Key points:
- Chronic absenteeism remains a stubborn challenge for educators nationwide
- Chronic absenteeism threatens to derail K-12 education
- Fighting chronic absenteeism with data-driven insights–and a little fun, too
- For more news on absenteeism, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership hub
Since the global pandemic shut down schools and forced students to learn remotely, chronic absenteeism has more than doubled in schools nationwide. Our elementary school is no exception–we were recently dealing with a situation where 20 of our students were chronically absent.
This surge in absenteeism presents major challenges for educators striving to maintain instructional momentum and ensure equitable learning opportunities. The disruption to consistent in-person engagement has not only impacted academic progress but also strained the social and emotional well-being of many young learners within our school community.
For me, attendance is the number one focus. You can’t learn if you’re not here. With the goal of reducing chronic absenteeism, we recognized that family engagement was key to driving attendance and academic success. However, we were skeptical that one solution could work for all of New Brighton’s K-5 teachers and students.
Using engagement to ignite attendance
We’d already built a strong foundation for engagement and attendance that started with the students. I believe in connecting with the kids first at school by creating a relationship with them, being around in the cafeteria, and greeting them as they come in the building. Then, when you go out in the community and a child identifies you, their parents are already won over.
We needed something to pull everybody together for positive behavior, attendance, and more, and that’s where our communication platform for districts, teachers, parents, and students came in. With the platform as our foundation, we took these four steps to start rewarding good attendance and improving family engagement.
1. Make students feel like VIPs. Our Social Worker, Tacey Mannarino, developed a plan to boost attendance and make kids feel like VIPs. She introduced regular in-person celebrations and rewards for students with good attendance, including:
- Monthly donuts with me for one student from each grade.
- Monthly pizza delivery by me to the family of one student from each building.
- An annual ice cream party for all students with less than five absences.
Mrs. Mannarino also introduced classwide incentives, like extra recess for the classroom with the best overall attendance.
2. Find a program to support your efforts. We knew we needed a unified way to promote these events and opportunities. During the search for that solution, I heard about ClassDojo from both teachers and parents. Our teachers Lisa Patterson and Holly Ziegler both used the platform with their second-grade classroom communities and told me how it had been a gamechanger for engaging parents and reinforcing positive student behavior. So, we embraced the platform–which includes features like behavior tracking, messaging, and sharing classroom moments–schoolwide.
3. Provide districtwide updates. Today, while teachers use class stories to engage families, I also use school stories to provide whole-community updates and attendance incentives. We’ve also introduced points to reinforce shared values, signups to better manage events, and automatic reminders to keep families in the loop and engaged. When a consistent mode of communication is used, I can send announcements and messages out with confidence that 90 percent of my families are going to see it. Since adopting these initiatives, we’ve seen around a 40 percent drop in chronic absenteeism.
4. Host your own attendance awards. Here’s how we recognize attendance the New Brighton way:
Once a month…
- Donuts with [SCHOOL LEADER] for one student per grade
- Pizza delivered by [SCHOOL LEADER] for one student per building
At the end of the school year…
- Ice Cream Party for all students with less than five absences
The good news is that attendance incentives don’t need to bust your budget. Consider swapping in extra recess or a certificate as needed.
Tips for tackling truancy
Beyond these recommendations, fostering a palpable sense of community ownership in attendance is crucial. Imagine local businesses proudly displaying student artwork celebrating perfect attendance, or community leaders volunteering time to read to classes with exceptional attendance rates.
Here are some additional tips for success from Attendance Works, a nonprofit that partners with schools, districts, and states to reduce chronic absences:
- Consider awards for shorter periods of time so that children and families can feel successful sooner
- Reward “behavior,” not people
- Include students or families when choosing possible recognition so they feel it is meaningful and positive
- Recognize families, not just students, especially in elementary school and preschool
- Offer incentives (e.g., gas cards, grocery cards, food baskets) that help to address common barriers to getting to school
- Build in recognition for teachers and staff who successfully motivate students to show up and engage families
The results are in
We credit the inspirational boost in attendance to the combination of in-person rewards and using our communications platform to promote them. For example, we have one student who would sometimes miss the bus, and today he calls our school to ask for a ride.
One of our teachers has also reported a significant drop in referrals of parents/guardians to the magistrate court for failure to comply with attendance laws. These are real “wins” in an era where schools across the board are grappling with high absenteeism rates and looking for real solutions to the problem.