Assessing the effect of school days and absences on test score performance

Abstract

While instructional time is viewed as crucial to learning, little is known about the effectiveness of reducing absences relative to increasing the number of school days. In this regard, this paper jointly estimates the effect of absences and length of the school calendar on test score performance. Using administrative data from North Carolina public schools, we exploit a state policy that provides variation in the number of days prior to standardized testing and find substantial differences between these effects. Extending the school calendar by ten days increases math and reading test scores by only 0.8% and 0.2% of a standard deviation, respectively; a similar reduction in absences would lead to gains of 5.8% and 3% in math and reading. We perform a number of robustness checks including utilizing u data to instrument for absences, family-year fixed effects, separating excused and unexcused absences, and controlling for a contemporaneous measure of student disengagement. Our results are robust to these alternative specifications. In addition, our findings indicate considerable heterogeneity across student ability, suggesting that targeting absenteeism among low performing students could aid in narrowing current gaps in performance.

What differences a day can make: Quantile regression estimates of the distribution of daily learning gains

“…Knowing the impact of instructional time on student achievement is critical to ensuring the efficient allocation of scarce resources and to conducting cost-benefit analyses of a variety of education policies regarding modifications to the school calendar, weather-related school closures, and student and teacher absences. Accordingly, recent research has employed a variety of quasi-experimental methods to examine the causal relationship between school days (or unexpected school closures, teacher absences, or student absences) and student achievement (Aucejo and Romano, 2013;Bellei, 2009;Clotfelter, Ladd, and Vigdor, 2009;Fitzpatrick et al, 2011;Goodman, 2014;Hansen, 2008;Herrmann and Rockoff, 2012;Leuven et al, 2010;Marcotte and Hemelt, 2008;Parinduri, 2014;Pischke, 2007;Sims, 2008). Generally, this literature finds that additional school days have a positive impact on student achievement.…”

Increased instruction hours and the widening gap in student performance

“…Sims, 2008;Fitzpatrick et al, 2011), as well as student and teacher absences (e.g. Herrmann & Rockoff, 2012;Aucejo & Romano, 2014). Second, the studies generating insights from considerable, policy-induced increases in instruction time are often accompanied by changes in other school input factors or changes in the peer environment (Bellei, 2009;Lavy, 2012;Taylor, 2014;Cortes & Goodman, 2014;Cortes et al, 2015).…”

Student Absences and Academic Achievement

“…The magnitudes of these estimates are comparable to ours. Aucejo and Romano (2016) find qualitatively similar but smaller estimates. They use data on North Carolina elementary school students in grades 3-5 together with fixed effects models and find that a 10 day increase in absences leads to a 5 percent of a standard deviation reduction in math score and 2.9 percent of a standard deviation reduction in reading.…”

“…Each uses different data sources and methodology, but each confirms that increasing absences leads to lower achievement. For instance, Goodman (2014) uses data from Massachusetts, Aucejo and Romano (2016) data from North Carolina, Gottfried (2010) data from Philadelphia, and Gershonson, et al (2017) national data on primary school students, and each finds an inverse relation between absences and achievement across a variety of statistical models.…”