DOI: 10.3886/e151541
title: Data on School Policies Defining Excused and Unexcused Absences, US School Districts, 2019

description: Two datasets were used for a two-part study explored whether discrimination encoded into U.S. school absenteeism policies leads to racially minoritized students being overrepresented in the juvenile court system. First, we examined excused and unexcused absenteeism policies in a nationally representative school district sample (n = 97). This dataset contains qualitative text drawn from the websites, parent handbooks, and/or district policies of 97 school districts that were randomly sampled from all public districts with 7,000-40,000 students listed in the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 2018 Common Core of Data.<br>In the same paper in which we present the findings from the policy dataset we analyzed data from all 7th to 10th grade students from three public school districts in Ramsey County, Minnesota. All students who attended any of the districts between 2006 and 2015 and had daily absenteeism data available were included. Unexcused absenteeism data for the 2006 and 2007 academic years were missing for the second-ring suburban district, making that district’s follow-up period 2 years shorter. We obtained longitudinal administrative data on the students from four sources. Education data came from the state’s department of education. Data on juvenile court petitions for unexcused absenteeism were provided by the county attorney’s office, and longitudinal data on child welfare involvement were provided by the state’s department of human services. Daily absenteeism data (containing the date of each absence and whether it was excused or unexcused) were provided by the school districts. This data set consisted of 179,237 person-years from 75,276 individual 7th- to 10th-grade students.<br><br>Due to data security agreements, the linked administrative data cannot be shared. However, in accordance with our agreement with AERA, we provide the Stata files used to create the variables and conduct the analysis for the study published in AERA Open.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
description: For Part 1, no weights exist for the textual data of absenteeism policies.<br>For Part 2, we created probability weights that force the same racial and ethnic distribution within each school district. Specifically, we assigned to each district the overall racial and ethnic composition of all schools participating in the court diversion program. Separate weights were developed for each racial and ethnic group in each district. In the majority-White districts, the White students were down-weighted, and the Black, Hispanic, and Asian students were up-weighted. The weights for the American Indian students remained close to 1 in all the districts. These weights can be used to minimize bias from demographic compositional effects.<br><br>
description: Response Rates: For part 1, we drew a sample of 97 districts. We collected textual policy data for all 97 districts.<br>For part 2, we included the full population of student-years for all years that the schools were able to provide reliable and valid daily absenteeism data.<br>
description: Presence of Common Scales: No commonly used scales were used to collect data for this study.<br>
description: <br>To draw the sample for Part 1, we created and used a uniform random variable to sort the medium-sized districts into a random order, and then selected the first 97 districts. The sample contained rural, suburban, and urban districts in 30 states. Only three of the districts were charter districts because few charter districts have more than 7,000<br>students. States with many medium-sized districts (California, South Carolina, and Alabama) were overrepresented relative to their share of the school-age population. States with many small districts (Ohio, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Nebraska) or few, very large districts (Hawaii and Florida) were underrepresented in terms of their share of the schoolage population. The median number of students per district was 12,979 (M = 15,063; SD = 8,150), compared with the median of 11,740 students for all 1,256 public school districts in the United States with between 7,000 and 40,000 students (M = 14,726; SD = 7,790.<br>For Part 2, we used the full population of student-years with daily absenteeism data.<br>
description: For Part 1, the universe was all U.S. public school districts with between 7,000 and 40,000 students. <br><br>For Part 2, the universe was all 7th to 10th grade students who attended three public school districts in Ramsey County, Minnesota between 2006 and 2015.<br>. Smallest Geographic Unit: School districts
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