The Role of School District Bus Transportation in Reducing Student Absenteeism

• In Event: 41.083 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 41.083-6 - Scalable Mechanisms to Improve K–12 Attendance

Abstract

School absenteeism is swiftly moving into the forefront of education policy dialogue. When examining what prior research has established regarding the effects of school absenteeism, attention on reducing absenteeism is well-justified. Children who miss school tend to have lower testing outcomes, higher chances of grade retention and dropout, more difficulty with social development and greater feelings of alienation, increased drug and alcohol use once in young adulthood, and worsened employment prospects. Of great concern is that out of all years of elementary school, absenteeism is highest in kindergarten. This is alarming because while many of the previously-mentioned consequences of absenteeism of course may not apply at such a young age including drug use and unemployment, educational and developmental ramifications have been documented.

This study focused on one school-going practice that has been overlooked in its role on reducing absenteeism: taking the school bus. Surprisingly, little is known about whether taking the bus to school is linked to attendance or absenteeism, as compared to other forms of commuting to school. This is a significant oversight given that at its fundamental core, the purpose of the school bus is to bring children to school. This study thus asked two research questions:

1. Do children who have the opportunity to take the bus to kindergarten have lower frequencies of
absences?
2. Are there differences in this association based on key child and family characteristics?

The analyses relied on the most contemporaneous national cohort of children in kindergarten – the ECLS-K:2011. The dataset provided specific information from parents about how children commute to school. It also contained a wide span of information regarding children and their families, thereby allowing the analysis to incorporate many of the family and contextual factors. With these data, multiple fixed effects analyses were tested on the sample of public school children in the dataset.

As for question 1, children who took the school bus had fewer absences and lower odds of chronic absenteeism. As for question 2, degree of urbanicity and duration of commute emerged as significant moderators. Kindergarten serves as especially influential year of education, in which school experiences can often set the trajectory for short- and long-term child outcomes. Therefore, finding potential malleable factors and actionable items to reduce kindergarten absenteeism is relevant such that children transitioning into formal education can do so much more smoothly. Thus, this study urges schools and districts to address these issues and consider how bus-taking might benefit our nation’s students just at the onset of school entry rather than delaying and waiting until the academic and developmental issues pertaining to chronic school absence become exacerbated.

Author

• Michael A. Gottfried, University of California - Santa Barbara