Is There a Catholic School Effect on Kindergarteners’ Absenteeism?

Abstract

Over the past decade, identifying how schools might reduce student absenteeism has moved to the forefront of education policy. Yet little research has examined whether school type itself is important. We focus on the influence of Catholic schools using data from the past decade—the most relevant policy context for addressing absenteeism. The research that exists has acknowledged the limitation of omitted variable biases. Thus, the signature contribution of this study is the use of propensity score matching layered with exclusion criteria to account for bias in unobserved variation that confounds estimates. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten Class of 2011, we present several model specifications, all of which indicated that students in Catholic school missed fewer days of school compared to students in other types of schools. However, estimates from the adjusted matching models using the exclusion criteria indicate that OLS and classical matching estimates were downwardly biased.

Keywords:

• Absenteeism
• Catholic schools
• propensity score matching
• omitted variable bias

Notes

1 This scale was replicated from Votruba-Drzal et al.’s (2008) study. The scale consisted of 10 items that were measured on a 4-point Likert metric. The scale assessed the frequency that parents engaged the child in various activities that promoted cultural, academic, or social enrichment. These activities included playing games, singing songs, and reading books.

2 Also from the Votruba-Drzal et al. (2008) study, this second scale, comprised of 15 dichotomously-scored items, assessed children’s access to learning materials. This scale assessed whether in the past month the child engaged in activities such as visiting a book store, taking music lessons, or attending tutoring lessons.

3 The model sensitivity of the threshold of 50 miles was tested using 30, 40, and 60 mile cut points. Note all models yielded statistically significant results.

4 The body of research dedicated to establishing the link between residential mobility and school quality is situated in the context of intercommunity moves (e.g. Barrow, 2002; see Brunner (2014) for review), which we have noted in our study framing is not part of the marketing done by Catholic schools In fact, some evidence suggests that distances beyond neighborhood moves have less influence on families’ selection of a school, and researchers examining this phenomenon have only identified such relationship within the scope of just a few miles (He & Giuliano, 2018). Even when different schooling options are available, families still tend to prefer schools near their homes (Ely & Teske, 2015). Thus, we proceed cautiously with our exclusion criteria, which assumes that families that do not live in counties with Catholic schools do not have the option to select into these schools.

5 It is worth noting that two peculiarities emerged among the statistically significant relationships between absenteeism and the covariates—externalizing behavior problems and frequency of home learning activities—which future research may consider worthy of further investigation.