Abstract
In March 2020, most schools in the United States transitioned to distance learning in an effort to contain COVID-19. A significant number of students did not fully engage in remote learning opportunities due to resource or other constraints. An urgent question for schools around the nation is how much did the pandemic impact student academic and social-emotional development. This paper uses administrative panel data from California to approximate the impact of the pandemic by analyzing how absenteeism affects student outcomes. Our results suggest student outcomes generally suffer more from absenteeism in mathematics than in ELA. Negative effects are larger in middle school. Absences negatively affect social-emotional development, particularly in middle school. Our results suggest districts will face imminent needs for student academic and social-emotional support to make-up for losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools around the nation to close physical campuses and shift to distance learning. The pandemic exposed deep cracks in our education system, with low-poverty schools and students transitioning to online participation quickly and students of color in high poverty schools and English learners (ELs) lagging behind (Burke, 2020; Hamilton et al., 2020; Umansky, 2020). A nationally representative survey of teachers conducted by the EdWeek Research Center found that in May 2020, 23% of students were considered “truant” (i.e., not logging into any online work, not making contact with teacher, etc.) and close to 45% of teachers reported students had “much lower” levels of engagement with schoolwork than before the pandemic. 1 A report by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest district in the country, found that participation in online learning of middle and high school students between March 16 and May 22, 2020, never reached 100% and was lower for students in particular subgroups such as low income, ELs, students with disabilities, and homeless and foster youth (Besecker et al., 2020).
When schools closed in March 2020, it is safe to assume students were mostly absent at least in the first week or two immediately following the closures (Kuhfeld et al., 2020). This would put most students above average absenteeism levels for regular school years. Students who were consistently absent from March through June, would have missed 10 weeks of school (50 days) putting them at the far end of the normal absenteeism spectrum. The analysis presented here gives some indication of the negative impact absences could have on both academic and social-emotional learning (SEL) outcomes. These estimates shed further light on the potential learning and social-emotional costs if students continue to be absent from school for long periods in 2020–2021 due to the challenging circumstances posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given the deep inequalities present in our school systems, an increasingly urgent question for schools around the nation is how much learning has been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic? And how are different student subgroups affected by this? Are students in the earlier grades losing more ground than students in middle and high school? And, also importantly, how is the social-emotional development of students affected by their absence from school?
Although some data are beginning to emerge to directly answer these questions, testing during the pandemic was curtailed in most districts. It is therefore useful to look at past experience with absenteeism to gauge what the potential impact could be. Our study uses administrative panel data from six large school districts in California to analyze the effects of absenteeism in the recent past. We use data from 2014–2015 to 2017–2018 for students in Grades 3 to 12 to understand (1) the average patterns of absenteeism occurring during regular school years for all students and by subgroup and (2) the impact on test scores and SEL outcomes of being away from school for all students and by subgroup.
Our article makes several key contributions beyond prior literature on this topic. First, we investigate the potential impact of absenteeism on both academic and social-emotional outcomes. Second, we estimate results for a large span of grades, allowing us to see how patterns related to absenteeism change across K–12 experience. Third, we drill down to results for four vulnerable student subgroups who may experience the effects of the pandemic in different ways: ELs, students with disabilities, low-income students, and homeless/foster youth. Fourth, we have data from six of the largest, most diverse districts in the most populous U.S. state. Last, our 4-year student-level panel allows us to control for unobserved attributes of students that could bias the relationship between absenteeism and outcomes.
Our findings indicate that absenteeism hurts both academic and social-emotional outcomes with variation by grade and subgroup, as well as in the cumulative effect of different degrees of absence. Students generally suffer more from absenteeism in mathematics than in English language arts (ELA) and experience larger negative potential effects on academic outcomes in middle school than in elementary grades. With regard to social-emotional development, absenteeism is likely to have the greatest negative impact on social awareness and self-efficacy and the likely negative impact is most pronounced in middle school.
