Understanding Absenteeism Across the South: Patterns, Policies, and Practice

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The return to in-person schooling following the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed attention to a longstanding challenge: missing school. As of the 2022–2023 school year, approximately 28% of students nationally were classified as chronically absent, defined as missing 10% or more of school days (United States Department of Education, 2025). For context, about 11% of fourth-grade public school students taking the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported missing five or more days of school in 2019, compared to 22% of fourth-grade students in 2022 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). With such a large share of students missing substantial instructional time, researchers and policymakers have concerns about the causes and consequences of absenteeism, particularly given its association with declining National Assessment of Educational Progress scores (Dewey et al., 2025). Additionally, according to a 2025 Brookings article, noted the increase of teacher absenteeism since the pandemic, finding that most schools have higher teacher absenteeism post-pandemic regardless of the school's economic disadvantage. Although scholars have examined the predictors and correlates of absenteeism for decades, this line of inquiry has taken on heightened urgency in the current educational context (Gottfried & Gee, 2017; Melvin et al., 2019).

Previous studies have adopted a bioecological approach to studying school absenteeism that situates an individual within interrelated systems: the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem (Ansari et al., 2020; Lyon and Cotler, 2009; Sugrue et al., 2026; Gottfried & Gee, 2017; Lenhoff and Singer, 2022; Childs & Scanlon, 2022; Lenhoff & Pogodzinski, 2018; Wei, 2024). Within this framework, absenteeism is shaped not only by individual and family factors, but also by school practices, community conditions, and broader policy environments. Among these layers, state-level systems play a particularly important role in structuring how absenteeism is defined, measured, and addressed. States set attendance policies, determine reporting requirements, allocate resources, and establish accountability systems that can either incentivize or constrain local responses. As a result, variation across states can lead to meaningful differences in both patterns of absenteeism and the strategies used to address it.

This panel builds on this systems perspective by centering the state as a key context for understanding absenteeism for both students and teachers. Bringing together evidence from four Southern states - Arkansas, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia - the papers examine how absenteeism manifests across different policy and institutional environments. Taken together, these studies highlight how state contexts shape both the prevalence and underlying drivers of absenteeism, offering insights into how policy variation can inform more targeted and effective interventions.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Jennifer Freeman, Texas Tech University

Discussants

• Ethan Hutt, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Josh B McGee, University of Arkansas

Individual Presentations

• School Closures and Student Attendance: Evidence from South Carolina - Presenting Author: Colby Woods, University of Pennsylvania

• Does Getting an IEP Change Why Students Miss School? - Non-Presenting Co-Author: Michael Gottfried, University of Pennsylvania; Non-Presenting Co-Author: Ericka S. Weathers, Stanford University; Presenting Author: Samantha Kreda Peters, University of Pennsylvania

• Teacher Absenteeism and Student Outcomes: Evidence from Arkansas - Presenting Author: Kimberly Shaw, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

• Does Having Effective Teachers Improve Attendance? Evidence from the Teacher Incentive Allotment in West Texas - Presenting Author: Jacob Kirksey, Texas Tech University

Organizer

• Colby Woods, University of Pennsylvania