What are the consequences of missing school?

Under the state penal code, students with 18 or more unexcused absences in a school year can be considered chronically truant and referred to local law enforcement. Their parents can face fines of up to $2,000 and a year in jail. Meanwhile, students with excused absences face little if any consequences.

What is the most common health related cause of school absence?

Asthma
Asthma is one of the most common causes of school absences, together with significant health concerns such as poor dental health, vision impairment, diabetes and obesity. Research suggests that U.S. schoolchildren with this treatable and remediable condition miss a combined 14 million days of school each year.

How many school days are missed due to illness?

School absenteeism due to illness is not fiction. In the United States, there are approximately 164 MILLION lost school days each year among students in kindergarten to grade 12 which averages out to 4.5 sick days per student per year.

How absences affect student learning?

A recent study looking at young children found that absenteeism in kindergarten was associated with negative first grade outcomes such as greater absenteeism in subsequent years and lower achievement in reading, math, and general knowledge. Research shows that attendance is an important factor in student achievement.

What does it mean when someone misses school because of illness?

If an illness is serious enough to make someone miss school or work for more than a few days, it means they’re probably in a lot of pain or the illness is significantly affecting their ability to engage in daily activities. It has a high rate of mortality.

How many days are children missing from school?

More than 6.5 million children in the United States, approximately 13% of all students, miss 15 or more days of school each year. The rates of chronic absenteeism vary between states, communities, and schools, with significant disparities based on income, race, and ethnicity.

How does missing school affect your academic performance?

As expected, and as states have long understood, missing school is negatively associated with academic performance (after controlling for factors including race, poverty status, gender, IEP status, and ELL status). As students miss school more frequently]

How often do students miss school for no reason?

Students could report that they missed no days, 1–2 days, 3–4 days, 5–10 days, or more than 10 days. We use this information to describe how much school children are missing, on average; which groups of children miss school most often; and whether there have been any changes in these patterns between 2003 and 2015.