Previous Literature
Effects of Absenteeism on Test Scores
It is well established in the literature that absenteeism negatively affects academic outcomes. Using data from elementary students in North Carolina, Aucejo and Romano (2016) find that being absent for 10 days from school would reduce test scores by about 0.03 SD in ELA and 0.06 SD in mathematics. The negative impact is greater in upper elementary grades (fourth and fifth) than in third grade and larger for low-performing versus high-performing students. In mathematics, the detrimental effects of absences in one school year can persist into subsequent grades, suggesting that absences today can have lasting consequences. Other studies have also found that absences affect mathematics more than ELA (Gottfried, 2009, 2011, 2014) and later grades more than earlier grades (Gershenson et al., 2017). Liu et al. (2020) use a high school student panel covering 2002–2003 to 2012–2013 in one large California school district and find that missing 10 mathematics classes in the spring semester reduces mathematics test scores by about 0.07 SD, math course grades by 0.19 SD, and the probability of on-time graduation by 0.08 SD. Results are similar for ELA outcomes. To account for time-varying classroom influences that could bias the relationship between absenteeism and outcomes, they use class period-level absences and control for absences in another subject (i.e., ELA or mathematics). The coefficient on spring semester absences in their student fixed effects model change only slightly when absences in another subject (class period) are added as a control. Importantly, they find that teacher and subject preferences are relatively stable across years and do not significantly bias the relationship between attendance and student outcomes.
Kuhfeld et al. (2020) estimate typical summer learning loss to project the impact of COVID-19 using a national sample of students in Grades 3 to 7 who took MAP Growth assessments between 2017–2018 and 2018–2019. Assuming that students lost the 3 months (about 60 instructional days) immediately following school closures in March, the authors project students could lose 32% to 27% of the expected yearly learning gains in ELA and 63% to 50% in mathematics when they come back in the fall of 2020. Effects vary across student proficiency categories, with the most significant losses concentrated among students at low proficiency levels. One advantage of our study over studies like this is that we use absences during the school year to predict academic losses. When students are absent for extended periods during the year, teachers provide homework and supplemental lesson materials. While these instructional efforts may not be as intensive as those that have been exerted during the pandemic, they do mitigate learning losses due to absence in ways that are more relevant to the current COVID-19 situation than summer learning loss.
Effects of Absenteeism on Social-Emotional Learning Outcomes
SEL skills, such as self-efficacy, self-management, and growth mind-set, have been found in the literature to be correlated with academic outcomes (e.g., Claro et al., 2016; Usher & Pajares, 2009; West, Buckley, et al., 2018). Recent work using Project CORE data suggests that when SEL outcomes improve, so do test scores and behavioral outcomes—this is true across student subgroups and regardless of the baseline level of SEL (Kanopka et al., 2020).
Only a handful of quantitative studies have tried to estimate the effect of being absent from school on SEL outcomes. Gottfried (2014) finds that chronic absenteeism reduces educational and social engagement for kindergartners. West, Pier, et al. (2018), using two years of survey data from CORE districts find that students in Grades 4 to 12 with low ratings on growth management, self-awareness, self-efficacy, and self-management miss more school. They find the strongest negative associations with absences for self-management and self-efficacy.
Data and Method
This study uses rich longitudinal student-level data from the CORE districts—a group of the largest districts in California who formed a collaborative organization in 2010 to cooperate in efforts to implement new academic standards, improve training for teachers and administrators, and pool data. 2 We use CORE data from six districts to estimate the potential impact of absenteeism on academic outcomes and four districts to estimate the impact on social-emotional outcomes. 3 The total number of student-year observations in our analyses is over 1.3 million, representing close to 600,000 individual students. We use 4 years of data from 2014–2015 through 2017–2018.
Outcome Data
The achievement variables are composed of vertically-scaled test scores on the Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBAC) in ELA and mathematics. These tests are available for Grades 3 to 8 and grade 11. Grades earlier than third grade and Grades 9, 10, and 12 are not tested.
