When it comes to standardized testing, New Jersey students consistently score in the top half of test-takers nationally. But quality curriculum and instruction matter little when a student is not in school.
Absenteeism has a corrosive effect on student achievement. The New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) reports that students with good attendance earned scores on standardized tests that are 11 points higher in reading and 13 points better in math than those chronically absent. 4th graders who missed three or more days in the month before national exams, scored significantly lower than students who showed up every day that month.
Who is absent?
Across the nation, 5 to 7.5 million students miss a month or more of school each year. In poor communities, truancy rates can reach 50%.
In New Jersey, more than 125,000 students were deemed “chronically absent” in the 2013 school year. Students from low income areas are more at risk: while 38 percent of New Jersey’s preK-12 students are in low-income families, they account for 55 percent of those absent from school. It is not enough to look at attendance rates. Researchers at Johns Hopkins warn that even schools with an attendance rate of 90% or better can still have a problem with chronic absenteeism.
In New Jersey’s “high absenteeism” districts, the proportion of chronically absent students averages 16 percent. These 177 school districts represent 30 percent of the school districts in New Jersey, but account for 61 percent of the students that are chronically absent. Of 1.3 million K-12 students in the state, more than 470,000 are in high absenteeism districts.
National data show that the highest rates of chronically absent students are those in the lowest and highest grades. Chronic absence seems to rise in middle school and continue into 12th grade, where seniors often have the highest rates of all. Attendance dips at transition points – entering school, and entering middle school and high school – suggesting that students and families need time to adjust to changes.
While the rates of chronic absenteeism are similar between boys and girls and among ethnic lines, they are consistently higher among economically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities.
Causes
There are many factors that contribute to chronic absenteeism, but they can be divided into three broad categories:
- Students who cannot attend school due to illness, family responsibilities, housing instability, the need to work or involvement with the juvenile justice system.
- Students who will not attend school to avoid bullying, unsafe conditions, harassment and embarrassment.
- Students who do not attend school because they, or their parents, feel disenfranchised and see little or no value in being there.
For students with disabilities, causes of chronic absenteeism can include these, and more. For those with social, emotional and behavioral disabilities, disengagement from school may be a factor. Students with these disabilities routinely experience suspension at a higher rate than non-disabled peers: 13 percent of students with disabilities received an out-of-school suspension, compared with six percent for students without disabilities. In high school, 18 percent of students with disabilities receive suspensions, more than twice the rate of those without disabilities.
Sometimes, conditions directly related to a student’s disability – health and sleep issues, doctor appointments, and surgery – could cause absences. An estimated 18 percent of school-age children live with some type of chronic illness, and of those, 58 percent routinely miss school and ten percent miss more than a quarter of the school year.
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