Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Preschool is an effective means to improving children’s early learning and development, especially for low-income children (Yoshikawa et al., 2013). Given the mounting evidence supporting the benefits of preschool, large investments are being made into these programs across the country (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013). However, there is growing evidence to suggest that children do not reap the maximum benefit if they are not present in school (Connolly & Olson, 2012; Ehrilch, et al, 2014). Understanding why children are absent from preschool can help improve interventions and policies that seek to improve attendance but overall, there has been little work on understanding why children are absent.

 To redress this gap, we test a comprehensive set of factors hypothesized to influence children’s absenteeism from Head Start and conceptualized in the accommodations framework of childcare choices (Meyers & Jordan, 2006). We focus on two overarching sets of factors. The first is family factors, such as employment and routines, which may shape family reliance on and commitment to preschool attendance. The second are classroom- and center-factors, such as outreach to families and classroom quality. These factors are particularly important to examine as they represent malleable factors that can be targeted in the future if they are found to be associated with children’s absenteeism.

We use data from Family and Child Experiences Survey 2009, which followed a nationally representative sample of 3,349 Head Start attendees across 486 classrooms. Our outcome was parent-reported and examined in two ways, continuously, as a proportion of days absent, and dichotomously, using the commonly implemented 10% cutoff as an indicator of chronic absenteeism. We included extensive covariates in all models, including child and family factors that were not our focal predictors. We ran OLS and logistic models with clustered standard errors, as well as classroom fixed effect models for all predictors that varied across children in classrooms.

A number of family factors were associated with children’s absences. Children whose mothers were employed full-time and children who were in a household with a greater number of children were less likely to be absent. Children whose families had more frequent routines were also absent less frequently than children whose families had fewer daily routines. Not surprisingly, child health was strongly associated with absenteeism. A number of indicators of economic stressors also predicted absenteeism, including food insecurity, adequacy of medical care, and receipt of governmental assistance. Lastly, mothers who perceived their neighborhoods to be violent had children who were more frequently absent.

A number of center- and classroom-level features were also associated with reduced preschool absences. Children who attended centers that provided more services to families were less likely to be absent. Children’s classroom experiences also played a role in the regularity of their attendance; specifically, children were less likely to be absent when their mothers’ perceived them as enjoying school and when they attended classrooms that were rated as higher quality. The results have implications for both the design of Head Start programs and for interventions designed to reduce preschool absenteeism.