Want to Solve Chronic Absenteeism? Harness the Power of Family Engagement

By April Hawkins, marketing manager at ParentPowered; and Chaná Edmond-Verley, chief executive officer at Vibrant Futures and president at Innovation & Impact Collective (I2C)

This article is part of our series: Voices of Engagement. In this series, we interview the people we are listening to and learning from as we continually evolve and improve our family engagement programs.

---

---

Getting kids back in school: 5 tips from the field

During our interview, Chaná shared an inspiring story about a successful family and community engagement project that can serve as an example for school districts everywhere. She explained the primary challenge her team faced as this: “Schools in the neighborhood were achieving less than stellar academic outcomes.” In other words, students were far from being on-track with academic readiness. 

With this huge need to tackle, Chaná and her team set to work investigating the factors impacting this level of academic performance. They discovered that there was a serious chronic student absenteeism problem in the school district. Compounding this trend were low levels of engagement with parents of children in their schools — parents were not showing up for parent-teacher conferences, and in general, communication with families was at an all-time low.

It was clear that something needed to change, and so the local school district decided to partner with Chaná and her team. Together, they took clear action with provable results. Here are the steps they followed:

1. Ask, “Do we really know what’s going on?”

These questions were the launchpad for productive collaborations between educators and families geared toward improving school outcomes. 

2. Shared ownership for increased buy-in

Once these lines of inquiry were established, the team conducted a series of town-hall style meetings. Chaná explained: “The community as engaged on their terms.”

Chaná’s team knew they needed to gain all stakeholders’ trust for positive family involvement in education to occur, so they reached out to local community-based organizations that were already “institutions of trust.” These local organizations shared flyers with people from the neighborhood and used social nodes to spread the word about these town halls and encourage families to attend.

The result was that this became the community’s meeting, and over five hundred attendees joined. It was clear to both the district and Chaná’s team that families cared deeply about the future of their children. They wanted to be part of solutions that improved regular attendance, boosted academic outcomes, and ultimately created a positive school culture for everyone.

3. Listen first

4. Keep creating space

As Chaná shared, “The real impact came from parents and community members sharing what they experienced every day.” Using the insights and information they had as full-time residents of the community, they came up with solutions that were the best fit for their children to share with district and school staff.

5. Keep your eye on the ball

Of course, one of the most important steps of any effort to improve programming is to measure the outcome of these efforts. Chaná’s organization supported this district by:

Through these meetings, the whole community became engaged and began keeping an eye out. Through these collaborative meetings, the whole community became engaged in maintaining a positive school culture that could address attendance issues and even students’ attitudes toward school for the better. Chaná shared the phenomenon that began happening in the neighborhood:

“From that point on, if an adult saw someone else’s child hanging out on the street during school hours, they would say, ‘Hey, what are you doing out of school? Aren’t you supposed to be learning? I’m going to call up your mom and see how we can help.'”

Of course, this had a huge impact because everyone in the community became partners in educating their children as a collective.

Why is this helpful for school districts?

Authentically engaging families is one of the biggest challenges for school administrators. Putting a plan in place that sees the process through all the way from beginning to end is essential and requires commitment. But boosting the effectiveness of engagement programs can feel daunting for many educators. After all, many schools serve a wide range of families from varying cultural and socioeconomic status, which can add complexity to cultivating family involvement in education.

I asked Chaná what she would say to a school or district administrator hesitant to engage in this type of deep collaboration. Here was her response:

Chaná explained further that an asset-based framework was essential to this collaboration. She shared that “the school’s in-road [to family and community engagement] is through cultivating and leveraging the aspirations, hopes, and dreams of families for their children.”

Extensive research about parental engagement programs supports Chaná’s insights. Perhaps the most well-known evidence comes from Dr. Karen Mapp’s Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships. In her research, Dr. Mapp cites that strengths-based engagement — also called assets-based engagement — creates opportunities for families to positively impact student outcomes by leveraging the knowledge, resources, and skills they already have in service of their children. 

Chaná went to emphasize that a shared belief in a child’s potential is at the core of family and community engagement, and that every family “has the potential to contribute in profound ways. This is the basis for a different kind of relationship, communications modality and ultimately engagement with families where more children can flourish, thrive, and be successful.”

The opportunity created by digital solutions

Reflecting on her experiences in family engagement, Chaná urged districts to consider non-traditional methods to reach families and increase the effectiveness of engagement programs they offer. In particular, digital family engagement offers a great opportunity to bring families to the table on their terms. 

