Risk and Protective Factors for School Absence Among Youth with Minoritized Social Identities

Youth with marginalized racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identities experience bias and stigma in schools that relate to school absences, disengagement, and pushout and may impact learning and achievement over time. Using data from 9th-12th graders who participated in the 2019 Minnesota Student Survey (N = 80,456) and the 2017–2019 California Healthy Kids Survey (N = 512,067), we used Exhaustive Chi-Square Automatic Interaction Detection to explore how experiences of bias-based bullying and teacher caring were related to general absences, safety-related absences, and grades among youth with diverse races, ethnicities, sexual and gender identities. Both datasets demonstrated important heterogeneity in the school experiences of youth with marginalized identities, particularly in the context of bias-based bullying victimization and low teacher caring. Structural change in schools should be guided by the experiences of youth with marginalized identities to improve school attendance, safety, and achievement.