Cracking the Code: Not Every Absence is the Same

Consider the following three students: Sarah, Trevor, and Vincent. All three of them attend Main Street High School and all three are chronically absent, each missing over 20 days this school year. However, that is where their similarities diverge and as a result, a school’s approach to support them must also diverge. As explained by Belfanz and Byrnes (2012), by and large students who are absent from school fall into three buckets: those who can’t attend, those who won’t attend, and those who don’t attend. This chapter will briefly outline these three buckets and in chapters 4, 5, and 6 we will delve deeper into each bucket and provide opportunities for reflection on the Sarahs, Trevors, and Vincents in your school and how your approach in supporting them may look different.

Barriers: Those Who Can’t Come to School

Of the 20 days that Sarah has missed this school year, 10 of them were because she had to stay home and take care of her younger siblings. Five of the days she has missed this year were because she missed the school bus, leaving her without a means of transportation to attend school because her mom leaves for work hours before she even wakes up. Sarah falls in the bucket of students who can’t come to school due to a variety of barriers that make attendance challenging for her. As Williams (2020) explained, identifying and eradicating barriers is a first step toward reducing absenteeism rates.

Reflection: 

What does Sarah need in order to attend school regularly?

What approaches and strategies won’t work in improving Sarah’s attendance?

Aversion: Those Who Won’t Attend

Over the summer, there were a string of videos posted on social media about Trevor by one of his classmates, all of which were making fun of his appearance. Embarrassment, anger, and shame all make it challenging for Trevor to want to attend school on a regular basis even though the hype around the videos has long since died down. It wasn’t until about halfway through the school year that Trevor’s mom realized that the mornings that he wakes up with a stomach ache also happen to be on days when he has P.E. with the classmate who posted the videos about him on social media. Trevor falls under the category of those who won’t attend school due to an aversion to school, often brought on by a socio-emotional or mental health need that is not being met.

Reflection: 

What does Trevor need in order to attend school regularly?

What approaches and strategies won’t work in improving Trevor’s attendance?

Disengagement: Those Who Don’t Attend

Of the 20 days that Vincent has missed this school year, 10 of them were spent on vacation with his family. Five of those days were due to appointments that he had in the morning and he convinced his mom that he should just miss the whole day. The other five absences were because he convinced his mom that he wasn’t missing anything at school anyway on those days because school is “boring.” Of note, since Vincent was in kindergarten, he has missed at least 20 days of school each school year and his parents were quoted as saying “well, it’s just kindergarten. It’s not a big deal if he goes or not.” Vincent falls in the category of those who don’t attend because both he and his family feel a sense of disengagement from school. Studies show that kindergarten is the grade level in which students are absent the most, followed closely behind by 12th grade (Balfanz and Byrnes, 2012), pointing to absenteeism as a habit for many families.

Reflection: 

What doesVincent need in order to attend school regularly?

What approaches and strategies won’t work in improving Vincent’s attendance?

A Tiered and Varied Approach

Given that the reasons for their absences are so drastically different, the strategies that the team at Main Street High School need to implement to support the regular attendance of Sarah, Trevor, and Vincent are drastically different. However, creating individual plans for each student who is chronically absent at a school could take every hour of every day and is not practical for a school setting given finite resources. As such, a tiered approach to tackling chronic absenteeism is necessary and school teams must match solutions and resources to the reasons behind their students' absences because not every absence is the same.