Supporting Chronically Absent Students Resource Center
Essential practices for reducing chronic absenteeism at scale
Chronic absenteeism rates have doubled since before the pandemic, leading to a cascade of consequences that impact student success, employee morale, and district budgets. Research shows that three emerging root causes for chronic absenteeism have largely gone unaddressed: more parents today undervalue in-person attendance, students have lost the motivation to attend school since the pandemic, and teachers are unsure of their role in combatting absenteeism at large. Despite chronic absenteeism being a decades-old issue in public education, superintendents are still searching for sustainable answers.
To address these three problems and support chronically absent students in returning to school, districts must meet three conditions: parents know why and when to bring their students to school, students can and want to come to school, and teachers understand and embrace their influence over student attendance.
Click through each condition below to explore EAB’s suite of tools and best practices for achieving them.
Three essential conditions to reduce chronic absenteeism at scale
Condition 1: Parents know why and when to bring their students to school
Practice #1: Text parent options for support before the 5-day absence letter goes home
Traditional 5-day or 10-day absence letters often include punitive, formal language that pushes parents farther away. Districts should buffer these state-mandated letters by creating an opportunity for empathy and action before the letters go out—for example, through a short, automated text message that offers options for parent support based on students’ most common reasons for chronic absence.
Practice #2: Nudge parents with an attendance policy checklist that embeds the cost of absence
Since the pandemic, more parents are uncertain of whether to send their children to school if they’re showing mild symptoms. Help make parents’ attendance decisions as straightforward and clear as possible with an attendance policy “nudge.” These visually appealing, simple-to-understand checklists can be shared with parents once a month in a newsletter or other communication. Each nudge has a different cost of absence embedded into its messaging to help build a repeated, consistent district narrative about the costs of missing too much school.
Condition 2: Students can and want to come to school
Practice #3: Audit your district's grading policies to ensure all students have the opportunity to feel successful in the classroom
Today, 3 out of 4 teenagers say schoolwork makes them feel anxious or depressed. To boost student motivation in the classroom and improve academic culture in your district, look to equitable grading—a highly effective yet underutilized strategy that is proven to minimize grading biases and boost student academic confidence. In this practice, districts separate non-academic performance from final course grades so that official GPAs only reflect learning mastery. Nearly 40% of traditional grades consist of non-academic measures such as participation, on-time homework submission, or behavior—often influenced by personal biases.
By shifting towards equitable grading policies, district leaders can minimize the chances of inadvertently penalizing students for out-of-school factors that interfere with their learning (i.e. mental health). To help districts adopt equitable grading practices, EAB designed an audit to benchmark your district’s grading methods against best practices for grading used by exemplar equity-focused districts.
Practice #4: Identify and engage disconnected students with relationship mapping
Research shows a lack of a meaningful connection to school can lead to chronic absenteeism, academic struggles, and dropping out of school. Fortunately, that connection can be as simple as having an adult who knows a student and cares about his or her well-being.
Administrators at Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada, realized that meaningful adult-student connections are too important to be left to chance. As part of a broader social-emotional learning campaign, the district implemented a simple exercise to map out the relationships between adults and students. This exercise serves as a powerful strategy to identify and engage students who may otherwise pass through school unnoticed.
EAB created a step-by-step guide to help schools conduct their own relationship mapping exercise and identify students who may be disconnected and disengaged from school. The toolkit also suggests a range of strategies for adults at school to better engage with students who may be at risk for behaviors like chronic absenteeism.
Practice #5: Help students connect academic courses to future career aspirations
Pre-pandemic, it was already hard for students to see the connection between school and learning. However, many of you are telling us this is an even bigger challenge than before. Students are feeling like school is further from what they want to do. They’re not seeing that clear connection between classes today and their aspirations for the future. As a result, students aren’t seeing the value or the relevancy of school and it is affecting their desire to show up.
Practice #6: Scale access to group therapy and mental health support
70% of schools report a growth in students requiring intensive mental health support since 2020. Even before the pandemic, the high number of students needing 1:1 intervention led to unmanageable caseloads for school support staff. Studies have proven that group-based therapeutic interventions—such as Group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—are highly effective practices that can enable schools to meet the needs of a greater number of students. However, Group CBT is rarely utilized in schools and is viewed as less effective than 1:1 therapy, despite clear evidence that it is effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression in many students.
By embracing group therapeutics, schools can provide a far greater number of students with access to the support they need, while reducing strain on counselors and future costs for the district. EAB compiled a playbook to help districts start this process on their own.
Condition 3: Teachers understand and embrace their influence over student attendance
Practice #7: Clarify the roles that all school staff play in combatting absenteeism
Combatting absenteeism isn’t a one-person task, and most districts expect all staff to play a role—yet most districts provide little or no guidance on why, when, or how different staff should play their part. Districts without clearly defined roles see more students with severe absences (20+ days a school year) and fail to provide interventions in time to prevent chronic absences. To jumpstart this practice in your district, EAB created a template of simple staff checklists to pass on to school leaders that will clarify and reinforce the roles all staff should play in combatting absenteeism.
Practice #8: Help teachers become experts on discussing absenteeism with parents
Parents trust teachers more than administrators when communicating about student absences, and teachers invested in improving attendance are twice as likely to see their students graduate. Nevertheless, fewer than half of parents report hearing from teachers about student absences. This is because teachers largely feel underprepared to have these critical conversations with parents, and districts need to provide them with the right tools and capacity to fulfill this important role.
To help teachers become experts on discussing absenteeism with parents, EAB created a guide of best-practice language that districts can hand off to teachers. Help teachers play a stronger role in combatting absenteeism by sharing this guide with anyone expected to contact the parents and guardians of absent students.
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