Too Few Michigan Students Are Showing up to School. This Study Says Fix Unstable Housing, Not Schools.
December 6, 2018
By: Koby Levin
Source: Chalkbeat
All of the educational techniques that have ever been tried have one thing in common. They don’t work if the students don’t show up.
Michigan is learning this firsthand. It has the nation’s sixth-worst rate of chronic absenteeism: Fifteen percent of Michigan students miss 1 in 10 school days. The state’s policymakers have responded by tying consequences for schools to their attendance rates.
However, a new study suggests that the most important solutions start with the family. Using new data on student homelessness, researchers at Poverty Solutions, a project at the University of Michigan, found that housing instability is by far the largest predictor of chronic absenteeism.