Children from certain racial and ethnic minority backgrounds, in poverty, and/or with a disability, often face distinct challenges in attending school, leading them to miss more school relative to their non-minority, more socio-economically advantaged and non-disabled peers. This brief describes these disparities in absenteeism in the US, discusses the challenge of explaining these disparities, and considers the implications that disparities have for addressing absenteeism.Finally, it closes with advice on how schools can make headway in reducing disparities in absenteeism. As this brief argues, while schools can readily document absenteeism gaps, diagnosing the root causes of these gaps remains much more elusive. Further, schools seeking to reduce disparities in absenteeism will not only need to intentionally establish explicit targets to reduce such gaps, but they will need to develop individualized strategies to remove barriers to attendance thereby getting children-especially those facing disproportionate challenges-back into the classroom.

The model minority perception of Asian American students often ignores the academic and social challenges that many face in schools. One area that has received less attention is the school victimization experiences of Asian American adolescents. While some qualitative researchers have explored factors contributing to school victimization in recent years, missing in the literature is the scope of these incidents among Asian Americans. This paper contributes to this literature by (1) examining national trends in the victimization of Asian American adolescents in schools over the last decade and (2) investigating how victimization varies according to their gender, socioeconomic status, and achievement levels. The results show that although Asian American adolescents are consistently less likely to be bullied relative to other students, they are more likely to report experiences of racial discrimination. Victimization incidents for Asian Americans also differ by gender and academic achievement levels.

Background/Context Chronic school absenteeism is a pervasive problem across the US; in early education, it is most rampant in kindergarten and its consequences are particularly detrimental, often leading to poorer academic, behavioral and developmental outcomes later in life. Though prior empirical research has identified a broad range of determinants of chronic absenteeism, there lacks a single, unified theoretically driven investigation examining how such factors concurrently explain the incidence of chronic absenteeism among our nation's youngest schoolchildren. Thus, it is difficult to determine the relative importance of one factor over another, hence making it challenging to develop appropriate supports and services to reduce school absences. Purpose/Research Questions Our study filled this critical void—we investigated multiple determinants of chronic absenteeism that were grounded, theoretically and empirically, in Bronfenbrenner's bioecological model of development. Specifically, using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11 and the method of hierarchical generalized linear modeling, we analyzed how the co-occurrence of key (a) process, (b) person, and (c) context (micro-, meso-, exo- and macrosystem) factors was associated with kindergarteners’ probability of being chronically absent. Findings/Results Children who have poorer health, higher internalizing behaviors, and more frequent engagement in learning activities at home had higher odds of chronic absenteeism. Also, children from larger families and of lower socioeconomic status faced increased odds of chronic absenteeism. Conversely, children holding positive attitudes towards school had lowered odds of chronic absenteeism, a finding that remained robust across socioeconomic status groups. Finally, parent–school connections were associated with lowered odds of absenteeism. Conclusions/Recommendations Overall, our findings strongly suggested that addressing chronic absenteeism will require comprehensive and multifaceted approaches that recognize these multiple factors. With this theoretically grounded, more descriptive approach, it is more feasible to identify key factors and subsequently design policies and practices to prevent absence behavior.