Kindergarten’s Overlooked Absenteeism Problem

Gabrielle Pobega knows kindergarten is more than just kids coloring, playing and singing songs, so she made sure her daughter made it to kindergarten at Lincoln Park Academy in Cleveland every day.

“They teach you ABCs,” Pobrega said as he picked up her third grader after school. “They teach you how to write. They teach you small little words and it prepares them for first grade.”

But not all parents value kindergarten as much as Pobrega. So many parents treat kindergarten as less important than other grades that it adds up into a major problem — nationally, across Ohio and particularly at Lincoln Park and other high-poverty schools.

Kindergarten has the highest absenteeism problem of any elementary grade in several states, studies have shown. In Ohio, attendance can be so bad that state data show some kindergartens approaching 90% chronic absenteeism.

Though chronic absenteeism — students missing 10 percent or more of school days — is drawing national attention for high school students, there has long been a second, less publicized, peak in absenteeism in kindergarten and sometimes preschool that is also damaging. 

Hedy Chang, one of the leading researchers of absenteeism and its effects, said kindergarten absenteeism needs educator’s attention, not just high school absences.

“You really want to worry about both,” said Chang, founder of the nonprofit Attendance Works. “You want to care about your youngest incoming learners, because that’s going to be critical for the long term. What you don’t invest in and address early, you might pay for later.”

Consider: In Ohio, more than a quarter of Ohio kindergarteners missed at least 18 days of school in the 2023-24 school year, state data shows, making kindergarten the highest chronic absenteeism rate of any elementary school grade in the state.

That matches findings by nonprofit FutureEd in March that kindergarteners had the highest chronic absenteeism of any grade in Hawaii and Utah last school year. In all 20 other states FutureEd looked at, Kindergarten had the highest chronic absenteeism rates before 7th grade.

“We see this U-shaped curve,” when charting absenteeism by grade, said Amber Humm Patnode, acting director of Proving Ground, a Harvard based research and absenteeism intervention effort. There is high absenteeism in kindergarten, it improves for several years, and typically rises again in late middle school.

She said there are really two separate absenteeism problems — one for the youngest and one for the oldest students — that need different strategies to fix.

Read the full article at the74million.org.