By Maren Madalyn, contributing writer
I remember one first-grade student (let’s call him Mike) from my first year working in a special education classroom. Mike’s family had recently experienced a traumatic incident, turning one parent into a near full-time caregiver for their partner while still working their day job.
Of course, this experience impacted the entire family’s mental health, and unsurprisingly, it affected Mike’s attendance at school, too. We provided transportation support where possible within our program’s policies. His family did their best to ensure someone could support Mike with catching the morning school bus. Our counseling staff also provided extra sessions to help him process the major changes in his life while keeping up academic success.
But soon enough, Mike had missed enough school days with unexcused absences to be classified as “habitual truant” per attendance policy in schools. Even after multiple family-staff meetings explaining the situation and trying to find solutions, he was eventually given a disciplinary hearing and assigned a probation officer.
Fortunately, our program, Mike’s family, and the school team did establish a sustainable strategy to bring him to school on-time for the rest of the year, and the probation officer was taken out of the equation. And amazingly, Mike still wanted to learn, remaining engaged in school despite the massive emotional turmoil experienced.
But the probation triggered by his absences, in the midst of a personal crisis left a negative impression on Mike’s family. Even with factors beyond their control affecting his presence on campus, policy mandated specific (and in this case, punitive) steps be taken.
Attendance policy in schools is ripe for reimagining. Let’s explore what’s not working (as well as what does support student learning) and how district and school leaders can shift these policies for everyone’s benefit.
The “common” attendance policy in schools: What works and what doesn’t
School attendance policies serve multiple purposes, which are important to understand before we can scrutinize their efficacy in boosting K12 attendance.
First, it’s important to remember that every child in the U.S. has the right to access a free, public education. Each state creates specific requirements for school officials (as well as caregivers) about when and how often children must attend instructional sessions. These compulsory school attendance laws are crucial to understand and ideally, school attendance policies align with these requirements, ensuring everyone understands what is expected of them.
Further, an attendance protocol explains what steps school personnel, district leaders, and even state officials may take to ensure that each child receives this free education. The idea is that the clearer a policy is about how to handle truancy or student absences, the better the supporting team can resolve that challenge.
Last, research demonstrates why attendance is important and the positive impact that it has on outcomes ranging from student achievement to high school graduation. Effective attendance policy in schools reinforces this message about consistent school attendance patterns with all stakeholders, whether that means engaging in the classroom or virtually.
The challenge with most attendance protocols
While anchored in good intentions, many attendance policies in schools fall short of their purposes. Here are just a few of the not-so-helpful characteristics often found in the average school and district attendance program:
- Reactive approaches: Typically, attendance protocols are triggered after an absence or truancy has occurred. For instance, a school may send a letter or text message to a parent only when a student has missed instructional time. While this means resources go toward solving emergent problems, it is also reactive and doesn’t get ahead of the future risk of further absence or truancy. Proactive solutions, such as sharing positive news with families about a student’s attendance record, can be more effective in encouraging regular school attendance and promoting a shared sense of ownership over student engagement at school.
- Emphasis on punitive measures: Once triggered, the attendance policy in schools often focuses on consequences. Most start with official letters sent home about repeated absence from school or truancy. Protocols then escalate from there to more serious interventions such as a school attendance board review or even probation, as Mike experienced. These punitive measures may create more burden for families and are not effective in actually increasing student attendance, especially when attendance is impacted by factors outside a family or student’s control.
- Inequitable systems that disproportionately affect underserved communities: A reactive and punitive attendance policy is a recipe for exacerbating inequities in students’ access to school. When protocols and subsequent interventions do not account for factors beyond family or students’ control that affect attendance (like access to reliable transportation and stable housing), students with fewer resources are inevitably impacted the most.
Summed together, these challenges result in an ineffective attendance policy in schools. Fortunately, many schools and districts are recognizing these outdated aspects in their attendance protocols, exploring how to rewrite them to better serve their intended purpose.
Four ways to improve policies that actually support attendance
Regardless of where a district or school is in revitalizing their attendance protocols, they benefit greatly from collaborating with their families—and intimately understanding the shared responsibility of both school and home in getting kids to school.
In fact, research shows that partnering with families to improve student attendance can lower absenteeism rates by up to 15% (Robinson et al., 2019).
Here are a few ways that a building administrator can begin to shift attendance policy in schools with the help of family-school partnerships.
Examine attendance policy in the context of school climate
Though school personnel are beholden to legal requirements around things like compulsory student attendance, they also are responsible for ensuring policies integrate into their desired school culture. This includes attendance improvement efforts that not only focus on practical solutions to challenges like absenteeism, but also maintain a student’s sense of belonging within the community.
School district and building leaders can ask themselves the following questions as they examine their attendance policy in the context of school climate:
- What does our policy require or recommend for helping students who miss instructional time return to school? For instance, do staff provide make-up work, virtual academic supports, community support services, or other interventions? More importantly, how effective are these strategies in reintegrating students academically?
