Hechinger Report | Q&A: Attendance advocate says littlest learners missing so much school they are being left behind

Hechinger Report | Q&A: Attendance advocate says littlest learners missing so much school they are being left behind

Q&A: Attendance advocate says littlest learners missing so much school they are being left behind

by Sarah Garland

Hedy Chang, the founder and director of Attendance Counts.

One in ten kindergarten and first-grade students misses a month of school a year, according to Attendance Counts, a new organization formed to combat chronic absences. For the youngest children, absences are often excused, so no one notices until it’s too late and the student has fallen behind. Frequent absences can be particularly problematic for poor families because those children already face an uphill battle in school.

The Hechinger Report’s Sarah Garland recently spoke with Hedy Chang, the founder and director of Attendance Counts, a national and state initiative dedicated to advancing school success by reducing chronic absences.
Hechinger Report: When we talk about school attendance problems, we usually picture teenagers hanging out on a corner skipping school, but you’re finding that the problem is deeper than that.
Chang: That’s absolutely the image that most people have in their heads. We typically think about attendance challenges being about truancy. These kids, of their own volition, are out on the streets, not going to school. But in fact attendance is really about, is the kid in school or not? There’s a much broader variety of reasons why kids aren’t in school. Particularly at young ages, it’s not truancy. It’s not like a kid is out on the streets and know one knows they’re not at school.