With so many states (36 plus the District of Columbia) now using chronic absenteeism as an accountability metric as part of their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), many might wonder how ESSA funding mechanisms can be used to help improve attendance.

There are several pots of money in ESSA that states can tap, including funds targeted at promoting academic success for disadvantaged students. Other funds can go towards engaging parents and families or improving “school conditions for student learning.”

FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University,lays out some of the options in a blog post:

• Title I provides more than $15 billion to support schools educating low-income students and school improvement efforts. Since low-income students are both more likely to be chronically absent and more likely to suffer academically because of those missed days, improving attendance becomes an important strategy.

Source: ESSA Funds Can Be Used to Reduce Chronic Absence – Attendance Works

The recent shift in federal education policy prompted by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has helped raise the stakes for schools around student absences. Under ESSA, at least 37 states are now looking at school-level chronic absence rates as their non-academic indicator in their ESSA plans. The implications of this are important. Previous policies assumed that parents were primarily responsible for attendance and answerable to absences. Now in many states, state policy indicates that absenteeism is an issue that schools have to address.

What, then, are schools to do in order to move the needle on student attendance? As researchers work toward understanding the impact of different interventions and practices, on-the-ground experiences in schools highlight the pervasive use of incentives from pre-kindergarten to grade 12. Schools have employed a wide range of incentives to improve attendance, with varied levels of success, according to senior researchers Rekha Balu at MDRC and Stacy Ehrlich at NORC at the University of Chicago.

In their article published February 2018 in JASPER, Making Sense out of Incentives: A Framework for Considering the Design, Use, and Implementation of Incentives to Improve Attendance, Balu and Ehrlich provide a framework to help school staff think about how—and when—to use incentives to improve student attendance. A number of other earlier research studies show the negative impact chronic absence has on student academic achievement.

Source: What Makes an Attendance Incentive Program Successful? – Attendance Works

By Kevin Kelly

Chronic absenteeism, usually defined as missing 10 percent or more of the days in a school year, is a widespread challenge that can lead to long-term problems. Data from the Office of Civil Rights suggest that 51 percent of Pennsylvania schools have 10 percent or more of their students chronically absent. Students who are chronically absent miss out on learning and are more prone to dropping out than their peers who attend school regularly.

The School Support and Improvement Research Alliance at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory (REL MA) recently held a workshop, developed in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), to provide information to educators about chronic absenteeism: what it is, how to measure it, and what research says about addressing it. The workshop met an important informational need in Pennsylvania, as the state will use chronic absenteeism as a measure of school quality and student success as a part of its approved Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Consolidated State Plan.

Source: At School, on Time, and Every Day: What Research Tells Us About Reducing Chronic Absenteeism

We are excited to join with our national partners to launch Attendance Awareness Campaign 2018! America’s Promise Alliance, Attendance Works, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, Everyone Graduates Center, Get Schooled, Healthy Schools Campaign, the Institute for Educational Leadership, Mentor, Points of Light and United Way Worldwide invite you to join us for the sixth year of the Attendance Awareness Campaign, which designates September as Attendance Awareness Month.

This year we encourage everyone to remember that community-wide engagement matters for attendance. Under this year’s theme, Team Up for Attendance! we are emphasizing the role everyone, from educators to health professionals, to local agency and business partners can play in creating a welcoming and engaging school environment that motivates students and families to come to school every day.

Our four-part webinar series will focus on key partners and the important role they can play in addressing chronic absence. During our first webinar on March 28, Team Up for Attendance: Leadership Matters, we officially launch the campaign and pass along how to get involved!

Source: March 28 Webinar Launches Attendance Awareness Campaign 2018! – Attendance Works

By Nico Savidge

As the school day ends at Peyton Elementary School in Stockton, Christina Del Prato calls a mother whose daughter was absent 62 times last year. The girl has missed 21 days through the first half of this year, including the past two days.

Del Prato, an attendance case manager, is a key player in an effort being waged across the state to focus not just on students with unexcused absences but on those who are chronically absent, meaning they have missed at least 10 percent of school days for any reason.

California collected and released data on chronic absenteeism from schools for the first time last year as part of its new accountability system. A school’s chronic absenteeism rate could be included as soon as this fall on the districts’ dashboard, which shows how students are doing on multiple measures.

Source: California’s largest districts address chronic absenteeism with focus on why students miss school | EdSource

A new survey by researchers shows that secondary students don’t really know how many days they miss from school each year, or how their absence rate compares with their peers. When asked why they missed school, the students in grades 6-12 named health, transportation and personal stress-related issues as the top three reasons they don’t come to class.

The survey, Reasons for Chronic Absenteeism Among Secondary Students, by Amber Humm Brundage and Jose Castillo at the University of South Florida, points out that students, their families, educators and communities don’t fully understand how many absences can put a student at risk academically. In the fall of 2016, the team surveyed 5,790 chronically absent secondary students—missed 10 percent or more of days during 2015-16 school year—from eight states and 91 schools.

“It is nearly impossible for critical stakeholders (parents, students, school, community, state) to fix a problem if they do not know it exists!” said Brundage. “Our survey shows that engaging in clear and consistent messaging for the purposes of building awareness of typical and acceptable levels of absences, as well as current numbers of absences, is still very much needed in schools across the country,” she added.

Source: Why are Secondary Students Missing so Much School? – Attendance Works Attendance Works

Educators in states across the country are seeing that current immigration policy changes are leading to increased chronic absence. As a way to reassure parents and students that school is a safe place for learning, states, districts and schools have posted resources as a way to encourage immigrant students to continue getting to school every day. We’ve complied a few for you.

Resources range from letters sent to school communities and families reaffirming anti-discrimination polices, to toolkits with tips for dealing with anxious students, to videos for parents on how to communicate with their young children on topics that are particularly difficult to tackle, such as bullying. Watch this video, in Spanish with English subtitles, from Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors.

Many districts offer fact sheets with answers to questions such as, ‘What impact does undocumented immigration status have on my child’s education?’ and ‘If I am a parent or guardian and I am worried about being detained while my child is at school, what should I do?’

Source: Educators respond to immigration policies – Attendance Works Attendance Works