FULL HOSPITALS, EMPTY CLASSROOMS: THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM IN SCHOOLS

Educators across the United States are holding their breath to see if their empty classrooms during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic remain so even after an end to widespread school closures. Existing research on chronic absenteeism has yielded insight into which students are particularly vulnerable to missing school and the debilitating long-term impacts for chronically absent students. This paper employs panel methods to analyze to explore how the pandemic impacted the rates and realities of chronic absenteeism in New York City public schools, relying on cross-sectional and panel observation data across several years from publicly available chronic absenteeism and demographic data of over 1,800 Department of Education schools, COVID-19 death and case rates from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and economic indicators from the US Census. This paper finds that the COVID-19 death rate of a community was associated with increased rates of chronic absenteeism within its schools, as were a range of economic and demographic characteristics that point to a sustained and amplified absenteeism crisis without targeted, immediate action from policymakers