(Observe: That is the second piece in a two-part collection on absenteeism in faculties. Learn the first half, on seven insights from researchers.)
Power absenteeism, when college students miss 10 p.c or extra of the college 12 months, is 50 p.c greater throughout the nation than earlier than the pandemic. Researchers say it’s troublesome for faculties to handle the issue as a result of it’s each so intense, with college students lacking big chunks of the college 12 months, and so in depth, affecting each wealthy and poor college students and even excessive achievers. And the explanations fluctuate broadly, from bronchial asthma and bullying to transportation issues and the sensation that faculty is boring.
“It’s exhausting to know the place and when to focus on sources,” stated Sam Hollon, a knowledge analyst on the American Enterprise Institute, which hosted a symposium on the issue in Could. “Who do you assist when each pupil probably could be a candidate for assist?”
Associated: Our free weekly publication alerts you to what analysis says about faculties and lecture rooms.
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement is exacerbating the issue. A June draft paper by Stanford College professor Thomas Dee calculated that current raids coincided with a 22 p.c enhance in every day pupil absences with notably massive will increase in absenteeism among the many youngest college students.
Speaking about the issue isn’t sufficient. Researchers say they need to examine extra faculties which are making headway. It stays unclear if there are broadly relevant fixes or if every college and even every pupil wants particular person options. Some underlying root causes for skipping college are extra complicated than others, requiring psychotherapy or housing help, which faculties can’t present. Listed below are a couple of examples of how very completely different communities are tackling the issue.
Windfall: Bus stops and weekend meals luggage
Principal W. Jackson Reilly of Nathanael Greene Center College in Windfall, Rhode Island, stated that when he arrived in April 2023, half of his 900 college students in grades six to eight have been chronically absent, up from 30 p.c of scholars earlier than the pandemic. Thirty p.c of his lecturers have been additionally chronically absent. Achievement scores have been within the state’s backside 1 p.c.
Reilly managed to slash his power absenteeism fee in half to 25 p.c this previous 2024-25 12 months. That’s nonetheless excessive. One in 4 college students missed greater than 18 days of college a 12 months. However, it’s higher.
He started by figuring out 150 youngsters who have been simply over the edge for power absenteeism, those that missed between 18 and 35 days, hoping that these youngsters can be simpler to lure again to high school than those that have been extra disengaged. Reilly and a bunch of directors and steering counselors every took 10 to fifteen college students and confirmed their households how a lot college that they had missed and the way low their grades have been. His workforce requested, “What do you want to ensure that your child to be coming to high school?’”
The 2 most typical replies: transportation and meals.
Associated: The power absenteeism puzzle
Many college students lived solely a mile away, too shut to high school to qualify for bus service. But the stroll deterred many, particularly if it was raining or snowing. Yellow buses usually handed these youngsters’s properties as they have been transporting youngsters who lived farther out, and Reilly satisfied the district so as to add stops for these chronically absent youngsters.
Ninety p.c of his college students come from households who’re poor sufficient to qualify for the federal free or reduced-price lunch program and 80 p.c are Hispanic. Though many youngsters have been fed breakfast and lunch at college, their households admitted that their youngsters would get so hungry over the weekend that they didn’t need to get up and are available to high school on Mondays. Reilly partnered with a meals pantry and despatched luggage of meat and pasta house with college students on Fridays.
Particular person consideration additionally helped. At the beginning of every college day, Reilly and his workforce verify in with their assigned college students. Youngsters who present up get 5 “inexperienced bucks” to spend on snacks and prizes. Directors name the properties of those that didn’t come to high school. “If they didn’t reply the telephone, we’d make a house go to,” stated Reilly.
Essentially the most dramatic overhaul was scheduling. Reilly scrapped particular person schedules for college students and assigned 4 lecturers to each 104 college students. The youngsters now transfer in pods of 26 that take all their lessons collectively, rotating via the identical 4 lecturers all through the day. The lecture rooms are proper close to one another, making a smaller neighborhood inside the college.
“It’s all about relationship constructing,” stated Reilly. When college students stay up for seeing their classmates and lecturers, he stated, they’re extra motivated to return to high school.
Researchers say fostering relationships is efficient. Hedy Chang, government director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit group that advises faculties on how you can increase attendance charges, stated it’s nonetheless a battle to influence college leaders (and college board members) that making college a extra welcoming place is extra productive than punishing youngsters and households for skipping college.
Reilly stated his college now posts the bottom pupil and instructor power absenteeism charges in Windfall. And he stated his college is the best performing center college within the metropolis and among the many highest statewide in studying.
New York Metropolis: Catching the butterflies
A cluster of New York Metropolis excessive faculties are taking a extra data-driven method, guided by New Visions, a consulting group that helps 71 metropolis excessive faculties.
After some experimentation, New Visions workers noticed sturdy enchancment in attendance in a single subgroup of scholars who have been on the cusp of lacking 10 p.c of college days, however had not but crossed the power absenteeism threshold. These are college students who would possibly miss a day or two each week or each different week however have been comparatively engaged at college. Jonathan Inexperienced, a New Visions college enchancment coach who’s spearheading this effort, calls them “butterflies.” “They’d flutter out and in each week,” he stated.
Inexperienced advised that somebody at college meet weekly with these butterflies and present them their attendance knowledge, set objectives for the approaching week and clarify how their attendance was main to raised grades. The intervention took two to 5 minutes. “There have been marked modifications in attendance,” stated Inexperienced.
New Visions constructed an internet site the place college directors may print out two-page paperwork for every pupil so the information, together with month-to-month attendance and tardiness, appeared in an easy-to-digest format. The short conferences came about for eight to 10 weeks in the course of the last grading interval for the semester. “That’s when there’s essentially the most alternative to show these probably failing grades into passing grades,” stated Inexperienced. “We have been discovering these candy spots inside the college calendar to do that very excessive useful resource, high-energy intensive weekly check-in. It’s not one thing that anybody can simply scale throughout a faculty.”
