Recent evidence suggests that the neighborhood context, particularly for urban youth, can influence a range of outcomes. This study makes contributions to the field by examining how the neighborhood context directly relates to missing school. To do so, this study employs a large-scale, longitudinal data set of multilevel observations for entire…

This study examined the unique and combined associations of homelessness and school mobility with educational well-being indicators, as well as the mediating effect of absenteeism, for an entire cohort of third-grade students in Philadelphia. Using integrated archival administrative data from the public school district and the municipal Office of…

This mixed methods study design explored the contributing factors to chronic tardiness, tardy behavior, and the impact on the secondary student. School tardiness is a growing problem and has been on a steady upward trend, as reported by the U.S. Department of Education. Tardiness and tardy behavior are consistently influencing the educational…

This study investigated the unique relations between school concentrations of student risk factors and measures of reading, mathematics, and attendance. It used an integrated administrative data system to create a combined data set of risks (i.e., birth risks, teen mother, low maternal education, homelessness, maltreatment, and lead exposure) for…

Background/Context: Parents, policymakers, and researchers uphold that missing school has negative implications on schooling success, particularly for students in urban schools. However, it has thus far been an empirical challenge within educational research to estimate the true effect that absences have on achievement outcomes. This study…

There is evidence suggesting that missing school negatively relates to academic achievement. However, it is a difficult task to derive unbiased empirical estimates of absences in their influence on performance. One particular challenge arises from the unobserved heterogeneity in the family environment, which may relate to both absence behavior and…

Researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and parents have assumed a positive relationship between school attendance and academic success. And yet, among the vast body of empirical research examining how input factors relate to academic outcomes, few investigations have honed in on the precision of the relationship between individual attendance…

The literature on school absences has focused predominantly on the reasons for student truancy, or it has assessed only aggregate student absences in their effect on achievement. However, this study brings forth a new issue: the relationship between types of absences--excused versus unexcused--and school performance. With a quantitative model of…

This article addresses the relationship between academic achievement and the student characteristics of absence and mobility. Mobility is a measure of how often a student changes schools. Absence is how often a student misses class. Standardized test scores are used as proxies for academic achievement. A model for the full joint distribution of…