Improving school attendance data and defining problematic and chronic school absenteeism: the next stage for educational policies and health-based practices

Abstract

School attendance/absenteeism (SA/A) is a crucial indicator of health and development in youth but educational policies and health-based practices in this area rely heavily on a simple metric of physical presence or absence in a school setting. SA/A data suffer from problems of quality (reliability, construct validity, data integrity) and utility (cutoffs, aggregated data, punitive purposes). This article summarizes these problems and outlines strategies to improve SA/A data and to better define problematic and chronic school absenteeism. Findings include greater focus on unique local conditions and student/family circumstances to improve the use of SA/A data; and greater employment of sophisticated and sensitive data analytic and assessment strategies to better define problematic and chronic absenteeism across geographical regions and student groups. Implications include movement away from one-size-fits-all approaches and toward valid and targeted policy and practice approaches, better consideration of special circumstances that affect educational agencies and families, and useful demarcation points in a multi-tiered systems of support model for school attendance problems.

Keywords:

• Educational policy
• health-based practice
• multi-tiered systems of support
• school absenteeism
• school attendance

Disclosure statement

No conflicts of interest or financial interests apply. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher A. Kearney

Christopher A. Kearney is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is also the Director of the UNLV Child School Refusal and Anxiety Disorders Clinic. Dr. Kearney received his B.A. in psychology and sociology from the State University of New York at Binghamton and his M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology (clinical) from the State University of New York at Albany.

Joshua Childs

Joshua Childs is an assistant professor in the Educational Policy and Planning program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated from Plano West High School and received a B.A. in Elementary Education from the University of Tulsa, received an M.A. in Education Policy from University of Colorado-Boulder, and PhD in Learning Sciences and Policy from the University of Pittsburgh.