How one district’s playbook can help you improve student attendance

Last month, leaders from Clark County School District (CCSD) in Nevada—the fifth largest in the country—led a session at AASA’s National Conference on Education on how they’ve increased family engagement to address a host of student challenges, such as mental health.

The presentation was memorable for a number of reasons, not least of which was the passion and commitment evident in the efforts made by district leaders. CCSD leaders took steps to improve engagement by having the superintendent conduct parent home visits; created an entire support center dedicated to meeting the needs of undocumented families; and offered free courses to teach parents how to be more effective in raising children, among other supports.

The research is clear about the importance of parents in directly shaping their children’s educational outcomes, which is why Clark County School District has invested so heavily in parent engagement. In our research, EAB found that parent engagement is also critical for another reason that is top of mind for Superintendents across the country—combatting chronic absenteeism. In fact, changing parent mindsets and behaviors around attendance by communicating the cost of absence and importance of daily attendance is one of the key ways our research team found schools can combat chronic absenteeism.

To implement the best practices that emerged from EAB’s research, we designed a Collaborative for district leaders, Hardwiring Effective Parent Communications to Improve Attendance. This opportunity allows district leaders to join a network of peers to receive expert EAB guidance, tools, templates, and protected work time to build an action plan for successfully improving attendance through targeted parent communication.

Below, learn how three key lessons on successfully engaging parents from Clark County School District can help you address chronic absenteeism, and how EAB’s Collaborative can help.

Lesson 1: Prioritize being warm and welcoming, rather than emphasizing rules and regulations.

CCSD leaders talked about visiting schools where signage emphasized to visitors the need to comply with rules, rather than welcoming visitors into the school as an engaging place for families. The district took steps to change this, focusing on shifting to a warm and inviting message across schools to ensure that parents feel like they belong.

Lesson 2: As with student instruction, parent engagement needs to be differentiated to meet each family’s specific context and needs.

Just as every student has instructional needs to meet learning goals, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work for families either. CCSD provides a variety of resources to families, including support in multiple languages and additional support for those who need it.

Lesson 3: Always assume positive intent when working with families.

Clark County School District leaders shared an anecdote about a parent who was unresponsive to a counselor’s repeated requests to come to the school. When the superintendent and counselor visited the parent’s home, they realized he was wheelchair-bound and lived in a building with no elevator. This story is a reminder about the importance of not making negative assumptions about families’ behaviors or motivations, but instead focusing on ways to understand their specific needs to realize mutual goals for their students.

As CCSD has shown, improving family engagement can help school leaders improve outcomes for students across a host of issues. We developed our Collaborative to Improve Attendance specifically to help district leaders use similar approaches to parental engagement to improve attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism in their schools.