STEP 1: Take a team approach at the district and school level. 

Research shows that a team approach works best to make traction on chronic absence. Therefore, it is essential to form effective district and school attendance teams. 

At the district-level, it is essential to create policies, procedures, and conditions for working effectively with actionable attendance data. Carefully assess what your district or charter network needs to be able to monitor and act continually on the data with a team approach. 

Consider the following questions when building a district/network team: 

• Do we have the right people at the table? Do we have diverse, cross-departmental representation and key people who can understand the various student subgroups affected by chronic absence? 
• What policies and processes need to be in place for us to succeed? 
• How do we build the capacity of current staff, principals, and other administrators to be able to understand and address the data and barriers to attendance? 
• What external partnerships might help as we unpack data, address patterns, and create a response? 

At the school-level, the team works together to organize and facilitate a school-wide attendance strategy that improves outcomes for all students.

Teams should be led by a school leader who has the authority to implement strategies determined by the team, such as the principal or assistant principal. Effective teams must have the right people for your unique school community to address chronic absence. A team might include:

• Attendance support staff
• Teachers
• Special education staff
• School counselor
• Social worker
• School nurse
• Family engagement liaison or staff
• Early education staff
• Attendance officer
• Sports coaches and other staff with key knowledge of student populations
• Relevant community partners or other agencies such as preschool or Head Start providers
• Health centers, care teams, and/or outside agency staff working with school families
• Others who know the student populations well

It may be worth considering if different existing school teams can assume responsibility for each tier of attendance support/strategies that you choose to implement. And, if this is the case, decide how the efforts can be coordinated across teams.

At both the district and school level, teams need to have the right makeup to bring a comprehensive understanding and perspectives of the diverse student demographics impacted by chronic absence. Teams should incorporate input and feedback from families and students, especially when working to understand the causes of not attending school and coming up with solutions that will work for families.

Before the team begins its work, it may be helpful to take a self-assessment to gauge your district and schools’ strengths and opportunities in reducing chronic absence.

RESOURCE

Check out Attendance Works’s best practices for district-level and school-level teams for more information on team functions, roles and responsibilities, and common pitfalls; find self-assessments; and watch this video to see an effective team in action.

STEP 2: Drive with data. Analyze the data regularly using a team approach.  

Analyzing student-level attendance data by school, grade, and subgroup allows districts and schools to differentiate student supports and work with students before they become chronically absent. Looking at data regularly allows teams to see patterns of attendance problems and proactively align supports. Create a process for regularly reviewing data that meets district needs. 

Using your district or network-level data, key questions to ask are:

1. To what extent is chronic and severe chronic absence an issue and where is it concentrated? Is it getting worse or getting better? 
2. How does satisfactory attendance and chronic and severe chronic absence vary across schools, grades, subgroups, or neighborhoods? 
3. What does the concentration and scale of chronic absence suggest about likely causes of chronic absence? 
4. What is the relationship between attendance patterns and academic performance across the district? 
5. What is the relationship between attendance patterns and behavior/disciplinary (e.g., suspensions) data across the district/network? 
6. How do we know if/when our different interventions are effective? 

School data is typically reviewed more frequently than district/network level data because it is at the school level where interventions must happen. Ideally, it is best to review the data every 10 days to see how many and which students are chronically absent and to what degree. 

Unpacking the data to understand the varying levels of attendance allows the school team to figure out how many and which students need Tier 2 (missing 10%-19% of school) and Tier 3 (missing 20% or more) supports and interventions. It also helps the team notice which student subgroups or grades are most affected. 

Looking at the data at the school-level should help answer these questions:

• Is chronic absence getting better or worse?
• Is chronic absence concentrated among particular students or student groups (race, free and reduced lunch, English language learners, chronically ill students, siblings, students from a similar neighborhood/community)?  
• Which grade levels are most affected in our school? Is it higher or lower for specific grades? 

Then, start to explore the trends:

• What might explain some of the differences among student groups or grade levels? 
• What additional information might be needed to identify barriers or to put effective strategies in place? 
• Who do we need to engage to understand the problem? 

