Chronic Absenteeism

In Indiana, a student is considered chronically absent after missing 10 percent or more of school days. This includes both excused and unexcused absences. Chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy are important predictors of school performance, including high school graduation. The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) is dedicated to reducing this number by interrupting this pattern and cultivating habits of good attendance early, so that all students have the opportunity to learn and succeed in school. IDOE is also highlighting the importance of student attendance through the development of an early warning dashboard that will provide actionable data for educators and families as they work together to support students most at risk of not graduating. For purposes of the dashboard, at risk is defined as having less than an 80% chance of graduating on time using historical data. Attendance will be one highly important indicator that will be used to determine which students are considered at risk.

Contributing Factors

According to Attendance Works, students are typically absent from school due to challenges within four categories: barriers to attendance, aversion to school, disengagement from school, and misconceptions about the impact of absences. Schools and corporations should collect data to identify which students, or groups of students, are chronically absent, and work to understand why these particular students are absent. Once the root causes have been identified, schools can determine appropriate strategies to reduce chronic absenteeism within their community.

Mitigating Chronic Absenteeism

Research provides several recommendations to prevent and reduce chronic student absenteeism. These solutions show considerable promise; however, evidence that these programs are effective at scale remains limited. Therefore, IDOE cannot recommend specific strategies to mitigate and prevent chronic absenteeism for all Indiana students.

According to the research reviewed by IDOE, effective student attendance programs generally consist of three central activities: monitoring, prevention, and intervention.

1. Monitoring activities should provide schools with accurate and timely information to effectively identify students who are most at risk of becoming chronically absent.
2. Prevention activities should be broad-based and designed to educate students, parents, families, teachers, and communities about the importance of consistent school attendance, while also creating conditions that incentivize perfect or near-perfect attendance.
3. Intervention activities should be strategically focused on students whose attendance is not improving. These interventions should include immediate communication with guardians about their student's attendance, as well as follow-up support that effectively assists students in arriving at school on-time and ready-to-learn.

Truancy and legal intervention should represent the final step in a school or district's effort to improve student attendance. This step often requires a combination of efforts from families, schools, school corporations, as well as the juvenile justice system and juvenile courts.