- How does our policy ensure students with chronic absences build connections with their peers and school staff? How are resources like the school counselor engaged in these efforts? Feelings of loneliness and disconnection from school can further exacerbate an attendance issue, while a sense of community may help remedy it.
- How do our students and families feel about the mandated procedures triggered by student absenteeism and truancy? Do they experience these steps as collaborative with school staff, working towards solving the same challenge?
- What adjacent school policies impact student attendance? For instance, a principal may examine protocols pertaining to student behavior and disciplinary action, and whether these policies may have unintended negative effects on a student’s connection with school.
It’s also important for school administrators to critically reflect on how attendance requirements account for those factors beyond a family or student’s control, but which can become barriers to attendance at school—more on this in a moment.
With each of these inquiries, leaders can tap into their family community for insights and honest feedback. Educators may first need to establish trust with parents and caregivers in order to encourage families to share openly about their experiences with the attendance policy in schools. These upfront steps are well worth it!
Go beyond “perfect attendance” awards
Once building leaders have a clear sense of how well (or not) the attendance policy in schools cultivates their desired culture, they can scrutinize school programs intended to promote positive attendance rates.
While they appear motivational on the surface, certificates and awards for regular attendance at school alone don’t actually impact student engagement. In fact, without proper context, they may unintentionally send the opposite message: that regular attendance isn’t expected or the norm for a school community! Further, students who struggle with attendance due to factors beyond their control are quickly excluded from such programs.
However, incentives for participating in school can still play a valuable role—when embedded within a broader, school-wide culture.
Attendance Works encourages educators not to focus solely on rewarding “perfect attendance,” but rather to recognize where improvements are made and to tailor these programs to the unique school community. Caregivers are great allies to engage in this process, especially in early childhood and elementary school levels, as they play an important role in helping students with consistent attendance.
Explore their guidelines for district and school leaders designing an attendance incentive strategy that leans on everyone in the community, from families to teachers and beyond.
Emphasize restorative practices
Next, administrators can turn to the protocols that are triggered in response to chronic absence or truancy. Even in states where attendance policies mandate specific interventions, school districts can integrate a more restorative approach to resolving these attendance issues.
The first step is to investigate and identify the root causes of absence in schools and which students are most affected by them. These patterns are crucial to understand where inequities exist and, importantly, what new solutions might look like.
The second step requires a cultural and mindset shift with absenteeism. Recent studies have found that teachers may hold less positive perceptions of students who are absent more often in comparison with their peers. This perspective is not malicious or even something staff are actively aware of. Yet it can potentially further a cycle of student disengagement from school, which increases the risk of more absences.
A proactive, positive approach to attendance focuses on building a culture of engagement and belonging—one that embraces the idea of a collective responsibility for student attendance rather than an individual one.
In response to the negative impact of the pandemic on attendance, Louisiana took measures in 2021 to radically shift their state-wide policies away from historically punitive measures and towards community-oriented, restorative methods. The early results were significant, reducing chronic absenteeism rates by nearly 10% within a single school year.
Read about their successes with community resources like the Basic Needs Closet and more.
Incorporate community supports as part of policy
By understanding specific barriers to attendance, district and school administrators can also coordinate the right stakeholders and community resources to remove them for students and families. This often means building a network of community-based support.
Let’s imagine that a school discovers housing challenges affect a group of students who regularly miss school. They may partner with local shelters or housing advocacy organizations to ensure school staff can connect families with these resources to meet this basic need. They may also adjust school bus routes so students in shelters can still get transportation to class, even when their home environment is uncertain.
Families can be invaluable resources in developing a community-wide support system centered on boosting student attendance. Parent leaders can offer unique perspectives and help co-create solutions for addressing student truancy or absenteeism. Odds are, there are also family members who may have connections or contacts at particular community organizations that can lend a head towards this effort.
Learn how ParentPowered Trauma-Informed connects families with local, state, and national resources that help them ensure their most fundamental needs are met.
ParentPowered is your student attendance ally
Looking for evidence-based, age-appropriate ways to engage with your families in service of student learning? Partner with ParentPowered.
Our evidence-based family engagement curriculum doesn’t just foster everyday learning moments outside of the classroom, with activities in literacy, math, life skills, and much more. It also sets up caregivers for successful communication and collaboration with school staff, including ways to keep student attendance strong and how to get support when things get tough.
Join an upcoming info session or watch a self-paced tour to learn more about how our whole-child approach benefits students and their families, from birth through high school.
About the author
Maren Madalyn has worked at the intersection of K12 education and technology for over a decade, serving in roles ranging from counseling to customer success to product management. She blends this expertise with fluid writing and strategic problem-solving to help education organizations create thoughtful long-form content that empowers educators.
