Chronic absenteeism — students missing at least 10 percent of the School year — is way up, writes Naaz Modan on K-12 Dive.

Forty-six percent of students in Los Angeles Unified School District, 40 percent in New York Public Schools, and 44 percent in Ohio’s Akron Public Schools are frequent no-shows with higher rates in lower-income communities.

Absenteeism is way up compared to before the pandemic.

Schools are trying everything from offering gift cards for perfect Attendance to adding night school for students with full-time jobs, reports Jacey Fortin in the New York Times.

Figure 9. Attendance value-added is significantly correlated with a diverse collection of individual survey items.

What motivates students to show up at school every day? School safety and “clear behavioral expectations” are the key, along with engaging classroom discussions and activities, a student survey shows.

Looking at value-added attendance — does a school raise attendance rates? — is more meaningful than conventional measures, concludes Jing Liu, a University of Maryland education professor in Imperfect Attendance.

Without adjusting for value added, “a chronic-absenteeism rating (based on raw attendance) might make a high-poverty school look bad, even if it’s actually high performing,” write Fordham’s Amber M. Norther and Michael J. Petrilli.