State and national school accountability policies situate preventing chronic absenteeism on par with meeting state standardized test benchmarks. We question relying on school attendance as both a component of accountability policies and a means of enhancing equity in schools. Our research suggests out-of-school factors unrelated to missed…

The purpose of this article is to address student absenteeism through the theoretical lens of ecological agency and to encourage the use of ecological agency in a school setting to address student absenteeism more holistically. We align absenteeism research within the ecological agency framework and suggest that absenteeism is a manifestation of…

Student athletes are constantly facing scrutiny over whether they should be characterized as athlete students or student athletes. As a result, student athlete academic support has evolved, driven by the NCAA metrics for student athletes, and finding new ways to support student athletes is more important than ever. This study examined the effect…

The National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) was founded to expand the use of evidence-based decision-making in rural education. NCRERN partners with networks of rural school districts to generate and evaluate strategies for improving student outcomes. This brief describes trends in student absenteeism and the relationship…

The broad relationship between students' self-efficacy and interest has been highlighted for decades. This, along with the inherently developmental nature of learning, calls for a more thorough examination of the way fluctuations in students' self-efficacy influence their interest in learning within a single course over an academic year and…

The United States is facing a high school dropout crisis. One of the early warning indicators of high school dropout is chronic absenteeism. This mixed-methods, post-hoc, hermeneutic, descriptive design study seeks to investigate the reported and self-reported attendance barriers for overage, under-credited (OU), at-risk, urban high school youth…

A high level of school absence has persisted across many countries since the COVID-19 pandemic. We use English data to investigate how local health and social regulations affected pupil absence rates during the pandemic and whether this pupil absence had a causal impact on school attendance and academic progress in future years. We find that more…

Though researchers have documented the consequences and causes of chronic absenteeism, there is limited empirical evidence about what schools and districts are actually doing to improve attendance. This study presents evidence about the types of attendance practices that forty-seven high-absenteeism districts in Michigan are planning and…

Background: School attendance and school attendance problems are complex and significant indicators of child and adolescent health and development. The study of school attendance/problems has a rich history but one that has bifurcated into detached systemic and analytic approaches. Objective: Integrative heuristic frameworks are pursued to enhance…

School absenteeism and its underlying causes can have negative effects on the cognitive, psychosocial and health development of a child. Research in primary education shows high rates of sickness absence. Many stakeholders are involved in addressing school absenteeism, including primary school professionals, child and youth healthcare physicians,…

Regular student attendance is one of the most important factors in determining a student's academic success. In this qualitative action research study, the researcher sought to identify the reasons behind an increase in chronic absenteeism at Mid-Atlantic Elementary School. Additionally, the question of what impact teacher self-efficacy had on…

Chronic absenteeism continues to be an ongoing problem for schools in the southern Illinois region. This project aims to examine how schools meet the basic needs of chronically absent students, and if there are systems in place to track how student's basic needs are met. Basic needs were defined by the theory and work of Abraham Maslow. The data…

Studies consistently show the detrimental effect of school absences on pupils' achievement. However, due to an accumulation of multiple risks, school absenteeism may be more harmful to achievement among pupils from lower socioeconomic status (SES). Using a sample of upper-secondary students from the Scottish Longitudinal Study (n = 3,135), we…

Extended school nonattendance has been identified across previous literature as problematic for autistic pupils and prevalence rates are considerably higher for this cohort than their neurotypical peers. The neurodiversity paradigm calls for a shift towards qualitative and participatory research methodologies, which was identified as a suitable…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a predictive relationship between the number of years a student is enrolled in an elementary school with a campus-wide character education program (CWCEP) and their academic achievement, attendance, and behavior during their high school years. This study examined whether students enrolled in…