Horne urges schools to adopt stricter absenteeism policies

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has called for significant measures to address the high rate of chronic absenteeism among public school students in Arizona. Horne emphasized the need for "radical efforts" by local schools to tackle this issue.

Policies regarding student absences are determined at the district and charter level. Horne is advocating for schools to implement policies where nine unexcused absences result in a student failing a course, and five tardies count as an absence.

"The idea that a third of our students are missing 18 days of school or more is a real catastrophe and an emergency for our state," Horne said. "We need radical efforts to solve this problem. We have to create a motivation for parents to be sure their children go to school. Parents don’t want their kids to fail courses or to miss out on graduating on time, and if schools would adopt those kinds of policies, we would see the parents motivated and a radical drop in absenteeism. As a result of that, we would see better academic results."

Horne's comments came after a presentation by the Phoenix-based Helios Foundation at the State Board of Education meeting. Data from Helios indicated that chronic absenteeism rates rose significantly across nearly every grade level during the 2022-23 school year compared to pre-pandemic levels. The data showed absenteeism rates increased from approximately nine percent in the 2019-20 school year to 30 percent in 2022-23.

He added, "90 percent of my time and energy and that of the department is geared toward students getting better academic results and raising proficiency rates. You can’t do that for kids who don’t show up in school; you can’t teach a student who is not there."

In Arizona, chronic absence is defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year for any reason while enrolled at a given school, which equates to 18 days missed in a typical 180-day school year.

A copy of the Helios report is available.

Information from this article can be found here.