Qualitative Data Tools 

To gather more information on why students are missing school, it is essential to use good qualitative data tools and processes at the district and school level. The best way to get qualitative data is through guided conversations with students and families. To engage students and families to understand why they are missing school:

• Conduct focus groups with students and parents/caregivers to identify barriers and ideas for solutions. A focus group is a moderated discussion with a set of questions prepared ahead of time that allows participants to share their experiences and perspectives. Focus groups work very well for older student populations in middle and high school.
• Host a cafecito or coffee with the principal for parents and caregivers. Ask families to share their strengths and challenges when it comes to attendance. A family who has had some success with attendance challenges might also be asked to speak and share what made a difference for them.
• Send out surveys to students and parents to understand their reasons for being absent. Share that their answers will be anonymous. Include questions that allow students to share about what makes them want to attend school in addition to barriers and why they cannot attend school.

STEP 3: Identify barriers to attendance and root causes based on the data analysis. 

Look back to the common root causes associated with chronic absence.

• Does what you are hearing fall into one of these big categories of misconceptions, barriers, aversion, or disengagement? 
• Identify exactly which reason within the root causes is the reason why a student or group of students are chronically absent. 
• Do you notice any trends? What are the top root causes or specific reasons for students and families at your school? 

Once you have identified the reason for not attending, the team will be able to generate ideas for possible interventions. 

AZ Spotlight

Buckeye Elementary School District

When Buckeye Elementary School District began its deep dive into addressing chronic absence, district leaders realized quickly that getting the right data can be a learning process. Issues arise when pulling student information from different systems and working out how best to synthesize it to get accurate, aligned data that drills down to the real-time student level and gives a sense of the overall attendance picture. Specifics such as being sure to count full academic year students and half academic year students can complicate the process initially. Buckeye broke down their data by school and student subgroups to start.

According to Director of Student Services Kara McDivitt, “It’s important to take the time to understand the data and report it so that it can be actionable. School teams need reports that allow them to analyze the situation and create solutions to address the issues.”

For example, by looking closely at the data, the school team realized that students who lived within a one-mile radius of school—which is considered walking distance—had attendance issues. They talked to parents and discovered that not being on a bus route had become a barrier to attendance. The district used their baseline data to set a district-wide goal to reduce chronic absence by 10%. Then, schools created attendance teams and came up with plans outlining specific goals with incentives for students to come to school. According to McDivitt, “It’s important to track the data early in the first months of school and to monitor the data regularly for each school to see progress or setbacks and make adjustments along the way without having to play catch up later on in the year.” Since the effort began, five schools in the district have successfully reduced their chronic absence rates.

McDivitt shared, “It’s important to make the work public and to celebrate every victory no matter how small, recognizing that so many people are working hard to drive the work forward.” The district reports progress regularly to the whole school community. For example, weekly district staff newsletters share which schools are in the lead for monthly school-wide attendance competitions. Winners are recognized each semester at a board meeting.

In addition to recognizing and rewarding students and schools, the district also rewards good teacher attendance knowing how important it is to set a good example for students. Teachers who have a 90% attendance rate for a semester receive a monetary bonus.

STEP 4: Develop and organize a systemic approach. 

• Build capacity, provide professional development as needed, and foster staff buy-in.
  • Ensure that staff have the appropriate skills, tools, and resources to work together to interpret data, engage in problem-solving, and adopt best practices to improve attendance.
  • Educate staff and school communities about the problem and causes of chronic absence and how taking a multi-tiered approach is key for success.
  • Emphasize that this problem is solvable with an all-hands-on-deck approach to get students in school and engaged in learning.
  • Work to establish ongoing professional peer learning communities and opportunities for staff to share challenges, what is working, and any new evidence-based practices that will be tried.

• Strategies that use ongoing positive family and community engagement, caring relationships, and working towards positive school climates are key to making this a successful effort.
  • Identify key strategies and methods that will work for your district or network to build trust and relationships.

• Plan and organize a community-wide messaging and outreach campaign for parents, students, and community partners.
  • Emphasize the positive aspects of attendance and the connection between attendance and achievement.
  • Communicate the consequences of missing just two days per month.
  • Highlight any efforts started and successes of individual schools.
  • Plan year-round messaging and strategy to maximize opportunities before the school year starts, during parent-teacher conferences, periodically throughout the year, and prior to and during summer or extended breaks.

• Identify key strategic partners who can assist with your efforts.
  • Community partners may provide student supports to address attendance barriers or provide information to inform the work.

• Use an intentional, year-round approach.
  • Events promoting and celebrating attendance can be integrated into all aspects of the school environment.
  • A district/network yearly planning calendar can assist in ensuring attendance is an integral part of school all year long. 

