Reducing chronic absence requires a team of individuals to craft and implement a school wide approach. This will provide you with the insights and resources needed to create a strategy that works and is implemented for all students. One or two people can’t do it all. Below are three steps to help organize your team:

1. Select an administrative leader and members: School teams are successful when they bring together school-based staff, are cross-departmental and reflect the school demographics. If you are just starting this process, you can begin with a small group, and invite others over time; you can use an existing, new or a reconfigured team.
   • Find our guidance on developing school teams. Consider also how district teams can support school teams.
   • Teams can monitor and track strategies and interventions to determine if they are successful or should be modified.
2. Take a school-wide, tiered approach: Effective teams analyze why students attend or are absent, map existing interventions and create a data-driven, tiered approach to reducing chronic absence. Community partners (local agencies, health providers, nonprofits, etc.) can support or help to implement parts of your strategy.
   • Download school self-analysis tools that can be used to facilitate this work.
   • Download the School Team Yearly Attendance Activities tool to develop a plan, with sample yearly activities for ideas.
3. Engage in professional development: Ensure staff have access to quality training that explains how to implement research- and evidence-based strategies that have been shown to reduce chronic absence.
   • Consider the Attendance Works three-part virtual training for educators, designed for teams.

Effective approaches to reducing chronic absence rely on real-time, actionable student data to identify which students or groups of students are chronically absent and need additional support. 

Data also will highlight when progress has been made, as well as show what is working. Data enables teams to reassess efforts throughout the year by showing you which interventions have been successful.

• If your data system does not already produce chronic absence reports, consider using the free Attendance Works data tools. Ask your district office for help pulling data from your Student Information System, if needed.
• Teams should review chronic absence data broken down by school, grade, classroom, student group or neighborhood to detect barriers requiring system-wide solutions. Learn more about data informed teams.

Understanding why students are absent as well as what motivates them to attend is key to effectively addressing chronic absence. Before your team selects interventions, you must first dig beneath the surface to uncover root causes for the absences—whether they’re related to transportation, family needs such as food or clothing, or access to healthcare.

By identifying what’s truly getting in the way of attendance, you can design more school wide as well as targeted  interventions that remove barriers and meet the needs of your students and families.

Most importantly, aligning interventions with the actual barriers students and families have identified ensures that your efforts are not only well-intentioned—but effective. When solutions are grounded in lived experience, they’re more likely to remove obstacles and make a lasting impact on student attendance.

• Download our root causes worksheet to help identify the likely causes of absenteeism
• Use qualitative data tools to learn from students and families the factors affecting whether students show up to school.
• The Scan of Environment and Attendance Tool is designed for schools to engage staff, students, parents and community members to identify strengths and opportunities to promote positive school culture and strong attendance.

Schools can take a comprehensive approach to attendance by providing tiered interventions to their students. Learn more about the three tiers of intervention. We recommend these three key ideas (below) to guide you when designing tiered interventions.

1. Start with prevention (foundational and Tier 1). By emphasizing prevention, and  strengthening the positive conditions for learning and school wide Tier 1 interventions, schools can be more effective in their efforts to improve attendance.
   • The updated Attendance Playbook, developed by FutureEd in partnership with Attendance Works, includes more than two dozen strategies to address student chronic absence divided into the three tiers of intervention. Each description identifies the problem the intervention solves and highlights schools or districts that have used the strategy successfully.
   • Use the Guide to the Attendance Playbook to select the evidence-based solutions to address the barriers students and families face in getting to school every day.
   • Build upon and strengthen efforts to improve school climate. For instance, incorporate classroom practices such as daily wellness checks or group greetings that offer students a warm welcome each day. See this video from Edutopia for more examples.
2. Layer on interventions that address root causes (Tier 2 and 3). While all students benefit from foundational supports and Tier 1 interventions, some students need more support. These students and families may face a variety of barriers to attendance so try to select the intervention or interventions that address the root cause(s) of a student’s absence. Ask yourself if the intervention is likely to remove the barrier you identified.
   • Students attending expanded learning programs have better attendance. After-school programs are especially well positioned to connect students to peers, adults, engaging activities and create a sense of belonging.
   • Quality mentoring can have a significant impact on improving school attendance and student success. Learn how to implement mentoring programs for elementary students with the Attendance Works Relationships Matter: A Toolkit for Launching an Elementary Success Mentor Initiative; and for older students, Mentor’s Starting a Youth Mentoring Program: Program Planning & Design.
   • Home visits, using the Learner Engagement and Attendance Program (LEAP) model, focuses on building trust with families, removing attendance barriers and reengaging students in school through home visits and check-ins.
   • More students are experiencing homelessness. Learn best practices for improving attendance of students experiencing homelessness.
   • The most intensive efforts (Tier 3) can be reserved for the small number of students for whom Tier 1 and Tier 2 interventions aren’t sufficient. If you're at Tier 3, make sure you have put in place Foundational, Tier 1 and Tier 2 supports.

3. Monitor whether you should adopt, adapt or abandon strategies and interventions. Pay attention to what the research and your own practice is telling you about what works and what doesn’t. Consider using improvement science tools such as High Tech High Graduate School of Education’s Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle to test promising ideas.

   By discarding what doesn’t work, your team has more time and energy to implement what does work. Before abandoning an approach, make sure you are implementing it with fidelity.

   Here are some suggestions for actions that have been proven to be more effective:

   • Instead of sending threatening truancy notifications, consider writing more positive communications.
   • Instead of Perfect Attendance Awards - consider recognizing good and improved attendance.