How Serious Are School Attendance Problems?
In some countries, schools are confronted with high rates of absenteeism,
which can influence instructional continuity and reduce the time for
learning. In general, research has shown that greater truancy is related
to less serious attitudes towards school and lower academic achievement.
To examine this issue, TIMSS developed an index of good school and
class attendance (SCA) based on schools’ responses to three questions
about the seriousness of students’ absenteeism, arriving late
at school, and skipping class. The high index level indicates that
schools reported that all three types of behavior are not a problem.
The low level indicates that two or more are a serious problem, or
that two are minor problems and one a serious problem. The medium
category includes all other combinations of responses.
The results of the index are presented in Exhibit
7.5. Sixty percent of students on average across all the TIMSS
1999 countries were in the medium category, where principals had judged
their schools to have a moderate attendance problem. Exactly one-fifth
of the students were in schools at the high level of the index, and
another 19 percent were in schools at the low level. Although countries
varied considerably, there was a modest positive relationship between
good attendance and science achievement on average across countries.
The results for the United States resemble the international averages,
and also show a positive relationship between attendance and science
achievement. Across the Benchmarking entities, the situation varied
considerably. Participants with the highest percentages of students
in schools with good attendance included Naperville and the Academy
School District, with more than 40 percent of the students in this
category. Jurisdictions with less than 10 percent of students in this
category included Pennsylvania, Jersey City, Oregon, the Delaware
Science Coalition, and Rochester.
The information used to compute this index appears in Exhibit
7.6, together with data showing the percentages of students in
schools where the behavior occurs at least weekly. Arriving late and
absenteeism were more common in the United States than in the TIMSS
1999 countries generally, but were not usually considered to be serious
problems. Among Benchmarking participants, Naperville had the fewest
students in schools that reported attendance problems. In contrast,
Rochester reported the most problems, with almost all students in
schools where tardiness, absenteeism, and skipping class are frequent
occurrences and sometimes constitute serious problems.
