THRIVEcast - Focused on Flint Kids Thriving
Jun 9, 2026 · 19 min · 10 segments
Attendance is often viewed as a concern for older students, but the habits that support lifelong success begin much earlier. In this episode of THRIVEcast, education leaders explore the connection…
Anne-Marie FariaGuest
Dawn HibbardHostNo entities detected.
So, you know, I think it's very easy for people to understand how missing school in elementary school or middle or high school matters, right? Students are going to miss lessons, they'll miss content, and start to feel behind.
But it is just as important for us to work with families to have our babies, our toddlers, and our preschool students attend preschool consistently.
So, so why does it matter? Well, we know that being in school every day on time puts students of all ages on the road to success, and that begins as early as early childhood education.
How we begin is how we continue, right? So it sets a very strong foundation for the future.
Um, and then there's also a really big body of research that's begun to look at the ways in which absenteeism or chronic absence, uh, which is missing at least 10% of the school year, um, or one or two days a month, is related to different kinds of outcomes.
So when we look at it in early childhood education, we know that those early attendance habits affect both later attendance and school success.
So let's talk a little bit about what it means for school success, right? So if a child is absent and they're missing one or two days a month, we know that that child is going to have lower kindergarten readiness scores ...
Lower kindergarten readiness scores, um, as well as poor reading and math skills in grade three, and attendance in early childhood can even affect the likelihood of graduating high school on time.
And so children who establish good attendance habits early on are much more likely to have higher test scores throughout elementary school and are better positioned to reduce any socioeconomic achievement gaps that might exist.
So there's a lot of research that's been conducted that documents this link between coming to school consistently, even when you're really young, and your learning outcomes.
But that's only part of the story, because we also know that being absent can also affect kind of your school habits throughout your career.
So if you have a high absentee rate in early childhood, you are also likely to have a higher absentee rate in later grades, which, as I mentioned a little earlier, it makes it really hard to get in the habit of showing up, and we know that showing up is really crucial to success in school, but also in the workplace, right? Um, and so these are the habits that we want to help grow and build with our youngest learners in early childhood education.
So, you know, I think it's very easy for people to understand how missing school in elementary school or middle or high school matters, right? Students are going to miss lessons, they'll miss content, and start to feel behind.
But it is just as important for us to work with families to have our babies, our toddlers, and our preschool students attend preschool consistently.
So, so why does it matter? Well, we know that being in school every day on time puts students of all ages on the road to success, and that begins as early as early childhood education.
How we begin is how we continue, right? So it sets a very strong foundation for the future.
Um, and then there's also a really big body of research that's begun to look at the ways in which absenteeism or chronic absence, uh, which is missing at least 10% of the school year, um, or one or two days a month, is related to different kinds of outcomes.
So when we look at it in early childhood education, we know that those early attendance habits affect both later attendance and school success.
So let's talk a little bit about what it means for school success, right? So if a child is absent and they're missing one or two days a month, we know that that child is going to have lower kindergarten readiness scores ...
Lower kindergarten readiness scores, um, as well as poor reading and math skills in grade three, and attendance in early childhood can even affect the likelihood of graduating high school on time.
And so children who establish good attendance habits early on are much more likely to have higher test scores throughout elementary school and are better positioned to reduce any socioeconomic achievement gaps that might exist.
So there's a lot of research that's been conducted that documents this link between coming to school consistently, even when you're really young, and your learning outcomes.
But that's only part of the story, because we also know that being absent can also affect kind of your school habits throughout your career.
So if you have a high absentee rate in early childhood, you are also likely to have a higher absentee rate in later grades, which, as I mentioned a little earlier, it makes it really hard to get in the habit of showing up, and we know that showing up is really crucial to success in school, but also in the workplace, right? Um, and so these are the habits that we want to help grow and build with our youngest learners in early childhood education.
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