Giving Compass' Take:

· In the 2015-2016 school year, roughly 8 millions children missed 15 or more school days. Here, Taylor Swaak discusses the crisis of chronically absent students and how it is affecting success, outcome, and society.

· How does attendance affect student success and achievement? 

· In addition to students, this study found that 1 in 4 teachers were chronically absent from the classroom.

The issue of “chronic absenteeism” among students has festered into what the U.S. Department of Education has branded a national crisis.

Nearly 8 million K-12 students missed 15 or more days of school in 2015-16 — a marked increase from the 6.8 million estimated in 2013-14, when the federal Office for Civil Rights began tracking the data. It’s not a short-term problem, either: Various research links chronic absences with poor academic performance, delayed graduation, and higher dropout rates.

One sign of the emerging importance of the issue is that 36 states and the District of Columbia chose to embed chronic absenteeism into their federal accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the main national law guiding K-12 education.

Read the full article about chronically absent students by Taylor Swaak at The 74.