
families with day care, transportation,
and other logistical concerns outside a
school's traditional purview.
" They're working really hard to get
to the bottom of these issues, " Lenhoff
said. " That's not a one-day job. "
F. Sheehan for Education Week + iStock / Getty
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - May 29, 2024

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