Chaná explained, “Many parents have children [navigating school] on different schedules. Some parents are trying to manage learning for a preschooler, a 4th grade student, a 6th grade student, another kid in 8th grade, and one in 12th grade. In these cases, it becomes increasingly difficult for parents to engage on the school’s schedule.”

ParentPowered designed its digital family engagement curricula with this in mind. Rather than attend or try to join an event during the school day or on campus, parents have resources and everyday learning activities sent to them — right into their pockets.

In the end, collaboration between school staff and their community was the key ingredient in a recipe for success to reduce student truancy, chronic absences, and other attendance issues. Further, by inviting families to the table, Chaná’s team and this school district established the foundation for ongoing parental engagement programs all aligned on improving student wellbeing and outcomes.

And when children thrive, everyone in the entire community thrives!

FAQs: Family Engagement and Absenteeism

What is student truancy vs. absenteeism?

In general, truancy refers to a student missing a certain amount of instructional time in a day, without a reason deemed excusable by a school. Absenteeism refers to a student missing entire days of instructional time, again typically without an acceptable excuse. 

In some states, like California, if a student misses 30 minutes of instruction without an acceptable excuse three times in a school year, they are classified as truant and educators are required to take specific actions as a result of this classification. In other states, like Texas, truancy prevention steps are activated based on the number of days a student misses in school. As a result, terms like “chronic truancy” and “chronic absenteeism” might be used differently to describe prolonged periods of missed classroom instruction time.

Regardless of the definitions or the reasons why students miss school, the outcome of truancy and absenteeism is the same: students lose valuable learning time. 

How does student absenteeism and truancy affect learning outcomes?

Research studies have long shown that when students regularly miss instruction, it has lasting consequences for their long-term academic success and overall wellbeing. 

These effects can start as early as elementary school. When students are chronically absent during these early years, it affects many of their future outcomes like academic achievement — even if attendance improves over time (CRESP Policy Brief, 2018). Other outcomes like graduation rates are also impacted. One longitudinal study conducted in Baltimore City Public Schools revealed that chronic absenteeism in 6th grade strongly predicted which students did not successfully graduate from high school by 12th grade (Baltimore Education Research Consortium, 2011).

Absent students miss out on more than just learning in the classroom. They also miss time to build crucial cognitive, social, and emotional skills in a school community, all of which underpin their learning, self confidence, and sense of belonging. To make matters more complicated, these factors can have a compounding effect on chronic absenteeism: if a student does not feel that they belong within a school community, or that they have positive relationships with their teacher, they can feel further disconnected, which may contribute to a continued cycle of poor attendance.

Even now, in the wake of the biggest changes from the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools and districts are struggling to mitigate lower attendance rates and the inequitable ways that attendance policies affect students from different backgrounds.

What can educators do to reduce student truancy and absenteeism?

Chronic absenteeism and truancy among students are not new challenges in education, but as the Brookings Institute aptly describes, educators are constantly searching for new solutions. 

Strategies to reduce student absences vary tremendously by context, too. Some districts have resources like school social workers available to support families with navigating barriers to school attendance. Enabling families is especially in an elementary school setting where students are often dependent on their families to get to and from school. In secondary schools, educators may tap into community partnership programs like mentorship groups to encourage positive attitudes toward school and increase student attendance. 

This is why family engagement is a critical component to any efforts to engage absent students.

How does family engagement impact student truancy and absenteeism?

Tackling chronic truancy or absenteeism isn’t any one group’s responsibility. In fact, it’s when educators cultivate positive and trusting relationships with families that students are better positioned to attend school regularly. 

When educators use strengths-based approaches in a parent engagement program, they empower families to use their existing resources and assets to support their child’s learning journey. They also signal to families that parents are equally important members of the teaching team. Both steps create a sense of community and shared responsibility to support student development.

Research shows that family engagement offers immense benefits, particularly to students from traditionally underserved backgrounds — students who may face more challenges with attending school than their peers. When families are active partners and participants in their child’s education, student attendance rates increase.

Where can educators learn more about effective and equitable family engagement?

Though there are common guidelines and best practices informed by research, family engagement  may look completely different across schools, communities, and programs for children and their adults. The most critical element of any family engagement program is cultivating partnership — however that may look for families!

Learn more about effective family engagement for families with children of all ages, from birth to adolescence.

Looking for evidence-based strategies to engage your families? ParentPowered’s curricula are designed to help families cultivate everyday learning moments — without creating extra work for school or district staff. Join an upcoming info session to learn more about our programs!