While existing literature documents disparities in and implications of absenteeism and truant behavior, less is known about truancy as defined in state laws. Habitual truancy, which can trigger external punitive responses, is particularly underexplored. The current study utilizes administrative data from the universe of Pennsylvania schools to…

Prior research indicates that the availability of school counselors--as measured by school counselor-to-student ratios--predicts desired student outcomes in high schools. Less is known about the impact of school counselors in elementary and middle schools, where school counselors take on a broad array of responsibilities related to youth…

Background: Asthma is epidemic in many locations in the United States. Asthma exacerbations pose serious health and education risks for students through school absences, school dropout, and introduction to the juvenile justice system. Accurate school district-level asthma data, currently in short supply, would enable early interventions that focus…

Early childhood education contributes to improved school readiness but impacts on high school remain unclear. This study estimates the effects of Tulsa, Oklahoma's universal pre-K and Head Start programs through the junior year of high school (in 2018/2019; N = 2902; M[subscript age] = 16.52, SD = 0.39; 48% female; 28% white, 34% Black, 27%…

Teachers of color increase school success for students of color. Yet, little attention has been paid to whether school attendance behaviors also increase from same race and ethnicity matches. To address this, our study used administrative data provided by a California high school district for the school years 2014 to 2018. We explored student…

The extent to which youth attend Tier 2 evidence-based intervention is an important dimension of implementation. This study examined attendance patterns of 369 middle schoolers involved in a randomized trial testing the impact of Coping Power, an evidence-based Tier 2 preventive intervention. We conducted latent profile analysis to examine student…

This two-part study explored whether discrimination encoded into U.S. school absenteeism policies leads to racially minoritized students being overrepresented in the juvenile court system. First, we examined unexcused absenteeism policies in a nationally representative school district sample (n = 97). All districts excused absences for reasons…

This exploratory-descriptive retrospective study examined the demographic, school-related, psychosocial risk factors, and service referrals among elementary school children (N=2,861) at risk for continued truancy. The study purposed to investigate the domains of staying in school and progressing in school, constructs associated with eventual…

Despite a nationwide trend to increase security measures in schools, their effectiveness in reducing or preventing student misbehavior remains largely unexamined. In addition, there is concern that increased security may have unintended negative side effects and is applied inequitably across students of disparate racial/ethnic backgrounds. The…

Increasingly, student success in college is gauged by retention and graduation rates. Understanding the factors that influence student success can assist practitioners in terms of programming and institutional investments. This study evaluated factors such as residential living, attendance programs, demographic attributes, average class size, and…

Driven by a combination of concern for historically high suspension rates and substantial disproportionalities in suspension use, a recent wave of education reforms encourages schools to reduce their use of suspensions for student behavior management. Both academic and political discourse has focused on the extensive use of suspension for…

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of early preparation for postsecondary education and explore the effectiveness of Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP). This comparative case study included 836 students from two cohorts (GEAR UP and Non GEAR UP). We compared high school attendance,…

We report findings of a convergent validity study examining the internalizing subscale (SRSS-I5) of the newly adapted Student Risk Screening Scale for Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE12) with the internalizing subscale of the Teacher Report Form (TRF; Achenbach, 1991) conducted in 13 schools across three states with 195 kindergarten…

Many schools have recently experimented with moving breakfast from the cafeteria to the classroom. We examine whether such a program increases achievement, grades, and attendance rates. We exploit quasi-random timing of program implementation that allows for a difference-in-differences identification strategy. We find that providing breakfast in…

This study sought to identify features of peer victimization that aggravate negative outcomes in children. The features that were assessed include "power imbalance," a commonly used criterion in defining bullying, and 5 other characteristics: injury, weapon involvement, Internet involvement, sexual content, and bias content. Three…