Chronic absenteeism among kindergarten students

Essential Question:
What are the effects of kindergarteners' Chronic Absenteeism on academics as they progress through school? And what are some of the obstacles to their attendance?

Schools can not teach students who are not there. Understanding the degree and nature of low attendance among the youngest students, as well as what they have in common, gives us insight into possible ways of mitigating both the absenteeism and its deleterious effects.

Attendance rates mask Chronic Absenteeism.

 
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RI public elementary schools generally have high attendance rates (90%+). But as many as 39% of students miss days here and there, adding up to a month or more of school.

Note that the school with the highest rate of Chronic Absenteeism, 39% -- at the far right of the right-hand graphic -- has almost an 89% attendance rate. So, on any given day, 89% of the students are probably in school, but over the course of the year, 39% are Chronically Absent.

Nationally, this problem has gone unnoticed because only 6 states collect data on chronic absenteeism, and only 3 report their data to the public. Rhode Island does both.

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