Chart of the week: Postsecondary enrollment is more likely with a strong attendance record

This week’s chart of the week offers a sneak peek into our upcoming State of D.C. Schools: 2023-24 report, set to be released on March 4 at 9:30 AM. Join us for the official launch event at the MLK Library auditorium, featuring coffee and networking before the program kicks off at 10:00 AM. We’d love to see you there! Register here.

Chronic absenteeism, or missing 10 percent or more of the school year, is up post-pandemic at 40 percent in school year 2023-24.¹ Although this has improved from a high of 48 percent in the first year of in-person school after the pandemic began, it is 11 percentage points higher than 29 percentage points in school year 2018-19, pre-pandemic.² 

The Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE)’s District of Columbia Attendance Report, School Year 2023-24, found that when controlling for student characteristics, there is a small and positive association between in-seat attendance and student growth on the statewide assessment in math and English Language Arts (ELA). 

Data on postsecondary enrollment (including at both 2- and 4-year degree programs) for D.C.’s high school alumni within 6 months of high school graduation suggests that starting higher education is also connected to chronic absenteeism. Among the group that graduates from high school (data on postsecondary enrollment are not available for the group that did not graduate from high school), the more school students miss, the less likely they are to enroll in college. 

In addition to chronic absenteeism, OSSE tracks different tiers of absenteeism and chronic absenteeism, which is extremely helpful in providing more nuance on the amount of school missed. In school year 2023-24, 40 percent of students were chronically absent, but there was great variation in the amount of school that students missed. 22 percent of students were in the “moderate chronic absence” tier (missing 10-19.99%), 8 percent of students were in the “severe chronic absence” tier (missing 20-29.99%), and 9 percent of students were in the “profound chronic absence” tier (missing 30% or more). About a third of the students were in the satisfactory attendance tier (32 percent missed less than 5%), and 29 percent were in the at-risk attendance tier (missing 5- 9.99%) or the satisfactory attendance tier (32 percent missed less than 5%).³

Looking at postsecondary enrollment, on average, 7 in 10 high school graduates who missed less than 5 percent of the school year went on to enroll in postsecondary, compared to 3 in 10 who missed more than 30 percent of the school year.⁴

Many factors influence attendance patterns,⁵ but the strong patterns between attendance and post-secondary enrollment holds up across student groups and between pre- and post-pandemic periods. Even before the pandemic, there was a gap of 41 percentage points in post-secondary enrollment between the highest and lowest chronic absenteeism tiers. This is also true within major student groups: for example, among students who were designated as “at-risk” for funding purposes,⁶ 54 percent of those who missed less than 5 percent of the school year enrolled in postsecondary, compared to just 23 percent of at-risk students who missed more than 30 percent.

1. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). 2024. DC School Report Card. OSSE. Retrieved from https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/home 
2. D.C. implemented a new attendance policy in school year 2022-23, making year to year comparisons tricky before and after this year. The new attendance policy states that students must attend at least 60 percent of the day, meaning they can miss up to 40 percent of the day without being counted as absent (compared to 20 percent under the old policy). 
3. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). 2024. “2023-24 Attendance Brief.” Retrieved from https://osse.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/osse/page_content/attachments/2023-24%20Attendance%20Brief.pdf 
4. This is based on an average of outcomes for two post-pandemic school years (2021-22 and 2022-23) and compares to 54 percent of all students enrolling in postsecondary.
5. Students miss school for many reasons, including transportation barriers, negative school experiences, lack of engagement, and attendance misconceptions. For more perspectives, see Saddler, B. 2024. “D.C. Voices: High School Attendance.” D.C. Policy Center. Retrieved from https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/d-c-voices-high-school-attendance/ 
6. Students are designated as at-risk if they meet one of the following criteria: experience homelessness, are in the foster care system, qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or are at least one year older than the expected age for their high school grade.