Countering Racialized Logics About Black Students and School Attendance

Deficit narratives about Blackness are embedded in research, discourse, and policies as policymakers and researchers theorize about differences in schooling outcomes between Black students and their peers. We offer a counterstory to prevailing conceptualizations of student absenteeism by arguing that they center racialized and deficit narratives about Blackness in explaining why students miss school and noting how they ignore the influence of systemic factors. Studying attendance rates in Georgia, we show that Black students miss school at comparatively lower rates than their peers after accounting for days missed because of suspensions and expulsions. We postulate that Black families’ historical and contemporary school involvement strategies contextualize Black students’ lower discipline-adjusted absenteeism rates and counter the deficit narratives about their parental involvement.