Tiffany Wu, CPEP doctoral student, speaks with EdWeek about a new study that examines measurements of chronic absenteeism

​​“We rarely stop to determine if we are measuring [chronic absenteeism] in a useful way,” CPEP doctoral student Tiffany Wu tells EdWeek. “There has been relatively little empirical evidence to justify that cutoff.”

The Annenberg Institute recently published the working paper, The Chronic(les) of Absenteeism Measurement: Unpacking the Many Measures of Attendance and Evidence for a Lower Chronic Absenteeism Threshold, co-authored by Wu, Marsal School Professor Christina Weiland, and Thomas Staines, a data analyst with the Education Policy Initiative at the Ford School. Their study finds that most schools deem students chronically absent after they miss at least 10% of school days, however poor attendance habits may affect academic achievement well before students reach that threshold.

“We wanted to know how well a given attendance measure correctly flags students who are truly at academic risk without flagging students who are not,” Wu tells EdWeek.

Wu and her colleagues’ study arrives at a time when schools are working to improve attendance patterns that were exacerbated by the pandemic and as states hold districts accountable for reducing rates of chronic absenteeism.

Although the findings are not conclusive, the authors note: “Our findings imply that substantially lower thresholds would better identify students at risk of poor academic performance in a more timely way while balancing sensitivity and specificity.”