Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
Teens investigated by child protective services miss more school, excused and unexcused alike
Ohio State researchers followed 3,334 adolescents from birth to age 15 and found an attendance gap for students with child protective services contact that school connectedness helps explain but leaves in place.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Ohio State researchers reported in Children and Youth Services Review that adolescents with child protective services contact were absent more often than their peers, for both excused and unexcused reasons.
- The analysis drew on the Future of Families Child Wellbeing Study, which tracked 3,334 adolescents across 20 urban cities from birth through age 15, comparing those with CPS contact by 15 to those without.
- Teachers were 14 percentage points more likely to contact these students' families about attendance problems than to contact the families of classmates.
- The same students reported feeling less connected to their schools than their classmates did.
- Almost 3 million children were the subject of a CPS investigation in 2024.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint A district funding connectedness work in order to close this particular gap should expect both groups to improve by similar amounts, leaving the difference between them in place.
- decision Attendance-triggered outreach already reaches these families more often, and Ansari said some respond to surveillance by missing more school, so districts have to decide where escalation helps and where it pushes families further away.
- exposure With more than a third of US children projected to be affected by a CPS investigation before 18, and more than half of Black children, this subgroup is large enough to move a district's chronic-absence number on its own.
The study ran two tests on school connectedness, and they answer different questions. Connectedness accounted for part of the absence difference between students with child protective services contact and their classmates, and it worked the same way for that group as for everyone else [6]. The first result puts connectedness on the path between CPS contact and missed school. The second says a universal connectedness push would do as much for the rest of the school as it does for this group. Ansari said connectedness is worth schools' attention for a plain reason: "This is important because school connectedness is malleable and modifiable." [16] Earlier work has linked it to positive teacher relationships, inclusive school climates and extracurricular activities [11].
Inside the CPS-contact group, Ansari described two family responses that point in opposite directions. Some disengage and the children miss even more school; others become more diligent about getting them there every day [8]. Average the two together and the first response gets understated. The only magnitude the report gives is the 14-point difference in teacher contact about attendance [c3, c18].
That number is about adults. It counts how often teachers reached out to families. That is a response to absence and also a staffing decision, so the 14 points are not a measure of days missed [3]. The gap in absences itself covered excused as well as unexcused days [1]. Truancy enforcement keys on the unexcused kind.
The comparison sets adolescents who had contact by age 15 against those who had not, inside a cohort followed from birth across 20 urban cities [4]. Nobody assigned the contact. That design leaves the effect of an investigation tangled with the conditions that prompted it, and Ansari said contact with CPS can itself be a source of adversity [8].
The national baseline underneath all of this moved. In 2018-19, 15% of K-12 students were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least a tenth of instructional time [12]. The rate reached 28% in 2021-22 and stood at 24% in 2024 [13], nine percentage points above the 2018-19 figure and about 1.6 times that rate [17].
"Surprisingly, in the attendance or absenteeism literature, there's been very little intersection with kids or families who have had contact with CPS," said Ansari, an associate professor of human development and family science at Ohio State and a faculty associate at the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy [c14, c2]. He also said: "School connectedness is one piece of the puzzle, but it ultimately can't be the only answer to the adversity these kids face." [15]
What to watch
- The paper in Children and Youth Services Review would show the size of the absence gap and whether excused and unexcused days differ in magnitude.
- A study that separates families who disengage after a CPS investigation from those who become more diligent would tell schools which subgroup the average hides.
- Replication outside the 20-city urban birth cohort, in suburban and rural districts, would test whether the gap holds.