This summary highlights key takeaways from a partnership among Boston University, Brandeis University, and the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care funded by a grant awarded in 2019 by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children and Families. Explore takeaways from other Child Care Policy Research Partnership Grant teams here.

Children with many absences from public pre-K and Head Start programs tend to have negative school and social-emotional outcomes in pre-K and elementary school. However, few studies have examined absenteeism among children in other early education settings, including family child care and private center-based programs.

This study used Massachusetts administrative data to examine absenteeism rates among children receiving subsidies who attended family child care or center-based programs the year before they entered kindergarten. The research team also explored whether pre-K absenteeism was associated with kindergarten absenteeism.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Absenteeism rates were high among children receiving child care subsidies. On average, children enrolled in subsidized care were absent for 8.4 percent of the pre-K school year and 5.9 percent of the kindergarten school year. Children in the study had higher rates of absenteeism during the pre-K school year than children enrolled in public pre-K in Massachusetts (6 percent).

Children in family child care had lower absenteeism rates than those in center-based programs during the pre-K year (7.2 percent versus 8.7 percent). However, children who had been in family child care had higher absenteeism rates during kindergarten than those who had attended center-based programs (6.2 percent versus 5.8 percent).

Children with more absences during the pre-K year also had more absences during kindergarten. This was true whether children spent their pre-K year in family child care or in center-based programs. This was according to the research team’s statistical analyses, which controlled for a range of characteristics, such as household income and the number of months they received subsidies.

POLICY AND PROGRAM IMPLICATIONS

These findings highlight how more data about children’s attendance at early childhood programs could help elementary school administrators better serve students. Tracking pre-K absenteeism could help teachers and school leaders identify children at greater risk for absenteeism during elementary school. Schools can then promote attendance among families with children who have high rates of absenteeism in pre-K.

However, this could be difficult for many school districts to implement. Many districts lack centralized data systems to track children’s attendance before kindergarten.

Historically, states have tied subsidy payments to children’s attendance records. This meant high absenteeism rates could affect the financial stability of providers accepting subsidies.

Adopted in spring 2024, the CCDF Final Rule, a new federal regulation, will require states to pay subsidies based on child enrollment instead of attendance. With the significant rates of absenteeism found in this research, the new policy could stabilize payments to providers. In doing so, it could encourage more providers to serve children receiving subsidies.

METHODOLOGY

The research team analyzed data for 14,233 children who

• were enrolled in public kindergarten for the first time in September 2017 or 2018,
• remained in public school through the end of the kindergarten year, and
• received subsidized care for at least one month in the year before kindergarten.

To create this sample, they linked subsidy administrative data from the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care to administrative data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. For both administrative datasets, absenteeism rates were calculated by dividing the number of days absent by the number of enrolled days in each school year (September to June).

While the study found that children with more absences in the year before kindergarten also had more absences in kindergarten, these analyses did not prove causality.