Giving Compass' Take:

• A report indicates that about 15% of students in the United States missed 15 or more school days in the 2015-2016 school year. Chronic absenteeism is concentrated in certain schools. 

• How can funders help reduce chronic absenteeism, particularly where it is concentrated? How do issues like poverty and healthcare access impact chronic absenteeism? 

• Learn how a nudge can reduce chronic absenteeism. 

Nearly 8 million students nationwide were chronically absent during the 2015-16 school year, with California accounting for more than 760,000 of those children, according to a report representing the most comprehensive analysis to date of chronic absenteeism in the nation’s schools.

These numbers equate to approximately 15 percent of all students nationally and 12 percent in California, says the report, which is the result of a collaboration among San Francisco-based Attendance Works, the Brookings Institution and Johns Hopkins University.

A deeper look at the data shows that just over half of all chronically absent students are concentrated in a relatively small subset of schools with “high” or “extreme” levels of chronic absenteeism, according to the report, which is dubbed “Data Matters — Using Chronic Absence to Accelerate Action for Student Success.”

The researchers used data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which defines a student as chronically absent during a given school year if he or she misses 15 school days. The report considers a school to have a high level of chronic absenteeism if 20 percent of its students are chronically absent; and to have an extreme level if the number reaches 30 percent.

Read the full article about chronic absenteeism by David Washburn at EdSource.