Social-emotional data come from CORE surveys of students. The data provide scale scores generated from survey items using a generalized partial credit model 4 measuring the following constructs: (1) self-management, the ability to regulate one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations; (2) growth mind-set, the belief that one’s intelligence is malleable and can grow with effort; (3) self-efficacy, the belief in one’s own ability to succeed in achieving an outcome or reaching a goal; and (4) social awareness, the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others from diverse backgrounds and cultures, to understand social and ethical norms for behavior, and to recognize family, school, and community resources and support (Hough et al., 2017). A validation study found the CORE-generated SEL constructs to have high structural validity, and high reliability in most of the factors (Meyer et al., 2018). 5 Scaled SEL scores range from 5.5 to 4.6 depending on the construct, but we standardize all scaled scores to a mean of zero and standard deviation of 1 by school year and by construct. 6 Table A1 in the online appendix (available on the journal website) contains descriptive statistics on all variables used in our analyses.
Student Characteristics/Designations/Behaviors
Data available for each student for every school year include: days attended, days enrolled, grade attended, race/ethnicity, gender, EL designation, disability status (SWD), whether student is a homeless or foster youth (HL/FST), income proxied by free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL), behaviors (i.e., suspensions or expulsions during the school year), and enrollment patterns related to school changes.
Method
Studying the impact of absenteeism on student outcomes is challenging because of unobserved factors that could be associated with both absenteeism and student outcomes. If not accounted for, these unobserved factors could bias estimates of the impact of absenteeism on outcomes. To mitigate this potential source of bias, we use a student fixed effect model that essentially uses each student as their own control. 7 Such models control for time invariant qualities of individuals—fixed traits or some persistent degree of ability—that could be important sources of bias. Our independent variable of interest—days absent—varies almost yearly within students in the panel, making fixed effects ideally suited to the analysis. A limitation to student fixed effects is that they do not control for time-varying unobserved nonrandom student-specific variation that may contribute to both the outcome variables and absenteeism simultaneously. For example, students might have family problems during a given year, causing absenteeism to go up and outcomes to go down. If students dislike a particular teacher or subject, this would reveal a time-varying influence on absenteeism that is difficult to observe. This latter potential source of bias seems less of a threat since, as mentioned earlier, Liu et al. (2020) did not find evidence of teacher- or subject-specific unobserved effects on absenteeism.
Our data allow us to control for other time-varying factors that could be potential time-varying sources of bias. We include the number of suspensions and expulsions a student has in a given year, which both controls for some involuntary sources of absenteeism and indicates problems that manifest in disciplinary behaviors. We also include an indicator for whether or not the student experienced a change of schools during the course of the year or in the prior summer, which allows us to control for absences due to adjustment issues or potential underlying factors that caused the school move (e.g., a change in residence, family divorce). We also include program designations such as EL or SWD that vary over time.
Equation (1) presents the basic model we estimate in this article.
In this model, Abs
it
are the number of days student i was absent at time (year) t. We allow a squared term to pick up nonlinear relationships with absenteeism at different levels. Enrit are the number of days student i was enrolled at time (year) t.
To check our estimates against other specifications, we ran models that did not include student fixed effects but did include all observable time-invariant student characteristics, time-varying variables, lagged achievement in one or both subjects, 8 and school-level fixed effects. The absenteeism coefficients from these approaches differ from those in the student fixed effects model, suggesting that the student fixed effects go one step further in eliminating sources of bias (see Table A2 in the online appendix available on the journal website). We are confident that the estimates from the models we present closely approximate the causal parameters. 9
Findings
Table 1 displays descriptive patterns of absenteeism. Panel A shows that on average, students in Grades K–12 are absent from school 7.4 days in a regular school year. Absences vary considerably by grade: elementary and middle school students spend about 7 days away from school in a regular school year, whereas middle school and high school students are absent 6 and 9 days on average every school year, respectively. Absences are highest for kindergarten and Grades 10 through 12, with 12th graders absent an average of 10.8 days. Absenteeism rates also vary considerably by student subgroup. African American students and those classified as SWDs, ELs, and HL/FST youth are much more likely than all students on average to be absent from school.
