Does Getting an IEP Change Why Students Miss School?

• In Event: Understanding Absenteeism Across the South: Patterns, Policies, and Practice

Abstract

Understanding patterns of absenteeism for students with disabilities (SWDs) is an important piece of being able to better support them. Despite legislation intended to better identify and protect SWDs, there are barriers that still persist. Among these include a lack of access to appropriate programming and inadequate identification, leading to numerous educational disparities. In this study, we explored whether an IEP might serve as a support to combat absenteeism. When a student receives an IEP, they have a larger support team overseeing their educational progress, which includes attendance. This is critical because SWDs are both more likely to be chronically absent and more likely to have their needs under-identified or misidentified.   

If getting an IEP better identifies needs, then this may help us home in on why they are missing school. We will be able to determine students’ absence patterns as well as when they receive an IEP. To do so, this study uses student-level administrative data from the West Virginia Department of Education. The analytic sample includes all public K–12 students enrolled between 2017–18 and 2023–24 (N ≈ 2.1 million; n ≈ 467,000). These data capture comprehensive attendance information, enabling analysis of both cumulative absence measures and disaggregated reasons for absence. A distinctive feature of West Virginia’s system is its standardized set of 20 absence codes, which schools assign for any missed instructional time over the course of 180 instructional days. West Virginia’s rural context is notable: in 2023–24, 57% of schools were classified as rural by NCES. Additionally, the data include student-, school-, and district-level characteristics, importantly including IEP status.  

We use an OLS regression and include both student and school fixed effects to allow students to serve as a control for themselves. Specifically, we are looking at whether getting an IEP changes the absence types. In other models, we utilize different attendance outcomes, including four subgroups of excused absences (Medical, Family, Personal, and School), one subgroup of unexcused absences, and then we break down unexcused absences even further. We are specifically interested in how attendance patterns change when a student receives an IEP, so having the specific reason is especially beneficial.  

Preliminary analyses indicate that there were differences in the patterns of certain absences for students after receiving an IEP. Our most robust models include student fixed effects, which allows us to compare students to themselves over time. When distinguishing between excused and unexcused absence type, we found that students with IEPs have more excused absences and fewer unexcused absences. Breaking down excused absences even further, students with IEPs have higher medical absences than any other category. From these findings, we are able to better understand how students who receive an IEP miss school. If patterns change when a student receives an IEP, then we become aware of shifts that may occur for SWDs. It seems like given that most absences after receiving an IEP are medical, the IEP itself might be linked to students getting their needs met.

Authors

• Michael Gottfried, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Ericka S. Weathers, Stanford University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Samantha Kreda Peters, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author