In Mount Pleasant, it’s not unusual for first-grade teacher Danielle Bruursema to have a quarter of her 24 students absent on the same day, an alarmingly higher rate than just a few years ago.
In Ypsilanti last year, plummeting attendance in now-retired Debbie Swanson’s fifth grade class made it difficult to build course lessons. Maybe 50% of students bothered to show up for scheduled half days.
And in Holt, third-grade teacher Michael Adams draws a straight line between rising absenteeism and declining standardized test scores. Days when attendance was too low to teach new material put his class one and a half weeks behind for the M-STEP tests.
“Sometimes you have to slow down the whole class,” lamented Adams.
He’s not alone: Across Michigan, children are missing more school and faring worse on tests than peers in other states. According to the most recent data, Michigan had the highest rate of chronic absenteeism in the Midwest, while just six states had lower fourth-grade reading scores on the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress test.
Despite consensus that absenteeism is a top hindrance to learning, Michigan lacks a statewide approach to fix the problem. While states like Connecticut and Indiana passed reforms in response to skyrocketing absenteeism during the pandemic, Michigan’s policy is to trust local districts to address it on their own, a Bridge Michigan investigation has found.
That hasn’t worked.
Chronic absenteeism declined last year, but remains significantly higher than before the pandemic — 28% of Michigan public students still missed 10% of school last year, 18-plus days in a 180-day academic year.
One in 10 Michigan students missed a whopping seven weeks or more. Children of every age, race and income missed more school than peers in Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin or Minnesota.
The absence hurts even those with perfect attendance, studies show, delaying lessons and impacting test scores.
“I don’t think there’s enough light being shone on this problem,” said a frustrated Jason Mellema, superintendent of Ingham Intermediate School District.
“It shouldn’t be a question, it should be a resounding answer that we value kids being in school.”
Unlike Michigan lawmakers, leaders in other states are attacking the problem and have moved with far more urgency.
Sixteen states and Washington DC have committed to reducing their chronic absenteeism rates by 50% in five years through a project with Attendance Works, EdTrust and the American Enterprise Institute.
Michigan, which is not part of the initiative, “lacks a clear, statewide policy agenda centered on reducing chronic absenteeism and a plan for financial sustainability of proven strategies,” according to EdTrust, a national education advocacy group, in a recent report comparing state chronic absenteeism policies.
Missing days, missing learning
Bridge Michigan spoke to about 50 educators, policymakers and researchers for the chronic absenteeism series.
Many weren’t sure why Michigan’s rate is higher than other states but suggested poverty, lack of transportation and cultural changes sparked by the pandemic are causes.
Those issues also exist in other states that have fewer kids missing school.
Teachers, education advocates and administrators bemoan a profound shift in how parents perceive school: While perfect attendance was once a point of pride, parents now keep kids home for the sniffles, family vacations and anxiety.
“The culture was that school was mandatory, that missing was not OK,” said Bob Kefgen, associate director of government relations for the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals.
Now, after the pandemic, when so many kids took their classes by video and schools recommended kids stay home when sick, the attitude has changed, Kefgen and others said.
It’s changed for Ann Arbor parent Megan Kanous, who now doesn’t view occasional absences as a big deal. Ann Arbor Public Schools’ chronic absenteeism rate has almost tripled since the pandemic to 35.8%.
Years ago, her family considered taking a trip that would take a child out of kindergarten — and Kanous declined.
“Now, I look back on that and I’m like, ‘gosh we could have taken those two days like that would have made some memories.’”
Whatever the causes, the corrosive effect of all those empty seats adds up, leading to lower test scores and less teacher job satisfaction.
A recent study in Delaware found that even students with good attendance in classes with more overall absences had lower test scores.
“It compounds on them very quickly,” said Bruursema, the Mount Pleasant first-grade teacher. “And it’s very very impactful to their ability to grow academically.”
Adams, the third-grade teacher in Holt, said that in the first eight weeks of classes this year, he had just five days where all his students were in school. Adams’ Ingham County district saw 30.7% of its students miss enough school last year to be deemed chronically absent.
“You look out and there are 16 kids in the class, and you think, ‘I can’t teach anything new today,’” Adams said.
Reluctance to get tough
Many educators who spoke to Bridge acknowledge the state has a crisis — but said Michigan’s system of local control allows districts to have high absenteeism rates without meaningful repercussions.
Last year, there were fewer than 75% of students in attendance across 873 separate school days at 162 separate traditional districts and charters. By law, Michigan could withhold partial funding for those districts.
Those days will cost districts $11.5 million in funding penalties for 2024-25, according to Ken Coleman, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Education. The funds will be held back from districts in November’s monthly payouts, he said.
