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Researchers Sarah Winchell Lenhoff and Jeremy Singer have been studying chronic absenteeism in Detroit for years, talking to scores of parents, students, educators, and school administrators along the way, and keeping track of many school efforts to reduce absenteeism.
One thing they’ve learned during that time is that no matter how much passion schools put into solving the chronic absenteeism problem, they may be fighting a losing battle. That’s because while chronic absenteeism “is a problem for schools,” it’s not a problem that can be solved by schools.
Their new book, “Rethinking Chronic Absenteeism: Why Schools Can’t Solve it Alone,” which was released Tuesday by Harvard Education Press, explains why and provides a road map for what they describe as an “ecological” instead of an “educational” approach to addressing chronic absenteeism.
Why? Because poverty weighs heavily into the reasons students miss school, particularly in communities like Detroit where the overwhelming majority of students come from low-income homes.
Chronic absenteeism has been a problem in Detroit for years and is also affecting school districts across Michigan. Statewide, nearly 30% of students were considered chronically absent, meaning they missed 10 or more days of school, during the 2023-24 school year, according to state data. In the Detroit Public Schools Community District, the rate was nearly 66%. Many charter schools in the city also have high rates of chronic absenteeism.
The pandemic fueled a surge in chronic absenteeism, though rates have since decreased.
The book has a number of recommendations for policymakers, school and district leaders, and community-based organizations and coalitions.
“I hope that folks outside of education pick up the book and think yes, there’s a role for me in health, or for me in housing, for me in transportation, or for me as a lawmaker,” said Singer, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Wayne State University.
For policymakers, who have the power to legislate change, the authors recommend they substantially increasing efforts to reduce poverty, eliminate punishments for schools and students for chronic absenteeism, invest in systems to ensure students have the resources they need, and reduce the emphasis on chronic absenteeism within school accountability systems.
Lenhoff said she hopes the book will shatter stereotypes people may have that children who are chronically absent aren’t motivated to attend school and that their parents don’t care.
“Detroit parents want their kids in school,” said Lenhoff, the Leonard Kaplan Endowed Professor and an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Wayne State. “Many parents, even parents who have kids with really good attendance, are going to extremely great lengths to get their children to school, coordinating all kinds of different resources and backup transportation.”
Lenhoff and Singer lead the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research, or Detroit PEER, with Lenhoff as its director and Singer as its associate director.
Chalkbeat talked with Lenhoff and Singer in a wide-ranging interview about chronic absenteeism.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Stay tuned for more later this week.
Your book makes the argument that an ecological approach to chronic absenteeism is needed. Why is there such a need to rethink the way communities approach this problem?
Lenhoff: That’s a big reason why we wrote this book was feeling a real need to have an intervention on the current discourse around chronic absenteeism and attendance in schools. In Michigan, and the majority of states around the country, chronic absence is counted against schools when they have many students who are missing lots of school. We have observed how that has seeped into the everyday practices of schools, such that lots of people are thinking about chronic absence, lots of people are trying to do something about it. They’re spending a lot of time on things that may not have a lot of benefit for students, may not be able to improve attendance, which means that they’re not spending time on other things that might be more within their scope of influence.
The second big thing is we really wanted to expand the table of people and institutions who are thinking about student attendance as part of their scope of work. Primarily schools are like the only institutions where we look to solve this issue. Lots of other institutions are maybe even in a better position to solve some of the root causes that are keeping kids from school … things like housing instability, things like transportation inequity, health inequity, you know, a lot of these things are really far outside what schools can do, and so looking to other institutions to see what they can do to improve conditions for student attendance seems like a really important move.
What will it take for school districts, Detroit in particular, or communities, to pull off what you’re recommending?
