Michael Gottfried, Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the UC Santa Barbara Gevirtz School, has recently published Absent from School: Understanding and Addressing Student Absenteeism (Harvard Education Press 2019). The book, co-edited with Ethan Hutt, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park, offers a comprehensive and timely resource for educators and policy makers seeking to understand the scope, impact, and causes of chronic student absenteeism.
The editors present a series of studies by leading researchers from a variety of disciplines that address which students are missing school and why, what roles schools themselves play in contributing to or offsetting patterns of absenteeism, and ways to assess student attendance for purposes of school accountability. The contributors examine school-based initiatives that focus on a range of issues, including transportation, student health, discipline policies, and protections for immigrant students, as well as interventions intended to improve student attendance.
“Absent from School provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of a critical factor influencing student success: absenteeism,” writes Russell W. Rumberger, author of Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out of High School and What Can Be Done About It. “The multidisciplinary team of scholars provide an in-depth analysis of the many facets of this issue, from the complexity of measuring absenteeism to the role that students, families, and schools play in contributing to and addressing the problem.”
Dr. Gottfried’s research focuses on the economics of education and education policy. Using the analytic tools from these disciplines, he has examined issues pertaining to peer effects, classroom context, and STEM. His research extends across the K-16 pipeline. Dr. Gottfried has published numerous articles in these areas, with multiple publications in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record, American Journal of Education, Journal of Educational Research, and Elementary School Journal, among others. He is/has been the Principal Investigator on multiple funded research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health (NICHD), American Educational Research Association, and the Haynes Foundation. He has won multiple scholarly awards for his research, including the Outstanding Publication in Methodology Award in both 2010 and in 2012 given by AERA Division H and the Highest Reviewed Paper Award in 2013 given by AERA SIG: School Effectiveness and School Improvement.