Associated: Monitoring pupil knowledge falls quick in combating absenteeism at college
Employees had to determine the bell schedule for every little one and intercept them between lessons. One succeeded in holding their whole caseload of scholars under the power absenteeism threshold. Not everybody thought it was a good suggestion: Some college directors questioned why a lot effort ought to go into college students who weren’t but chronically absent reasonably than college students in larger bother.
The dramatic outcomes assist reply that query. Amongst faculties within the Bronx that volunteered to take part within the butterfly intervention, power absenteeism charges dropped 15 proportion factors from 47 p.c in 2021 to 32 p.c in 2025, nonetheless excessive. However different Bronx excessive faculties within the New Visions community that didn’t do this butterfly intervention nonetheless had a power absenteeism fee of 46 p.c.
Inexperienced stated this resolution wouldn’t work for different excessive schoolers. Some have bother organizing their examine time, he stated, and wish extra intensive assist from lecturers. “Two- to five-minute check-ins aren’t going to assist them,” stated Inexperienced.
Indianapolis: Biscuits and gravy
The chief of an Indiana constitution college advised me he used a system of rewards and punishments that lowered the power absenteeism fee amongst his kindergarten via eighth graders from 64 p.c in 2021-22 to 10 p.c in 2024-25.
Jordan Habayeb, the chief working officer of Adelante Faculties, stated he used federal funds for the college breakfast and lunch program to create a made-from-scratch restaurant-style cafeteria. “Enjoyable truth: On home made biscuit and gravy days, we noticed the bottom charges of tardies,” he stated.
Researchers advocate avoiding punishment as a result of it doesn’t convey college students again to high school. However Habayeb stated he adheres strictly to state regulation that requires faculties to report 10 absences to the state Division of Baby Providers and to file a report with the county prosecutor. Habayeb advised me his college accounted for a fifth of truancy referrals to the county prosecutor.
The varsity created an automatic warning system after 5 absences reasonably than ready for the vital 10-day loss. And Habayeb stated he dispatched the protection and attendance officer in a van to have “actual conversations with households reasonably than being buried in paperwork.” In the meantime, college students who did present up obtained a continuing stream of rewards, from locker decorations to T-shirts.
Mum or dad schooling was additionally essential. Throughout obligatory household orientations, the college illustrated how common attendance issues for even younger youngsters. “We shared what a baby would possibly miss throughout a three-day stretch in a unit on ‘Charlotte’s Internet’ — displaying how simply a pupil may go away with a very completely different understanding of the ebook,” stated Habayeb. “This helped shift views and introduced urgency to the difficulty.”
Kansas Metropolis: Sweet and notes
College leaders in Kansas Metropolis, Kansas, shared some ideas which have labored for them throughout a webinar earlier this month hosted by Attendance Works. One elementary college lowered its power absenteeism from 55 p.c in 2021 to 38 p.c in 2024 by assigning all 300 college students to an grownup within the constructing, encouraging them to construct an “genuine” relationship. Lecturers got a listing of concepts however have been free to do what appeared pure. One instructor left sweet and notes on their assigned college students’ desks. A preschooler proudly pasted his word, which stated he was a “genius,” on the entrance door of his home. “The grins youngsters have on their faces are superb,” stated Zaneta Boles, the principal of Silver Metropolis Elementary College.
When college students do miss college, Boles stated educators attempt to take a “non-blaming method” in order that households usually tend to expose what’s going on. That helps the college refer them to different neighborhood companies for help.
Albuquerque: A shining instance regroups
Alamosa Elementary College in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was as soon as a shining instance of a faculty that persuaded extra households to ship their youngsters to class. Power absenteeism fell as little as 1 in 4 college students in 2018, when The Hechinger Report wrote concerning the college.
However Alamosa has not been immune from the surge of absenteeism that has plagued faculties across the nation. Power absenteeism spiked to 64 p.c of scholars in the course of the 2021-22 college 12 months, when Covid variants have been nonetheless circulating. And it remained shockingly excessive with 38 p.c of scholars lacking greater than 10 p.c of the 2024-25 college 12 months — precisely matching the 50 p.c enhance in power absenteeism throughout the nation since 2019.
“We have been on a roll. Then life occurred,” stated Daphne Strader, Albuquerque Public Faculties’ director of coordinated college well being, who works to scale back absenteeism.
Strader stated Alamosa and different Albuquerque faculties have made some profitable modifications to how they’re tackling the issue. However the quantity of absenteeism stays overwhelming. “There’s so many youngsters who’ve wants,” Strader stated. “We’d like extra workers on board.”
Associated: 7 insights about power absenteeism, a brand new regular for American faculties
Strader stated attendance interventions had been “too siloed” and so they’re focusing extra on the “entire little one.” She’s encouraging faculties to combine attendance efforts with different initiatives to spice up educational achievement and enhance pupil habits. “College students are hungry, they’re dysregulated, they don’t have grit,” stated Strader, and all of those points are contributing to absenteeism. However she additionally concedes that some college students have extra extreme wants, and it’s unclear who within the system can tackle them.
Her greatest recommendation for faculties is to give attention to relationships. “Relationships drive all the pieces,” stated Strader. “One of many main penalties of the pandemic was the isolation. If I really feel a way of belonging, I’m extra more likely to come to high school.”
Contact workers author Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Sign, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about how faculties are tackling absenteeism was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, unbiased information group targeted on inequality and innovation in schooling. Join Proof Factors and different Hechinger newsletters.