Average Days Absent per Year, by Subgroup
Note. Averages over 2014–2015 to 2017–2018 school years. Includes data from six CORE districts. EL = English learner; FRPL = free or reduced-price lunch; SWD = students with disability; HL/FST; homeless or foster youth; P.I. = Pacific Islander.
Panel B shows that 14% of students are absent zero days, 65% are absent 1 to 10 days, 13% are absent 11 to 18 days per year, and 8% are absent 18 days or more—the level at which absenteeism is considered chronic. Chronic absence is more prevalent in Grades 9 to 12 than in the earlier grades. About 7% of students are absent from school 30 days or more in any given year, indicating that most chronically absent students are absent for longer periods than 18 days.
Effects of Absences on Test Scores
Results from estimating Equation 1 with test scores as outcomes are presented in Table 2 (columns 1 and 2) and Figure 1. We use only Grades 3 to 8 in this analysis. 10 Being away from school for 10 days results in a 5% of a standard deviation loss in ELA and an 8% SD loss in mathematics. The squared absence term is very small but statistically significant and positive and thus tends to lessen slightly the negative effect of additional days absent on test scores as absenteeism increases.
Effects of Days Absent on Cognitive and Noncognitive Outcomes
Note. Robust standard errors in parentheses. Models are estimated as shown in Equation 1. Data cover six CORE districts, for years 2014–2015 to 2017–2018. GM = growth mind-set; SA = social awareness; SE = self-efficacy; SM = self-management.

Predicted effects on test scores, by different values of days absent.
In the graphical display (Figure 1), what is important to note is the slope of the lines. The intercept for ELA and mathematics differs only because the vertically scaled SBAC scores and their predicted means differ across the subjects—thus the distance between the lines is not due to a difference in absenteeism effects. As the slopes reveal, absences have a clear negative effect on test scores. The rate of predicted academic loss due to absenteeism as it accumulates is steeper for mathematics.
Absences affect test scores differently depending on the student’s grade level. Predicted effects by grade are found in Figure 2. The slopes on the grade lines are steeper (downward trend) in sixth, seventh and eighth grade, indicating that academic loss due to extended absences is borne more heavily by students in middle school. Predicted effects for elementary students are noticeably flatter—indeed, even slightly positive for third graders, suggesting that the ability of teachers and parents to compensate for lost schooling is greater in the early grades.

Predicted effects of absences on test scores, by grade level.
The impact of extended absences on academic achievement vary by student subgroup. Overall predicted effects for students classified as EL, FRPL, SWD, and HL/FST can be found in Figure 3. For comparison we add a category of nonvulnerable students (NONVUL) composed of students who do not fall into any of these program designations. The negative effects of absenteeism are substantial for all students and are the most pronounced for students classified as FRPL, SWD, and HL/FST. These findings are concerning, given that in our analytic sample, 77 percent of the student population is classified as FRPL, 13% as SWD, and 4% as HL/FST. 11 ELs (18% of sample students) are an exception, as they are less affected even than non-vulnerable students (19%). It should be noted that this group includes students that are considered long-term ELs, newcomer ELs, and ELs at various points of English Language Development. More research is needed on variation within this subgroup to better understand these effects. For all subgroups, absences appear to have a more negative impact on test scores in the middle school grades relative to elementary grades (results by subgroup and grade available in the online appendix (Figure A1) available on the journal website.

Predicted effects of absences on test scores, by subgroup.
Effects of Absences on Social-Emotional Learning Outcomes
To estimate the effects of absenteeism on SEL in a normal school year, we estimate Equation 1 using as outcomes the SEL scale scores in each of the four constructs standardized by year—social awareness (SA), self-efficacy (SE), self-management (SM), and growth mind-set (GM). SEL scores are available for Grades 4 to 12, and we include all of those grades in the analysis. As recommended by the construct developers and standard in this literature, we estimate this model on the subsample of students who answered at least 50% of the items used to generate each of the constructs (Education Analytics, 2018; West, Pier, et al., 2018).
