Chronic absenteeism can feel like a problem that’s way too big for district leaders to fight effectively, but building strong, trusting, and collaborative relationships with kids and their families can go a long way, said panelists in a recent webinar.
High rates of student absences have been top of mind for educators in recent years as school and district leaders race to drive up attendance, a factor that directly influences how much students can learn.
More than 1 in 4 students nationwide were chronically absent—missing at least 10 percent of school days—during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, according to an analysis of federal data by the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University and the organization Attendance Works. Those figures represented a marked increase over pre-pandemic levels.
Chronic absences have profound impacts on students who miss classes, hurting their grades, how connected they feel to their peers and school community, and their chances of completing high school.
Frequent absences by a large segment of the student body also hurt students who attend regularly.
When chronic absences reach high levels, the classroom churn makes it harder for teachers to set classroom norms and teach, and harder for students to learn even when they show up every day. Chronic absenteeism can also be self-perpetuating, as research has shown that student absences can make peers more likely to miss school. Absences have also contributed to national declines in math and reading in recent years.
During a recent EdWeek webinar, district leaders and researchers discussed the absenteeism problem that they say is affecting schools around the world, and the practical ways in which districts can work to combat it and promote attendance, from designating people within schools that families can reach out to about problems affecting students’ attendance to more clearly communicating expectations to families.
Schools need to better understand why their students are absent
Research shows that when students feel connected to the adults in their schools and their peers, and are connected through participation in clubs and extracurriculars, they’re more likely to come to school on a regular basis.
The work to design engaging programs and build relationships must be intentional—just existing in the same spaces isn’t enough to forge those meaningful bonds, said Sharon Bradley, the director of student, family, and community services in Plano, Texas, and a 2024 Education Week Leaders to Learn From honoree.
“Honestly, I thought that if we just spend a semester or a whole year in a classroom, we would immediately or automatically build positive relationships,” Bradley said. “That’s not the case. We have to focus on what we can do to create spaces that kids are excited to come to school every single day, rather than coming to a place where they feel like they have to be.”
To help drive down absences, school and district leaders must first understand the reasons their students are missing class, said Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, the co-founder of the International Network for School Attendance, an organization that works with school districts to improve attendance.
It’s important to distinguish between different types of absences when exploring how to help families.
Sometimes, students are absent because their parents simply can’t manage their work and other obligations and get their kids to school. Sometimes, students miss school to go on college visits. Sometimes, it’s because a student is anxious and school-avoidant, or because they have to work to support their family.
“These differences have consistently not been effectively tracked in school systems, and so for attendance officers or counselors or teachers, they are not quite sure how to offer that support to parents,” Gentle-Genitty said. “We are quick to jump on a definition [of absenteeism] or a framing where we think, we must solve it by legislation, not recognizing the care and support that’s needed to understand the student and what they’re going through.”
Help parents understand the school’s attendance goals
School district leaders could also do a better job of communicating to parents both why attending school consistently matters, and the threshold at which missing days becomes problematic, the panelists said.
Families tend to overestimate their children’s attendance because they don’t track it as closely as schools do, said Lesleigh Dye, leader of the Ontario North East school system in Canada. Consistently sharing students’ actual numbers of absences with their families can go a long way, she said.
It’s also important that parents understand schools’ attendance goals, Bradley added.
Her district strives for an average attendance rate of 96 percent or higher. But when she talks with parents and says their child’s attendance rate is, say, 80 percent, they don’t understand that’s not good enough because they don’t know the school’s goal.
“They’re like, ‘What’s the problem? An 80 is a B.’ But, of course, we at the school know attendance rates in the 80s are not good at all,” Bradley said. “So, being able to communicate those things in very clear terms and explain if a kid missed two days a month every month from kindergarten to high school, they can literally miss over a year’s time of instruction, which can result in being behind in reading and math, and things like that.”
Not only that, Gentle-Genitty said, but on days when students aren’t in school, they don’t have access to the myriad other supports schools offer, from mental health services to meals to the school nurse.
Students and families need to feel safe in school
One often-overlooked factor that contributes to absenteeism is how safe students feel at school, both physically and emotionally.
To address those safety concerns, Dye said schools in her district have designated an “attendance contact” whom parents may reach out to to discuss barriers to attending class. The attendance contact is a staff member who does not necessarily have to be an administrator, but is willing to answer phone calls and discuss parents’ concerns. So, the parent of a child who felt upset or bullied the day before can call and discuss the problem, and the attendance contact can offer resources to help, and escalate any ongoing problems to other staff members as needed.
To address physical and psychological safety concerns, Bradley said it’s important for school leaders to establish clear expectations about how everyone in the building should treat each other. Those expectations, which she called “agreements,” can be developed in partnership with students and their parents, and then communicated routinely throughout the year.
“If we do not create opportunities to co-create agreements, rather than just saying, ‘Hey, this is school, and this is how we’re going to do it,’ we’re not going to truly achieve the sense of safety that is needed in order to learn,” she said. “We know that when our kids feel safe, that’s when they can learn.”
