Chronic absences in early grades linked to higher risk of district transfers, study shows

Students in kindergarten through third grade who miss 10% or more of the school year are about twice as likely to switch school districts — and their attendance problems often follow them, according to new California research.

Research briefs published Tuesday found that chronic absenteeism may play a larger role in disruptions to student learning than previously thought, linking poor attendance in the early grades not only to academic struggles but also to student mobility.

Researchers analyzed state data from 2022-23 and 2023-24 and found that students who are chronically absent in kindergarten through third grade are twice as likely to change school districts as their peers who did not miss 10% of the school year. Reports from Attendance Works and the School Policy, Action and Research Center (SPARC) at UC Davis also found that low attendance frequently persists after students transfer.

The understanding that early chronic absence predicts later chronic absences is not new, said co-author Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, adding that she was surprised there is no standard protocol to ensure that districts are communicating about attendance challenges when students transfer.

“The fact that we don’t actually share that information so that a new district could take action and engage in prevention, I think sometimes we just assume we’re sharing information, but we’re not necessarily,” said Chang.

Chronic absences among the youngest students, including kindergarten, are often a reflection of factors outside a child’s control, said Kevin Gee, research co-author and professor at UC Davis.

“This is about families experiencing challenges, systemic barriers, be it housing or transportation challenges — things that can be barriers in families getting their kids to school,” Gee said.

The state data analyzed is from school years before the full rollout of transitional kindergarten, known as TK. Both Gee and Chang agree that transitional kindergarten may help reduce chronic absences in kindergarten, which in turn could lower the chances of disruptions to student education. A high-quality TK program could help families understand the importance of routines in a young child’s life and provide much earlier access to counseling and basic needs resources for families facing housing, food or transportation instability.

Chronic absenteeism increased sharply during the pandemic, from 12.1% in 2018-19 to 30% in 2021-22. Since then, the rate steadily has decreased by about 5 percentage points each school year, up until the 2024-25 school year, when it dropped by only about 1 percentage point. During that school year, which provides the most recent chronic absence data, about 19% of California’s students were chronically absent.

“Chronic absence remains a significant issue. It’s come down, but the slowing down of improvements really requires us to be even more targeted and thoughtful about how we use our resources to improve attendance,” Chang said.

She also emphasized that chronic absences occur across a spectrum, with some students missing 10% of the school year, while others may miss 20% or even half of the school year.

“Knowing what are the levels of absenteeism that the kids are experiencing gives you some sense of the kind of outreach and support and engagement” that students need, Chang added.

The new research also shows the number of students who were chronically absent in both kindergarten and first grade more than doubled after the pandemic, from about 6% in the 2017-2018 school year to over 15% in 2022-23.

A deeper look into the data showed significant differences among student groups. For example, about 4.5% of students who were not chronically absent transferred to other districts. But for students who were experiencing homelessness, that rate increased to 8.4%. If students were both chronically absent and experiencing homelessness, 16.5% of them transferred districts. The rate was as high as 16.7% among Black students in K-3 who were chronically absent.

The sharp increases led to one of the researchers’ recommendations: Attendance staff and homeless liaisons should work together to support students whose basic needs may be unmet and to share information about students’ attendance when they transfer to new districts.

“Time and time again in education we tend to kind of silo things off and say, ‘if we can just solve the chronic absence problem, then everything’s going to fall into place,’ ” said Gee. Issues that may be intersecting with chronic absences, however, might still need to be addressed, he added, including factors such as food insecurity or transportation instability.

Other findings include:

• The chances of students remaining chronically absent increased after changing districts; they were even greater among students who were socioeconomically disadvantaged, homeless, identified as English learners, or migrants
• The higher the chronic absences, the more likely students were to change districts: Over 13% of severely chronically absent students (those who missed 20% or more of the school year) changed districts compared to 4.5% of students not chronically absent
• The probability of being chronically absent in both kindergarten and first grade was highest among students who identified as Black, Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Hispanic or Latino

The authors provided several recommendations, including:

• Engaging with families on the importance of attendance in kindergarten as a prevention measure for absences in later years
• Connecting attendance staff with homeless liaisons as a measure for addressing basic needs, such as transportation or housing instability, that could be preventing students from getting to school regularly
• Developing districtwide strategies to prevent chronic absences among students newly transferring into the district

A significant part of the solution toward maintaining stability in students’ lives and educational experience is collaboration, Gee emphasized, because the challenges that often lead to chronic absences, including unmet needs, do not end once a student leaves their school campus.

“How do we get our social service sector just to interact and speak with our folks in our education system and to work with them, given that there’s kind of different rules and there’s different funding streams?” asked Gee. “We can’t just be talking about chronic absence in a silo. We need to be talking about this in conjunction with other outcomes that we deeply care about.”

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