STEP 5: Adopt and support a multi-tiered approach to reducing chronic absence throughout the district/network.

• Ensure that school leaders have the capacity needed to develop a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) framework and create a continuum of prevention and intervention strategies at the school level.
  • The MTSS model related to chronic absence uses a range of systemic and individual approaches to meet the needs of all students.
    
• Start with implementing Tier 1 universal support and prevention for all students. Consider your approach in terms of the year-long calendar.
  • For Tier 1 supports, think about what activities make the most sense to implement in the summer, fall, winter, and spring. See this planning calendar from Attendance Works.
    
• Add Tier 2 and 3 supports for specific students or student groups based on real-time, school data. Ensure staff can align interventions to the specific root causes for students not coming to school.
  • If large numbers of students are chronically absent, likely systemic barriers are contributing to students missing school.
  • Some barriers can be student-specific and ameliorated with specific support. For example, some families may struggle with transportation. This can be solved by coming up with a reliable way to get students to school. Some students may not have enough clean clothes. In several communities, schools have figured out ways so that parents or older students can do laundry at school. Once teams have figured out the nature of the barriers, then the problem-solving begins.
    
• Consider a scaffolded response to build your capacity to address the problem.
  • A district or school may want to target specific grades or a specific student population first depending on the data and capacity at different schools.
    
• Incorporate an early warning system and routine to be able to respond to student data and intervene early with an effective cadence.
  
• Address clarity of school attendance practices and processes. Decide how and when the school attendance team or staff will act to improve attendance. Outline who should activate the process and exactly what should be done.
  • Attendance Works has a great example of a visual tool to show a school’s appropriate response for each level of absence.

AZ Spotlight

Avondale Elementary School District

Avondale Elementary School District has been tackling chronic absence since 2015 and has made significant improvements year after year. During the 2022-23 school year, there was a 20%-60% reduction in chronic absences across schools compared to the prior school year. According to Superintendent Dr. Betsy Hargrove, "After nine years, we are still learning and actively committed to the process of continuous improvement. It started by digging into our data and breaking down the large data set into grade-level information. It was eye-opening when we pulled K-1 attendance data and looked at it side-by-side with students' Dibels scores."

Drawing a connection between attendance data and achievement, the district created a tiered approach with different solutions to improve attendance that strategically addressed the reasons they discovered why students were missing school.

Hargrove continued, "We built buy-in from everyone in our district, 100% committed to a vision that will help every child succeed, knowing that we can’t do that alone and without students being here every day to learn."

Dr. Hargrove also pursued various community partnerships to help in the effort—from local community-based organizations to support families to the National Center for School-University Partnerships to dive into improvement science and use it to empower school and teacher teams to design solutions that work. The approach zeroed in on building the capacity of school leaders and teachers ensuring they had what they needed to create success school by school and classroom by classroom.

Every year, one-third of the teaching team from each school comes together for additional learning opportunities. The AESD team embeds the development of the attendance plan for the following year. They set goals looking at the prior year’s baseline data and come up with a plan and non-negotiables as a team. As a result, each school’s attendance plan can look different and iterates from year to year as teams learn from each other about what has worked.

Hargrove shared, "This collective teacher efficacy model lifts and provides a voice to the entire community as we learn and celebrate with each other and see how what we are working on together to achieve is connected to the success of each and every one of our students."

The efforts in Avondale Elementary School District continue to pay off as students are outperforming their peers statewide in reading and math. Improved attendance is a critical factor to success in school and beyond.

STEP 6: Regularly review the data and monitor progress of interventions.

At the district or network level, determine an effective cadence of progress monitoring. Monitor data closely in the first quarter of the school year. Provide additional support to schools that are most in need.

At the school level, once strategies have been chosen for each tier of attendance, be sure to record attendance rates prior to implementing any change to accurately gauge impact. Monitor the progress of strategies at each school attendance team meeting. Invite team members to share challenges and ideas for improvements. Parents and students can be invited to weigh in and give feedback. Look at the big picture. Consider how well supports are working based on qualitative feedback and by looking at pre- and post-attendance rates. If necessary, revisit your year-long approach.

Data should be organized so that the team can:

• Get a high-level picture of all students by tier and attendance categories.
• Notice changes since the last meeting.
• Understand if the problem is getting better or worse.
• Celebrate successes and reflect on strengths.
• Offer analysis, ideas, and ask any clarifying questions.

