Do Students Receiving IEPs Have Stronger School Attendance Records?

Background and Context: Absenteeism is a national crisis, affecting students with individualized education programs (IEPs) most significantly. When students with disabilities (SWDs) are absent from school, they miss not only instructional time but also social and behavioral supports as well as other related services, such as physical therapy (PT) and speech/language therapy. Although there has been some focus on academic outcomes when students receive an IEP, none has looked at specific patterns of attendance. Purpose and Research Questions: There has been a dearth of research focusing on whether receiving an IEP has any association with pattern of absences. This study, therefore, focuses on the different types of absences that students can incur—excused or unexcused—and how this changes based on whether they receive an IEP. We posed the following research questions: Does receiving an IEP predict different absence patterns? Do these patterns differ based on the type of absence (i.e., excused vs. unexcused)? Research Design: We utilized administrative data from a small, urban school district for students in grades K–5 during the school years 2011–12 to 2013–14 (prior to COVID). The data came directly from the school district’s Office of Research and Evaluation, though the district identifying information cannot be released, and included demographic information on students and teachers as well as students’ absence records for each school year. These absences were delineated as either excused or unexcused. The sample contained 12,579 students, and we had complete data for all students, given that this was administrative district data. Conclusions: Using these data in our most robust model, which utilizes student fixed effects, we found that students who receive an IEP have a decrease in absences. When we looked specifically at the type of absence, we found that SWDs had fewer excused absences. These results suggest that moving to more proactive interventions could help students to reduce absences, receive appropriate services at school, and feel more included in the classroom.