Lenhoff: It’s all the more difficult in the current political climate where schools are likely to have less funding, not more. There’s going to be a deemphasis on things like social welfare programs and affordable housing, and equitable transportation. Things we think can make a difference are in this current federal political climate going to be really challenging to pull off. What I would say now is that working closely with the nonprofit community, with the kind of local government agencies that you already have connections with that are maybe already trying to do things around youth programming or supportive work with families, and just trying to connect the dots with attendance. A lot of groups are already thinking about kids. They’re thinking about families with kids — how to better support them, how to increase employment opportunities, increase extracurricular engagement. All these things, we think could have a positive effect on attendance, and they might require a little bit of coordination on the school side.
Singer: If there are policymakers who are thinking, ‘What could we do now, knowing that we have an important role to play,’ it could make sense to even just try small block grants or pilot programs that can help schools try some creative things in partnership with community organizations or other state agencies. The same goes for philanthropy. Foundations might be able to play a role in just helping to pilot something that might be otherwise unattainable financially, like giving rideshare credits or experimenting with some new form of … transportation, or some kind of new health intervention or providing health services. If there’s a way to try them at a smaller scale and start to identify promising models that we could then expand to other places that would be a great opportunity.
There’s no lack of advocacy around tackling these issues in Detroit. But what role should or can the City of Detroit mayor’s office play, and how pivotal that involvement would be?
Singer: We have a mayoral race coming up, and I’d love to see the next mayor of Detroit both acknowledge this as an issue but acknowledge the roots of this issue in the right way. We’ve heard Detroit Superintendent [Nikolai] Vitti speak to this issue in terms of identifying the root causes of poverty and inequality and the long history of that. Public figures can play a really great role in helping to set the tone for how we think about these problems. And so hearing the mayor speak to the fact that the city and departments within the city need to play a role in the solution — because the problem lies in things like transportation challenges, health problems, financial strain on families, housing issues —would be a really great place to start.
Lenhoff: it’s likely to be a priority for any new administration focused on economic and neighborhood development, right, and trying to increase the population of Detroit, or at least stabilize it, those conversations by and large, you know, to the extent that I’m aware of them, largely don’t have have much to do about schools. Schools are not often at the table in those conversations about which neighborhoods we’re going to invest in, where we’re going to cite affordable housing, where we’re going to invest in new commercial activity. if you’re trying to make a walkable neighborhood, a school should be part of that calculus, that you should be able to walk to a local public school, and because it’s an important resource. The affordable housing piece is essential. You know, investing in affordable housing that is big enough for families and that’s near schools, right? I’ve heard folks talk about building affordable housing for families, and they’re like, one-bedroom units. What does a family actually need to live in a home over the long term and stay there?
Sarah, you mentioned that you know that there are some things that that schools have done that aren’t necessarily beneficial? What are some of those methods?
Lenhoff: Some of the big ones have to do with the punitive approaches to student attendance. We’ve seen some move to deficit thinking about family … leads to this dynamic where the school is maybe not trying to build a trusting relationship with a family so that they can (learn) what barriers they face. The book shows that it’s really time consuming to build strong relationships with families. But that can be the root of figuring out what’s going on and solving those issues. Instead, schools are spending a lot of time on things that maybe take less time, and maybe are less costly, but maybe don’t have the weight of building those strong relationships. One example is we see a lot of short-term, incentive-based approaches. Schools love incentives. They love, you know, they love to celebrate the kids, and they should. But there’s very little evidence that those sorts of things actually improve attendance.
What do you say to those who feel very strongly that there needs to be some kind of punitive consequence for chronic absenteeism?
Lenhoff: It’s ultimately a reflection of schools and districts getting to the end of their rope and feeling like they’re not able to fully solve this issue alone. But these are counterintuitive ways of solving the problem, because they erode the very things that are at the core of good attendance. So punitive approaches like court prosecution can erode school family relationships and weaken families, parents and students, ties to the district, that sense of belonging or engagement. You know, taking away social services is getting rid of resources that are crucial to actually enabling regular participation in school if a family has financial issues or some, some host of problems relating to those that cause them to miss school.
Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit and covers Detroit school issues. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.
