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The study questions using attendance as an accountability measure and as a lever for equity. Evidence indicates that out-of-school factors unrelated to missed instruction explain most links between absences and achievement, with unexcused absences driving the associations. Excessive, especially unexcused, absences do not mainly harm students through missed instruction; they reflect enduring out-of-school harms and produced inequalities.",{"@graph":69,"@context":123},[70,84,106],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-signaling-power-of-unexcused-absence-from-school-educational-policy-2023-article/603046/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-signaling-power-of-unexcused-absence-from-school-educational-policy-2023-article/603046.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"MrHarris58","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-11-03","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":105},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",11,{"@type":107,"mainEntity":108},"FAQPage",[109,115,119],{"name":110,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":112},"Why do accountability policies focus on chronic absenteeism?","Question",{"text":113,"@type":114},"They position attendance prevention alongside standardized test benchmarks and assume increased attendance and in-class presence improve equity and achievement.","Answer",{"name":116,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":117},"What does the research suggest explains the link between absences and test scores?",{"text":118,"@type":114},"Most associations are driven by out-of-school factors unrelated to missed instruction, with unexcused absences playing a particularly strong role.",{"name":120,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":121},"Do excessive absences primarily harm students by causing missed instruction?",{"text":122,"@type":114},"The findings argue they do not mainly operate through missed instruction; unexcused absences instead signal broader out-of-school harms that sustain inequalities.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":125,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":127,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":129,"site_id":62},603046,1792436987,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":132},{"doc_id":129,"user_id":133,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":134,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":135,"file_id":136,"file_url":137,"file_type":138,"file_size":139,"view_count":105,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":140,"language":141,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":142,"faqs":143,"seo_title":144,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":145,"read_time":146},687212988360,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","The Signaling Power of Unexcused Absence from School  \nEducational Policy 2023, Vol. 37(3) 676–704 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines:  \n[sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/08959048211049428](DOI: 10.1177/08959048211049428)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/08959048211049428)[journals.sagepub.com/home/epx](journals.sagepub.com/home/epx)  \nJaymes Pyne 1, Eric Grodsky2, Elizabeth Vaade3, Bo McCready4, Eric Camburn5,  \nand Dominique Bradley6  \nAbstract  \nState and national school accountability policies situate preventing chronic absenteeism on par with meeting state standardized test benchmarks. We question relying on school attendance as both a component of accountability policies and a means of enhancing equity in schools. Our research suggests out-of-school factors unrelated to missed instruction account for most of the associations between absences and test score achievement—with unexcused absences driving those associations. Excessive absences—and particularly unexcused absences—don’t harm students mainly through missed instruction. Instead, they reflect out-of-school harms students endure that have produced inequalities for years—and will continue to do so even if students show up or parents call in.  \nKeywords  \nachievement, classroom instruction, educational policy, high-stakes accountability  \n1 Stanford University, CA, USA  \n2University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA 3Madison Metropolitan School District, WI, USA 4Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA, USA  \n5University of Missouri–Kansas City, USA  \n6American Institutes for Research, Washington, DC, USA  \nCorresponding Author:  \nJaymes Pyne, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, 520 Galvez Mall, Stanford, CA 94301, USA.  \nEmail: [Jaymes.pyne@stanford.edu](Jaymes.pyne@stanford.edu).  \nWhen children who are chronically absent from school struggle academically, it is natural to connect their struggles to in-school factors like missed instruction. In 2013, then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris highlighted California’s “attendance crisis, with dire consequences for our economy, our safety, and our children” (Harris, 2013, p. 1) . In 2015, the US Secretary of Education, in a joint open letter with other prominent federal officials, urged communities across the country to “support every student, every day to attend and be successful in school. . .” (p. 2), arguing that“missing 10 percent of school days in a year for any reason, excused orunexcused—is a primary cause of low academic achievement. . . .” (p. v, emphasis added). Legislative responses, such as provisions in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, followed from those widely-publicized warnings, prompting states, and school districts to adopt now-prominent school accountability policies tracking “chronic absenteeism”—or missing 10% or more of school days—among K-12 students (Hough, 2019; Jordan & Miller, 2017) . Such policies imply that getting children to school and in class more often will go a long way toward achieving equity in our nation’s schools. Yet available evidence suggests otherwise, as is clear from recent well-designed experimental studies in schools reporting reductions in chronic absenteeism but not improvements in academic achievement (Heppen et al., 2020; Tran & Gershenson, 2021) .  \nIn this paper, we propose reframing the attendance crisis narrative that has shaped policies sweeping the nation’s public schools. We do so by highlighting how unexcused school absences powerfully signal out-of-school crises in children’s lives. Our study begins by discussing the well-documented attendance crisis, which has captivated education researchers (Gottfried & Hutt, 2019) and some of the nation’s most prominent politicians and bureaucrats (Harris, 2013; United States Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice, 2015) . An attendance crisis is plausible because showing up to school ","cbCaifeek1DEDklI","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaifeek1DEDklI","pdf",1029125,29,"English","# Abstract\n# Background and policy context\n# Study approach and data\n# Findings on absence types and achievement\n# Interpreting the attendance crisis narrative","[{\"question\":\"Why do accountability policies focus on chronic absenteeism?\",\"answer\":\"They position attendance prevention alongside standardized test benchmarks and assume increased attendance and in-class presence improve equity and achievement.\"},{\"question\":\"What does the research suggest explains the link between absences and test scores?\",\"answer\":\"Most associations are driven by out-of-school factors unrelated to missed instruction, with unexcused absences playing a particularly strong role.\"},{\"question\":\"Do excessive absences primarily harm students by causing missed instruction?\",\"answer\":\"The findings argue they do not mainly operate through missed instruction; unexcused absences instead signal broader out-of-school harms that sustain inequalities.\"}]","The Signaling Power of Unexcused Absence from School - Educational Policy 2023 Article | PDF",1792095625,73]