What causes students to chronically skip school?
The following excerpt is from an article originally published on The Nevada Independent, What causes students to chronically skip school? A new Guinn Center report offers answers.
A new report by the Guinn Center for Public Policy Priorities found that students who experience bullying and those with learning disabilities are more likely to miss school compared to their peers.
The findings are part of the nonpartisan Guinn Center’s recent series examining chronic absenteeism and efforts in the state to address it.
Students are considered chronically absent after missing 10 percent or more of the school year (about 18 days during a typical 180-day school year), whether the absence is considered excused or unexcused.
An estimated 23 percent of students nationwide were chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year, an 8 percent increase from the last school year before the pandemic. Nevada’s chronically absent rate for the 2023-24 school year — at almost 26 percent — was slightly higher than the national average.
Anna Colquitt, the center’s education policy director, said it’s an issue that needs to be tackled as the state demands better school performance.
“If a quarter of our students are chronically absent, thinking we are going to continue to grow our achievement rates seems really difficult,” she said.
Mental health diagnoses and other struggles are reported as the “top health-related drivers of absenteeism,” and can lead to students feeling school is overwhelming or not worth attending. This includes students who are bullied, an experience 26,000 of Nevada middle schoolers reported in 2023. The center’s report found that the percentage of students missing school due to bullying rose from 7 percent to 13 percent between 2013 and 2023.
The report also noted students with disabilities are 36 percent more likely to be chronically absent compared to their classmates without disabilities. The report states this could be because these students are more likely to experience depression or anxiety or feel frustrated when they compare themselves to their peers. Having an undiagnosed condition can exacerbate these feelings.
Students with physical disabilities also have similar experiences.
“The mental health piece impacts both students' ability to attend school and their desire to attend school, and so it is linked to a great degree with chronic absenteeism,” Colquitt said.
Lawmakers this year passed a bill, SB165, that advocates say will bolster the state’s child mental health workforce, crucial for a state with a higher than recommended student-to-counselor ratio.
The bill establishes regulations and licensing opportunities for behavioral health and wellness practitioners. Those providers are trained to identify early warning signs of mental health disorders, trauma and emotional distress, and can offer kids and families strategies on how to mitigate those issues.
It also provides a total of $3.2 million in funding to create new programs at UNLV, UNR and Great Basin College for students pursuing careers in child behavioral health and offer them scholarships.
It establishes the first Nevada internship program accredited by the American Psychology Association for UNLV students interested in child psychology and appropriates another $3.2 million to the Nevada System of Higher Education to establish the program and offer scholarships.
“Nevada will be able to create and retain child psychologists rather than lose them to other states,” the Children Advocacy Alliance of Nevada stated in its 2025 legislative report