School Attendance and the Opportunity to Learn in Early Elementary Grades

• In Event: 18.054 - Factors That Affect School Attendance

Abstract

Attendance in elementary school has garnered increasing attention in education research as associations between early attendance and later achievement become clearer. In this paper, we argue attendance impacts students’ opportunities to learn through the constraints and choices of families or communities, in addition to exposure to material teachers cover in class. Using district data on over 18,000 K-3 students, we find excused and unexcused absences have different nonlinear associations with learning growth, much of which is accounted for by other characteristics of students, including reported health conditions. We argue the larger negative marginal associations between learning and unexcused absences serves as an important signal of largely extra-curricular factors that constrain students’ opportunities to learn.

Authors

• Jaymes Pyne, Stanford University

• Eric Grodsky, University of Wisconsin

• Elizabeth Vaade, Madison Metropolitan School District

• Bo McCready, Madison Metropolitan School District

• Eric M. Camburn, University of Missouri - Kansas City