Like all states, Michigan has a compulsory attendance law, requiring parents to send their children to school from 6 to 18.
Unlike many states, Michigan leaves it up to local districts to interpret some details of the law — including what constitutes truancy, what kind of absences are excused and when districts should intervene with parents.
“Michigan’s law is very vague and allows for a lot of local control about what counts as too many absences and for which reasons,” said Sarah Lenhoff, an education associate professor at Wayne State University and co-author of a recent book on school attendance issues, “ Rethinking Chronic Absenteeism.”
Lacking state guidance, many districts hesitate to involve the judicial system, fearing that taking parents to court will make home life worse — or drive students from school altogether.
Some studies confirm those fears, showing that prosecutions actually lower school attendance.
Adding to the issue: Michigan law does not have a specific number of days that counts a student as truant, said Scott Hemker, attendance systems and support coach at the Gratiot-Isabella Regional Education Service District.
That makes prosecutions harder and less of a deterrent, Hemker said.
They know the loopholes, they know nothing’s really going to happen,” he said. “The courts, they just got so many bigger things to deal with.”
Michigan moves slow while other states act
Legislators have been slow to intervene.
In 2017, before the absentee crisis worsened, the Michigan Senate passed bills to create standards for attendance.
It did not get past a House committee.
In 2020, lawmakers removed the minimum number of days a parent could be held in jail for failing to comply with the school attendance law.
Now, Senate Education Committee Chair Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, said she wants to make absenteeism a policy priority but isn’t sure what legislation might entail beyond a “sticks and carrots” approach.
“This is my big thing I want to tackle. It’s just so glaring,” she said.
Nationwide, chronic absenteeism has fallen from 28% in 2021 to about 23.5%. Among the states to pass laws since the pandemic:
1. Iowarequires districts to intervene by contacting parents, law enforcement and creating prevention plans —and threatens legal action against parents if they’re not followed.
2. Maine beefed up monitoring data of absences and can force districts to provide outreach and services to students in districts with high absenteeism.
3. Connecticut requires schools with 15% or more of students chronically absent and districts with 10% or more chronic absenteeism to assign a team of educators to improve attendance rates.
4. Indiana passed laws mandating real-time reporting of absences and requiring schools to intervene with parents when they pile up.
State: ‘It’s a major concern’
Despite the limitations, Michigan education officials say they’re working hard on the issue.
“It is a major concern for the state and that they are very attentive to what’s going on around absenteeism. It is a primary focus,” said Diane Talo, director of student supports at Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators (MAISA).
The Michigan Department of Education has 20 people, many retired teachers, available as needed to coach local districts by looking at student data to identify students at risk of dropping out and pairing students with supports. The process is called Early Warning Intervention and Monitoring System (EWIMS).
The state has also dedicated $5 million for a five-year project for schools to use a data system to better track attendance, student behavior and course completions. Roughly 60 school districts are piloting the program this year with the Michigan Association of Intermediate School Administrators.
Still, the state’s goals are modest.
School accountability guidelines produced by the state list a “long-term” target of 26.17% chronic absenteeism — a rate that would still leave Michigan with one of the worst attendance problems in the Midwest.
The problem is complicated to solve because many of the issues leading to absenteeism occur outside of school, said Bersheril Bailey, an education consultant at the Michigan Department of Education, who works with school districts on attendance issues.
“We see things as far as transportation issues, mental health issues, physical health issues … or a single parent may have to go to work and the student has to take care of the siblings,” said Bailey.
State Board member Mitch Robinson suggested the attendance crisis represents a cultural shift sparked by the pandemic. He’s also a music professor at Michigan State University and said he sees the same increase in absences there.
“Something snapped, and people … just don’t have the same compunction about showing up at a place at a certain time. ‘ It’s fine to be late, it’s fine to miss something.’”
More than five years after schools initially closed due to COVID, the rationale has worn thin, others contend.
“We can’t blame the effects of a pandemic on what we’re doing now. We’ve got to be better as a society,” said Midland middle school principal Keith Seybert.
Seybert said he’s trying to retrain students to think that even if they are not feeling 100%, they can still be at school.
“I’m not the student’s parent. I’m not there at their home. But if you can get here, push, pull or drag, we want you in the building.”
Several school leaders told Bridge they had included student absenteeism goals in their continuous improvement plans, and others are being more aggressive about contacting parents when children are on a trajectory to being deemed chronically absent.
Mellema, the Ingham superintendent, told Bridge there are pockets of good news with absenteeism, but “pockets is not a systemic solution. We need to come up with a better way (where) we’re all committed to students being at school.
“If other states can do it, we can do it.”