Regression results are shown in Table 2 (columns 3–5). The coefficients on days absent for all four SEL constructs are negative and statistically significant, with very small (close to zero) positive coefficients on the squared term. As shown in Figure 4, being absent from school for 20 or more days, harms all four SEL constructs. Effects for most constructs flatten out after 40 days. However, for SA the decline is more or less linear suggesting a steeper rate of loss on this construct and the greater importance of schools in promoting social awareness.

Predicted effects on social-emotional outcomes, by different values of days absent.
Figure 5 shows that the SEL constructs are affected differently by absenteeism across grades. To facilitate viewing, we aggregate grades into school levels, but grade-specific results can be found in the online appendix (Figures A2–A5) avaible on the journal website. All constructs are negatively affected by absenteeism. However, middle school is the level at which extended absence from school has the strongest negative impact on social–emotional development, with SE and SA having the steepest slopes. At the elementary level, the most affected constructs are SE and SM. At the high school level, the most affected construct is SA.

Predicted effects on social-emotional outcomes, by different values of days absent and school level.
Absences are detrimental to all subgroups (see online appendix Figure A6 available on the journal website). Absences harm SA and SE more or less equally across groups. Absences harm non-vulnerable students more than others in SM, and they harm nonvulnerable students and SWDs slightly more than others in GM.
Conclusion
After schools shut down in-person instruction in mid-March 2020, districts across the nation scrambled to provide various modes of distance instruction within weeks so students would lose as little learning as possible. In an effort to help assess the possible effects of being away from school during the pandemic, we estimated the impact of absenteeism on academic and social-emotional outcomes from recent pre-COVID experience. This study, using data from six large school districts in California, shows that average absenteeism is low in the regular school year: about 7 days on average, although this is higher in secondary school and for certain subgroups such as homeless/foster youth and students with disabilities.
This article adds important information to the growing evidence on the anticipated negative impact of COVID-19 on student development and its possible differential impacts by student subgroups. We show that absenteeism negatively affects student achievement, more so for mathematics than ELA and more so for middle school students than elementary students. Although all students experience the negative effects of absenteeism on academic outcomes, certain vulnerable subgroups of students—particularly low-income students, students with disabilities, and homeless and foster youth—are more subject to learning loss than other students.
Being absent from school harms SEL skills, as well, particularly those related to social awareness, self-efficacy, and self-management and, again, more so for middle school students than others. Absences are detrimental to SEL for all subgroups, with some variation across groups.
Taken together with evidence that significant numbers of students were absent from virtual schooling opportunities for longer periods than normal during the COVID-19 pandemic (EdWeek Research Center, 2020; Hamilton et al., 2020) and that absenteeism was highest among students of color and disadvantaged groups (Besecker et al., 2020), our results suggest that school disruptions brought on by the pandemic will negatively affect both the academic and social–emotional development of students, particularly for students in certain grades and vulnerable subgroups. It is increasingly evident that students will need both academic and social-emotional support to make up for what was lost.
Our study raises some questions as to why these effects occur with different patterns for different groups and grades. For example, heterogeneity within certain groups such as ELs and SWDs across grades and subcategorizations may be driving some of the differences we see. More research is needed with regard to the mechanisms by which absence from school affect students of all types so that the full effects of the pandemic or other such shocks to the school system can be better understood.
This study provides an overview of the effects of absenteeism on both academic and social-emotional development across a large span of grades and for several subgroups of students. As such, it enables districts to gauge the potential effects of absenteeism to better predict and proactively address the potential effects of COVID-19.
Supplemental Material
sj-pdf-1-edr-10.3102_0013189X21994488 – Supplemental material for The Effects of Absenteeism on Academic and Social-Emotional Outcomes: Lessons for COVID-19
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-edr-10.3102_0013189X21994488 for The Effects of Absenteeism on Academic and Social-Emotional Outcomes: Lessons for COVID-19 by Lucrecia Santibañez and Cassandra M. Guarino in Educational Researcher
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