Look at individual student progress for those in the Tier 2 and Tier 3 categories at every meeting.

• Review individual students.
• Determine who follows up with students and/or families; consider who is most trusted by families.
• Plan outreach to students and families to determine barriers and causes for absence.
• Assign new interventions as needed and offer resources for students requiring targeted intervention.
• Remind staff to document any attendance barriers identified, supports provided, or follow-up needed.

STEP 7: Promote shared accountability and continuous improvement. Celebrate every success!

Addressing chronic absence is a process that involves continuous learning and improvement. Strategies and interventions will need to be adjusted and tweaked. 

Shared accountability ensures that there is a common understanding of the goals at the district and school levels. It also involves sharing how progress will be measured and determined.

• Set realistic and achievable target goals for schools and the district as a whole.
  • Aiming for a 2%-10% reduction in chronic absence in the first year of the targeted work is likely a good range. However, creating realistic goals depends on your specific data and circumstances.
• Make attendance data, goals, and targets publicly available.
• Share attendance data and updates on progress regularly via newsletters and at school board meetings.
• Regularly celebrate and publicly share the successes of individual schools as they work towards reducing chronic absence.
• Review staff attendance patterns to ensure that adults are modeling the behaviors that are expected of students, and consider celebrating and incentivizing teacher attendance as well.

To promote shared accountability, a community-wide attendance plan, including school- and district-level goals, strategies and action steps, can be developed before the beginning of a school year. The plan should be informed by the previous year’s data and insights and could include:

• An overview of the extent of the chronic absence issue.
• An assessment of district/network and school capacity to address barriers students face and schoolwide strategies to address these barriers.
• Target goals for district and schools that can be measured; school attendance plans could be highlighted.
• A description of the tiered interventions and strategies.
• Key attendance practices and processes.
• A timeline for implementation and monitoring method for assessing success.

REFLECT

How does your district, network, or school promote shared accountability and celebrate continuous improvement in addressing chronic absenteeism? Are there any new ideas or strategies needed?

AZ Spotlight

Washington Elementary School District 

Washington Elementary School District began its strategic and coordinated approach to improve attendance by using resources from Attendance Works. Director of School Support Richard Morris shared, “Early on, we realized we didn’t have the right people on the district team to make headway. We added parents to get their perspectives and more cross-sector representation—from health and social services, safety and mentoring, to assistant superintendent and principals— to understand the problem fully and ensure the work was not being done in different silos.”

The district reorganized its committees, looked at available resources, and decided to take a tiered approach with every school campus expected to have a team focused on attendance. The district team explored how they could support schools best, and created a tiered intervention workbook that school teams could use to select strategies to implement. Assistant principals collaborated on solutions—tackling chronic absence as a problem of practice together. Morris shared, “Just as we were gaining traction, the pandemic hit. Like many places around the country, our chronic absence rate shot up to 48% post-Covid. Our district went back to what we know to tune in and solve the problem.” 

Strategies have revolved around building strong relationships with students so they don’t want to miss school, prioritizing early intervention, and staying true to their data-driven approach. Beginning in August, if students are absent two days, they are red-flagged within the system. Then, each school uses its own process to call parents at this early stage.

Within one year, the chronic absence rate was reduced by 11%. Data from the 2022-23 school year showed the biggest dips in attendance in December and May, so the district took another targeted approach to change this the next school year. The district team provided new messaging around health and mental health and worked with school nurses to provide parents an updated guide on when to keep students home. They also conducted focus groups with seventh and eighth grade students to determine what would make them want to come to school seeing that this age-group had higher absence rates.

The district team is always looking for ways to better support schools. Recently, the district took on the role of rewarding students for attendance instead of schools. The district data system compares individual student attendance by quarter to gauge improvement. Students receive a digital certificate acknowledging their growth in attendance from the prior quarter. In the first quarter of school in 2023-24, 9,000 students received a digital certificate rewarding them for improved attendance.

Morris explained, “Our success comes down to being goal and data driven. We have a strong district team that provides data, strategic support, and resources to empower our schools. Our schools have the autonomy to solve the problem because they know their students and families best. It’s been a big team effort to provide supports and strategies for all.”

Resources

West Ed’s WEAC Organizing a District Team to Address Chronic Absence

West Ed’s WEAC Data-driven School Attendance Teams webinar 

Attendance Works Superintendent’s Call to Action

Attendance Works Teaching Attendance 2.0