Despite progress over the last 50 years, recent events and the pandemic highlight persistent educational inequities for African American students, resulting in increased disparities in engagement and learning. Post-pandemic, chronic absence rates for African American students are alarmingly high. This session emphasizes the importance of adopting an asset-based mindset to create positive learning conditions that support African American students both in and out of the classroom. Participants gained insight into national attendance and engagement trends, learned about assets, barriers, and strategies affecting African American students, and identified culturally responsive and evidence-based approaches to enhance engagement and attendance.
Chronic Absenteeism
Attendance Playbook: Smart Solutions for Reducing Student Absenteeism Post-Pandemic
Among the dire educational consequences of the pandemic, the impact on student absenteeism stands out. The pandemic’s long months of remote learning, hybrid schedules and repeated quarantines frayed bonds among students and between students and educators and fractured routines of attending school. Left unaddressed, these high levels of absenteeism threaten to undermine the unprecedented investment of federal Covid-relief funds in public schools.
To help education policymakers and practitioners respond to the post-pandemic absenteeism crisis in the nation’s schools, FutureEd and Attendance Works have expanded our Attendance Playbook to reflect schools’ realities during and after the pandemic. The new analysis includes more than two dozen effective, readily scalable approaches covering topics ranging from family engagement to the value of attendance incentives, as well as students’ social and emotional well-being, a high priority for educators post-pandemic.
In the playbook, we explain each intervention, identify the problem it solves, summarize supporting research, and highlight schools or school districts that have used the strategy successfully. Attendance Works has added an implementation guide for schools and districts.
Four Strategies to Increase Student Attendance Through Personalized Family Messaging
What personalized messaging strategies can educators use to increase student attendance? The National Center for Rural Education Research Networks released a how-to guide, Improve Attendance with Personalized Messages, which outlines four key components of effective messages to families:
– Personalization: Introduce yourself, address the caregiver by name, and include the student’s name.
– Attendance status: Summarize the total number of days absent in the past month.
– Importance of attendance: Emphasize the value of being present in school.
– Invitation to connect: Provide contact information for caregivers to connect with school staff.
Caregivers are often unaware of the number of days their student has missed. By providing real-time, personalized information, educators can increase caregivers’ awareness. These easy-lift actions can also build stronger relationships between educators and caregivers, enabling them to address barriers to attendance and engagement together.
Quick Start Guide for Districts to Improve Attendance
According to the U.S. Department of Education, at least 10.1 million students were identified as chronically absent in the 2020-21 academic year. When a student misses 10 percent or more of school days for any reason (excused, unexcused, suspensions) their opportunity to learn to read by third grade and graduate from high school is threatened. This new resource authored by WEEAC’s partners at Attendance Works presents actionable steps to local, tribal, state, and federal educators and leaders in a quick-to-read format.
Click the following links below to access the recordings to our Chronic Absence Sessions.
Exploring an Unexamined Source of Racial Disparities in Juvenile Court Involvement: Unexcused Absenteeism Policies in U.S. Schools
This two-part study explored whether discrimination encoded into U.S. school absenteeism policies leads to racially minoritized students being overrepresented in the juvenile court system.
Evaluation of Ramsey County’s Truancy Intervention Programs: Policy Implications for Court Diversion Programs
This brief, based on four years of research, indicated a potential racial disparity in truancy enforcement. A disproportionately larger number of absences of minority students were marked unexcused when compared with the absences of their classmates.
Using Chronic Absence Data to Improve Conditions for Learning
This report describes how chronic absence and conditions for learning are interconnected issues that can have an impact on a child’s educational success. The report identifies specific conditions for learning that can improve school experiences for students and staff and help reduce absenteeism and improve academic outcomes.
This brief includes brief case studies from the state of Georgia and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District that help to illustrate how chronic absence and conditions for learning can be addressed through comprehensive, data informed actions. A five-point school action framework outlines how chronic absence data can be used to diagnose and address factors in a school and community that affect attendance and conditions for learning.
Using Chronic Absence to Map Interrupted Schooling, Instructional Loss and Educational Inequity: Insights from School Year 2017-18 Data, by Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center
This report provides a national and state analysis of how many schools face high levels of chronic absence and shows how chronic absence data reported prior to the coronavirus pandemic can help guide strategies to address the learning loss that has been further exacerbated by Covid-19.
Chronic Absence: Busting Myths and Helping Educators Develop More Effective Responses
Standing in the way of truly addressing chronic absence are three harmful myths. These myths can be counteracted by using evidence-based approaches grounded in the seminal body of knowledge known as the conditions for learning. A safe, supportive and engaging environment for learning buffers against widespread chronic absence, and educators must examine these conditions to appropriately address this issue.
Monitoring Attendance During the First Weeks of School: An Essential Tool for Reducing Educational Inequity
Monitoring chronic absence allows schools and community partners to engage in prevention and early intervention before problems are more expensive to resolve. Examining attendance patterns offers valuable, real-time feedback about what is and isn’t working well so districts and schools can determine what practices they should expand or drop. And if high levels of absenteeism affect large groups of students, it suggests that systemic solutions should be put in place to address educational inequities.
