Faculty Publications

The federal government has made chronic absence a key criterion in evaluating the success of public school districts, and states have adopted it as a benchmark. Monitoring chronic absence, which encompasses excused and unexcused time away from school, rather than truancy, is rooted in the belief that any absence from school is unfavorable, regardless of the underlying reasons or situations. Congress has also established a threshold for the number of school days that can be missed without causing substantial learning setbacks; that threshold is generally calculated as a percentage of an academic calendar of around 180 days in most jurisdictions––a calendar established a century ago.