Although educational policy makers uphold that chronic absenteeism (missing 10% or more of the school year) is damaging to students' schooling outcomes, there is little empirical research to match. This study considers the role of spillover effects of chronic absenteeism on classmates' achievement. It does so by utilizing a large-scale…

Nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Class of 2011 (n = 14,370) were used to examine the grade-level and cumulative outcomes of school absenteeism between kindergarten and fifth grade for students' school performance in the United States. Students who were more frequently absent in any year of…

Research Findings: Relying on a newly released national data set of kindergarten students from the 2010-2011 school year (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011), the findings suggest that having a greater percentage of same-needs classmates positively boosts both achievement and socioemotional outcomes among…

Addressing student absenteeism continues to permeate education policy and practice. California and a majority of other states have incorporated "chronic absenteeism" as an accountability metric under the Every Student Succeeds Act. It is therefore a crucial time to take stock of what we know on the research, policy, and practice to…

Empirically, the link between classmate ability and individual-level student achievement has been established. And yet, within the scope of this body of literature, there is a dearth of studies examining if a relationship also persists between classmate ability and non-achievement outcomes--that is, social skills. This article fills this research…

Increasing and improving the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational pipeline has been a point of emphasis for decades, and federal policy in the United States has urged high schools to embed new types of STEM courses into the curriculum. As one example, applied STEM courses--one growing branch within career and…

Competing in today's workforce increasingly requires earning a college degree, yet almost half of all enrolled undergraduates do not graduate. As the costs of dropping out of college continue to rise, instructor-student relationships may be a critical yet underexplored avenue for improving college student outcomes. The present study attempts to…

In "Absent from School," Gottfried and Hutt offer a comprehensive and timely resource for educators and policy makers seeking to understand the scope, impact, and causes of chronic student absenteeism. The editors present a series of studies by leading researchers from a variety of disciplines that address which students are missing…

In evaluating the deleterious effects of missing in-school time, research has almost exclusively focused on absences, and almost no attention has been paid to tardiness. Hence, this study contributes a new dimension to the field by examining the effects of student tardiness on academic achievement. Employing an empirical model on a large-scale,…

This study evaluates the effects of classroom peers on standardized testing achievement for all third- and fourth-grade students in the Philadelphia School District over 6 school years. With a comprehensive individual-and multilevel data set of all students matched to teachers, classrooms, and schools, two empirical strategies are employed. The…

Recent policy dialogue suggests that chronic absenteeism is not only underdocumented, but is also detrimental to the success of students as early as kindergarten. That said, almost no empirical research has examined the effects of chronic absenteeism on student outcomes. This study addresses this underresearched issue in more depth. Using a…

Despite the vast body of research examining the relationship between full-day kindergarten attendance and children's outcomes, little is known about the effects of full-day kindergarten on children with disabilities (i.e., students with 1 of the 13 categories of disabilities recognized under federal law). This study fills this research void by…

The authors explored how classroom gender composition moderated the relationship between having classmates with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) and peers' academic achievement in both kindergarten and Grade 1 classrooms. Given the behavioral and social-cognitive styles of girls, it was hypothesized that classrooms with a higher percentage…

Numerous studies have examined how grade retention can impede the academic success of those retained students. One uncharted line of research is the spillover effect that retained students may exert on their classmates. The purpose of this study is to evaluate this relationship for students in urban elementary school classrooms. To do so, this…

While an emerging body of research has examined the effects of school absences on student outcomes, there is comparatively little research examining the different reasons contributing to school absence, how common these reasons are, and the extent to which different types of absences are differentially associated with achievement. To address these…