The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades

November 20, 2008 by Elizabeth Beachy  
Filed under Education

The National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health recently published a study funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that highlights the importance of addressing chronic absence in kindergarten and primary school, to improve educational outcomes in the later grades.

According to the report’s authors, “At the core of school improvement and education reform is an assumption so widely understood that it is rarely invoked: students have to be present and engaged in order to learn. That is why the discovery that thousands of our youngest students are academically at-risk because of extended absences when they first embark upon their school careers is as remarkable as it is consequential.”

They continue with a call to action for all teachers and parents: “Schools and communities have a choice: we can work together early on to ensure families get their children to class consistently or we can pay later for failing to intervene before problems are more difficult and costly to ameliorate.”

“…During the early elementary years, children are gaining basic social and academic skills critical to ongoing academic success. Unless students attain these essential skills by third grade, they require extra help to catch up and are at grave risk for eventually dropping out of school.”

Download full report

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