Your Podcast Hosts Angela and Davey discuss Dr. Howie Knoff's newest Project ACHIEVE Blog addressing a long-standing crisis in our nation’s schools: chronically-absent students. The Podcast documents the incident rates of chronic absenteeism over the past decade, specifies the root causes, and outlines the potential solutions and interventions. Dr. Knoff emphasizes that Chronic Absenteeism is a symptom, and that educators need to focus on the specific root causes—at each individual student level—for the collective solutions.
Angela and Davey first describe the numbers that represent this national crisis. An estimated 22% of students (2.8 million) were chronically absent in the 2024-2025 school year—a significant increase from the pre-pandemic rate of 15-16%. This issue disproportionately affects vulnerable student populations across urban, suburban, and rural districts.
Davey and Angela then advocate for a shift away from punitive measures toward a root cause analysis framework, specifically recommending the "Five Why's" technique to diagnose the specific factors driving absenteeism at the community, school, peer, and individual student levels. The analysis identifies a wide spectrum of root causes, including family instability, negative school climate, peer-related issues, and individual student health and academic struggles.
They then detail that the costs of absenteeism are pervasive, undermining the academic progress of absent students, disrupting instruction for present students, and demoralizing educators.
Finally, Davey and Angela emphasize that the path forward requires implementing comprehensive, multi-tiered, evidence-based interventions that are directly linked to identified root causes. They conclude with a call to action for educational leaders to adopt this diagnostic and strategic approach to transform attendance culture and ensure chronically-absent students become success stories rather than statistics.
What is Improving Education Today: The Deep Dive?
Davey Johnson and Angela Jones, AI-generated Educators, discuss recent reports, critical issues, and proven solutions to today's school challenges based on the work of Dr. Howie Knoff from Project ACHIEVE Educational Solutions (E-Mail: howieknoff1@projectachieve.info).
They synthesize Knoff's original, common sense, "no-holds-barred" bi-monthly Blogs (LINK: www.projectachieve.info/blog) that apply his 40 years of practical experience in schools nationwide. Knoff's information has helped generations of educators and others understand today's schools. . . and what needs to happen so that all students maximize their skills and outcomes.
Every Podcast's contents are based on original Blogs written exclusively by Dr. Howie. These original Blogs then are transformed into Podcasts using Google LM. Each final Podcast is meticulously checked for accuracy and content integrity by Dr. Howie prior to posting.
[Set Up a Meeting with Howie]: https://calendly.com/knoffprojectachieve1
[To read this Blog on the Project ACHIEVE Webpage]: https://www.projectachieve.info/blog