Today’s blog is written with Sarah Morris, a Graduate Researcher in OEP and former junior high teacher.
The first week of school can be exciting for students, but we all know that sooner or later, students will need to be absent. Did you know that each district is required to have a policy about absences, and that each district can determine how many absences are allowed before students may be denied credit for a course? In the context of our work on the importance of freshman year, we examine the absence policies of all Arkansas districts and how they intersect with freshman course failure rates.
As we study this importance freshman year, we discovered a concerning finding. Despite similar academic abilities, Arkansas’s freshmen who face economic disadvantaged are twice as likely to fail a course compared to their more economically advantaged peers. Last year, we sent each district a Freshman Success Report communicating their own district’s likelihood of failure rates, and we will send the most recent years reports tomorrow.
While what teachers decide to grade in their classroom varies, there are also policies in each district that indicate how many unexcused absences a student can have before being denied course credit. We wanted to determine if this was a factor in students facing economically disadvantaged students being more likely to fail.
The A.C.A 6-18-222 policy includes:
“The board of directors of each school district…shall include a certain number of excessive absences that may be used as a basis for denial of course credit…”
We tracked down the policy for each district and found that local policy implementation varies widely across the state. We examined how these variations are related to freshman failures. We present our results in this shorter policy brief and more in-depth Arkansas Education Report, but highlight key takeaways below.
How many absences are allowed?
- Most districts have set the threshold number at 10
- As few as 2 unexcused days to as many as 15 unexcused days are permitted by districts
- 15 districts have an incomplete policy that includes the phrase “insert number”
What are the consequences of exceeding the absence threshold for students?
- Around 71% of districts use a permissive “may not receive credit,” allowing for potential changes
- 20% of districts use a more stringent “shall not receive credit” phrasing
- Nine percent of districts have an incomplete policy or do not mention consequences exceeding the absence threshold
That’s a lot of variation in both how many days a student can miss and what the consequence would be for their course grade! You can check out your district’s policy in the appendix of the Arkansas Education Report.
Only about 40% of students who reach their district’s unexcused absence threshold fail their course. We expected that students in the districts whose policies indicate they “shall not receive credit” after reaching the absence threshold would have a higher failure rate than districts that selected the “may not receive credit” language. But we find essentially no difference in the failure rates for these students between “shall not” and “may not” districts.
Among students who reached their district’s unexcused absence threshold, however, students facing economic disadvantages are still more likely to fail a course than their more advantaged peers. Even after controlling for district policy, we continue to see disparities and inequitable outcomes for students facing economic disadvantages.
This in-depth descriptive work highlights that attendance policies are not consistently implemented. As the local implementation of the policy varies widely and the influence of the policy on course failures isn’t substantial, we ask why have more stringent language? Why have a low unexcused absence threshold if the policy isn’t applied with fidelity?
Although districts could focus on rewriting their policy and reinforcing the policy with fidelity, we suggest that district leaders should instead focus on the underlying issues of absence rates. Evidence suggests that interventions such as Early Warning Intervention and Monitoring Systems (EWIMS) and efforts to improve school culture can reduce student absences and increase engagement.
As for us, we will continue with our sense of urgency on freshman course failures. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into factors contributing to freshman course failures, grading practices professional development for your teachers, or help assessing your district’s policy implementation rates, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at oep@uark.edu.