Attendance and Absenteeism, part 2

Does the Attendance Gap explain the Achievement Gap?

In the first post of this series, we saw that, in comparison with other districts, SFUSD has much higher rates of chronic absenteeism among its Latino and Black students but not among its Asian and White students. This post will examine the consequences.

In addition to publishing chronic absenteeism figures, the CDE also publishes the actual average number of absences per student for different demographic groups and the reasons for those absences. Here’s a chart showing the average number of days missed per year by students in SFUSD compared with the statewide average for select groups.

White, Latino, and Black students all average about 5 excused absences (i.e. those because a child is sick or has a doctor’s appointment) per student per year both in SFUSD and throughout the state. Asian students average one or two fewer excused absences but that’s a relatively minor difference. What stands out is the vast number of extra unexcused absences for Latino and Black students in SFUSD compared with the state average.

Does This Explain The “Achievement Gap”?

The academic underperformance of Latino and Black students in SFUSD is the most critical long-term issue facing the district. Attendance provides at least a partial explanation for the gap. Latino students missed 4.5 more days per year in SFUSD than elsewhere in the state and Black students missed 7.5 more days per year in SFUSD than Black students elsewhere in the state. Those extra days add up. Over 13 years of schooling, it means Latino students in SFUSD miss 58 more days of school than Latino students elsewhere and Black students miss 97 more days of school than Black students elsewhere. This helps to explain why Latino and Black students do worse in SFUSD than elsewhere in the state.

Although Latino and Black students are absent way more in SFUSD than elsewhere, Asian and White students are absent less often in SFUSD than elsewhere. These differential attendance rates provide at least a partial explanation of why the “achievement gap” is so much larger in San Francisco than elsewhere. Compared to Asian students in SFUSD, Latino students miss 115 extra days of school and Black students miss 191 extra days of school over their K-12 careers. A school year has 180 days so that’s nearly two-thirds of a school year for Latino students and more than a full school year for Black students.

If we could bring the attendance levels of Latino and Black students up to even the statewide average rates for those groups, it would improve their achievement levels significantly. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything the district could do that would have a more beneficial impact than simply getting the kids to show up in class more often.

Cost of Chronic Absenteeism

Absenteeism hurts the students and it also hurts the district. SFUSD gets the majority of its revenue from the State via the Local Control Funding Formula, which is tied to attendance, not enrollment. The district gets paid if a student shows up to school and doesn’t get paid if a student is absent.

Let’s do a rough calculation of how much the pre-pandemic levels of absenteeism were costing the district:

• Suppose Latino students were to attend school in SFUSD at state average rates for Latino students i.e. they miss 10.1 days per year instead of 14.6. Suppose Black, Pacific Islander and American Indian students were to miss school at state average rates for their groups (12.9, 12.2, and 13.4 days respectively) instead of SFUSD rates (20.4, 18.2, and 19.2 days respectively).

• That would add up to approximately 130,000 extra school days. At 180 days in the school year, that’s equivalent to about 720 extra full-time students. All of those students would be eligible for the Base Grant which runs to about $10,200 this year.

• But the majority of these extra students would also boost the district’s “Unduplicated Pupil Percentage (UPP)” because they’re socioeconomically disadvantaged or English learners. Such pupils bring in an extra 20% in Supplemental Grant funding and 65% in Concentration Grant funding. If we assume that 70% of the extra students are included in the UPP, the average funding per additional student would be around $16,270.

• Multiplying by 720 gives $11.7 million in lost revenue solely due to absenteeism by Latino, Black, Pacific Islander, and American Indian students being above the state averages for those groups.

The new Inflation Reduction Act contains provisions to spend a lot more on the IRS. The budgetary cost of hiring all those extra agents is less than zero because it is expected that increased compliance from taxpayers will bring in more than enough revenue to pay for the salaries of the new IRS agents. I wonder if it would similarly be worthwhile for SFUSD to hire people to chase up parents who are not sending their children to school.

Effect of the Pandemic

All the absenteeism rates quoted so far come from the the last pre-pandemic year of 2018-19. The CDE didn’t publish data for 2019-20 and SFUSD schools were all online in 2020-21, making comparisons problematic. CDE hasn’t yet reported the attendance information for 2021-22, but SFUSD has published some internal data.

Buried in one of SFUSD’s presentations is this wonderfully informative chart showing attendance on a week-by-week basis during the year:

Three things stand out:

• Even pre-pandemic, there was a slight, but perceptible, decline in attendance from week-to-week throughout the school year. I’ve no idea whether that’s true in other districts.

• Attendance in 2021-22 was lower at all points in the school year than in prior years;

• There was a huge dip in January during the Omicron wave.

Not surprisingly, this led to a huge increase in the chronic absenteeism rate.

Given the year of zoom school and the lower attendance in 2021-22, it was also unsurprising that fewer students met standards on their SBAC tests.

Everyone will also be watching closely to see whether chronic absenteeism rates return to pre-pandemic levels this year. For budgetary purposes, the State has allowed school districts to look back to 2018-19 in calculating their attendance figures so SFUSD has not yet borne the full financial impact of either the decline in enrollment or the increase in chronic absenteeism. That won’t last forever.

Up Next

The next post in the series will look at individual schools in the district rather than considering the district as a whole. Are there particular schools or patterns of schools that have particular problems with absenteeism?

For example, one thing I investigated is whether start times make a difference. It seemed plausible that parents and kids might find it difficult to get to school for early start times and that this might lead to higher rates of chronic absenteeism. But the evidence for this is weak, at least in San Francisco. Here’s a graph of the chronic absenteeism rate by race for early, middle and late start times¹.

There’s no obvious relationship. While Asian and Black kids have higher chronic absenteeism rates at schools that start before 8:15 than at schools that start after 9:00, Latino and White kids exhibit the opposite behavior, with (slightly) higher chronic absenteeism rates at the later start times.

1. SFUSD changed many school start times in 2021 but, fortunately, the old start times are preserved at: https://schoolbelltimes.org/DetailedInformation.html