We know that chronic absenteeism erodes student academic performance. And we know that students who are not involved in extracurricular activities are 57% more likely to drop out, have a 0.88 lower GPA, and engage in more at-risk behaviors (Furda and Shuleski, 2019).  

But chronic absenteeism also bleeds into the school's overall attendance culture in some lesser-known ways. Addressing these overlooked dynamics can support a more effective response to chronic absenteeism.

1. Contagion

Chronic absence creates an observable shift in school culture among other students too.

When a student disappears from class, their friends draw a powerful, silent conclusion: attendance is optional. This conclusion plants a seed of doubt that motivates a dangerous internal question: If the school doesn’t prioritize my friend’s absences, why should I prioritize mine?

This contagion effect erodes the collective belief in the value of school, making it easier for others to justify spending their days elsewhere. We must recognize that our response to each individual case is a public, cultural statement. Visible re-engagement is essential to upholding attendance expectations and preventing individual cases from becoming a broader contagion.

2. Delayed Responsiveness

Late identification positions us to be reactive instead of proactive. When students get flagged in our systems only after chronic attendance challenges have set root, we lose the opportunity to employ more efficient and effective early interventions.  

How can we strategically identify at-risk students sooner, given that looking into earlier stages of absenteeism means that MANY more students are flagged for intervention than we have the capacity to address?  If the answer is that we delay responsiveness until a sufficiently small number of students reach a sufficiently extreme level of absenteeism, we will never effectively get to the root causes of chronic absenteeism.

3. Social-Emotional Disengagement

While grades measure subject mastery, school is the primary setting for students to develop non-graded social-emotional skills such as effective collaboration and conflict resolution.

Chronically absent students consistently miss the organic, day-to-day interactions that provide a supportive peer group and a vital sense of belonging.  The true cost of this disengagement is the loss of a supportive peer group, which is often the essential anchor that gives students a sense of purpose and motivation to overcome the root causes of their absenteeism. 

4. Staff Time

Chronic absenteeism requires consistent engagement, tracking, and communication.  But few schools have the extra funding and staff capacity needed to scale our intervention programs beyond more than a small number of at-risk students.  

When our staffs spend their time manually processing data, they are drawn away from their most effective human skills: building relationships, understanding students’ stories, and strategically addressing the root causes of each student’s individual attendance challenges.

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Chronic absenteeism has many hidden costs.  In the next post, we will share 3 engagement strategies to improve student belonging - practical strategies that help students be seen and heard, both in each of their classrooms and more broadly on campus.