Chapter 7: Relations of Change of ExD Use with Chronic Student Absenteeism

As noted, one important purpose of this data story is to better understand school's tendencies to use/not use ExD across time and how these relate to important student/school outcomes. In this chapter, we examined how changes in use of ExD relate to chronic student absenteeism -- defined as the number of students who miss at least 15 days of school during the school year (CRDC, 2016).

Education can only be effective when student attend school regularly and receive the support they need to learn, thrive, and be successful. When students are chronically absent, they are at serious risk of falling behind, performing poorly, and dropping out of school (Healthy Schools Campaign, 2016; The White House, 2023). In fact, some research suggests that absenteeism is a better predictor of whether a student drops out of school before graduation than are test scores and grades (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Additionally, chronic student absenteeism has been found to negatively impact not only the students missing school, but their classmates as well (Gottfried, 2015). Ultimately, these impacts have longer-term consequences such as poor employment opportunities, diminished health, and involvement in the criminal justice system (Rafa, 2017). 

Similar to the findings for the use of ExD, student chronic absenteeism is more likely to occur for minority students (U.S. Department of Education, 2019). Using the CRDC data noted previously, Figure 7.1 presents the mean rate of chronic student absenteeism (per 100 students enrolled) for Black, white,  Native American, and Hispanic students across the three CRDC data collections. The U.S. average rate is also depicted.

Here are some takeaways from Figure 7.1:

• Rates of chronic student absenteeism have generally increased for all students across the 3 data collection time periods. 
• The overall rates for Black and Native American students are above the U.S. average whereas Hispanic and white and below the U.S. average. 
• Note also, the large increase from 2015-2016 to 2017-2018 for Black students. 
• The race/ethnic disparities are again striking. Compared to their white peers, Native American students are almost 50% more likely to lose three weeks of school, Black students almost 45% more likely, and Hispanic students about 17.5% more likely.

To explore the degree to which the use of ExD relates to chronic student absenteeism, we first compared the rates of absenteeism for those schools that used ExD consistently across all three data collections (the U/U/U group) to all of the other Use/No Use groups. These data appear in Figure 7.2.

Here are some takeaways from Figure 7.2:

• Although mean rates of chronic student absenteeism increased over time for all the groups, the mean rate of chronic absenteeism across the three data collections was about 30% higher in the U/U/U group than all other groups combined. 
• As such, students in schools that consistently used ExD were 1.3 times more likely to be chronically absent than students in all the other Use/No Use groups combined.

To drill down even further to understand how "change" in the use of ExD may related to a school-climate outcome such as chronic student absenteeism, we next explored how those ExD that change from either Use to No Use or from No Use to Use at either 2013/14 to 2015/16 or from 2015/16 to 2017/18 (e.g., the N/U/U, N/U/N, U/N/N, and U/N/U for earlier dates and N/U/N, U/U/N, N/N/U, and U/N/U for the later dates). Comparing these groups, both concurrently and over time, provide some insight into how changes in use of ExD may relate to changes in rates of chronic student absenteeism. The results of these comparisons are presented in Figure 7.3.

Here are some takeaways from Figure 7.3:

• At both Time1 and Time2, students in schools that used ExD were significantly more likely to be chronically absent than students in schools that did not use ExD. r
• Over time, there is a significant increase of about 17% for those schools that changed from No Use to Use.
• In contrast, the absenteeism rates were about the same over time for those schools that changed from Use to No Use. 
• Although rates of chronic student absenteeism did not drop significantly when schools stopped using ExD, there was no evidence that the absenteeism was adversely affected when ExD was no longer used -- a concern raised by many who are wary of policies that prohibit the use of ExD.

Because of the disparities in both ExD use and in rates of chronic student absenteeism, we next explored the relation of change in use of ExD and absenteeism separately for each of the race/ethnic groups in our sample. These data are presented in Figure 7.4.

Here are some takeaways from Figure 7.4:

• With few exceptions, schools that were using ExD generally had higher rates of chronic student absenteeism for all racial/ethnic groups. 
• Even when the mean absenteeism rate was greater for the No Use than Use group at Time2, the rate of increase from Time1 to Time2 for these groups was smaller (i.e., the slope from Time1 to Time2 was less). 
• Importantly, for Native American children, when schools changed from using ExD to not using ExD, there was a significant drop in absenteeism whereas the reverse was true for schools that changed from not using ExD to using ExD. 
• Thus, for those students most at risk of being chronically absent, changes in absenteeism were the most strongly related to use of ExD. 
• Similar to the conclusions drawn from Figure 7.4, when we broke out the data for each race/ethnic group, we also failed to find much evidence that the chronic student absenteeism was adversely affected when ExD was no longer used.