Bureaucrats, School Improvers, and Caseworkers: The Limits of Educational Roles and Routines in Addressing Chronic Absenteeism

• In Event: Exploring Tensions in Research on Chronic Absenteeism

Abstract

Objectives
Nearly a decade after the the Every Student Succeeds Act permitted states to incorporate chronic absenteeism into their school accountability systems (Chang & Balfanz, 2016; Jordan, 2017; Jordan & Miller, 2017), districts across the country have created positions, developed policies, and implemented plans to reduce the sky-high rates of chronic absenteeism that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic (Dee, 2023). In doing so, they developed school-focused practices that emphasized communication and incentives (Author, 2024), even while recognizing absenteeism as an ecological problem requiring a holistic, multi-pronged approach (Authors, 2021, 2022; Gottfried & Gee, 2017). Drawing on a two-year mixed-methods developmental evaluation of early efforts to reduce chronic absence in the high-absenteeism context of Detroit, this paper asks: 1) How do common educational roles and routines shape the development of strategies to address chronic absenteeism? 2) How are educational roles and routines implemented in a high absenteeism context? 3) What are the limits of educational roles and routines in addressing absenteeism?

Theoretical Framework
Applying ecological thinking to education policy (Authors, 2022; Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Gottfried & Gee, 2017;), we recognize chronic absenteeism as stemming from complex factors in and outside of school. Therefore, chronic absenteeism can be viewed as an ambiguous problem with significant uncertainty in how schools should go about addressing it (Yurkofsky, 2022b, 2022a). We seek to understand how institutional logics and organizational routines within schools shaped attendance strategies and, in turn, how those strategies aligned with the ecological nature of the problem (Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017; Cooney & Cohen, 2023)

Methods
We conducted a mixed-methods developmental evaluation (Authors, 2016; Rey et al., 2014) of the Detroit public school district’s attendance strategy. Grounded in continuous improvement, we partnered with the school district and a community-based coalition throughout the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years to share emerging research results, co-construct meaning, and inform initial adaptations to practice.

Data Sources
This study synthesizes four sources of data: 70 interviews with district staff and coaches working on the attendance strategy, 295 survey responses from district staff, 27 hours of observation of professional development, and analysis of about 80 artifacts, such as district policies and training materials.

Results
We find that district attendance staff were encouraged to adopt practices and routines reflective of three common educational roles: bureaucrats, school improvers, and caseworkers. These roles represented necessary functions related to tracking absenteeism, reaching out to families, and addressing individual students’ attendance barriers. Yet, they also represented a limited conception of the possible (and needed) approaches to reducing chronic absenteeism in a context where more than half of students were missing 10% or more school days. These roles were each embodied by school staff to varying degrees and their implementation was shaped by the available guidance and tools within schools, the limited resources available to address systemic barriers to attendance, and the magnitude of the problem.

Significance
This paper demonstrates the challenge of addressing high rates of chronic absenteeism with educational approaches alone and shows how common school roles and routines may limit the reach of schools in solving this problem.

Authors

• Jeremy L. Singer, University of Michigan-Flint

• Sarah Winchell Lenhoff, Wayne State University