Masking Attendance: How Education Policy Distracts from the Wicked Problem(s) of Chronic Absenteeism

none - conceptual essay

US K-12 policy context

Conceptual policy essay with no data, no design, and no effect estimates. Argues that chronic absenteeism is a "wicked problem" rooted in students' life circumstances, and that conventional school-reform levers (class size, choice, leadership) distract from it. Read in full via abstract; there is no empirical content to extract.

The argument runs in the opposite direction from most advocacy writing and is worth noting for that reason - it treats absence as a downstream symptom of family and community conditions rather than as a school-controllable input, and observes that frequently absent students are the least likely to be reached by any school reform. That framing is consistent with the evidence base, but the paper supplies no evidence of its own.

Not applicable - no estimates. Its causal story (absence is driven by family and life circumstances) is the environmental half of the confound this topic is concerned with; it does not consider heritable child or parent traits.