Effects of School Social Work Services on Student Attendance

Background and Purpose:

In 2009, 47% of 4th graders, 55% of eighth graders and 62% of 12th graders were absent from school at least once over a one month period (National Forum on Education Statistics, 2009). This estimate raises concern given that school attendance is linked to a variety of positive student academic and psychosocial outcomes. 

Recent systematic reviews suggest that extant attendance intervention approaches yield modest effects (Maynard et al., 2014; Sutphen et al., 2010).  Teasley (2004) argues that, while attendance problems clearly fall within the scope of school social work practice and school social workers are well-positioned to address attendance related problems and related risk factors, there is, to date, limited evidence of school social work-specific impact on student attendance.  Available evidence on school social work specific effects on student attendance yields mixed results (e.g., Newsome et al., 2008).  Importantly, methodological limitations constrain interpretation of findings from prior intervention research related to student attendance, in general, and school social work effects on attendance, in particular. 

The current study implements propensity scoring methods to adjust for pre-treatment differences between students who receive versus don’t receive school social work services to estimate effects on total number of student absences over a single school year.           

Methods:

Study Context: This observational study draws on student-level data from all elementary and middle schools in a large urban district enrolled during the 2012-13 school year.  The district is composed of predominantly minority student body and 60% of students receive free/ and or reduced lunch.  District-wide student-level educational records were linked with detailed student-level service records documenting the frequency and type of school social work contacts.  This near-census sample included approximately 19,000 student records.

Variables:  The key dependent variables in the study include total absences and total tardies accumulated over the 2012-2013 school year.  There were four key independent variables designating receipt of school social work specific services (versus not), including whether a student received any school social work service as well as the primary type of service received (i.e., direct school social work services [which reflected receipt of case management and/or counseling], participation in a group, or being the focus of a school meeting)     

To facilitate propensity scoring matching, the following pre-treatment covariates were included:  student age, dichotomous indicators reflecting student ethno-racial background, whether the student was male (versus female), whether the student received free and/or reduced lunch, whether the student was an English language learner, whether the student participated in special education-related programming, as well as indicators for school attended.  Crucially, student attendance and tardies accumulated in the prior school year (2011-1012) were included.

Results:  Results from propensity-matched samples indicate that students who received direct school social work services, on average, were absent five fewer days than well-matched students who did not receive these services.

Conclusions and Implications:

Assuming results generalize to other urban districts, findings suggest that intense and direct school social work services show promise in promoting attendance among K-8 student populations.