Identify the root causes of absence
Understanding why students are absent as well as what motivates them to attend is key to creating a comprehensive multi-tiered system of support for attendance and engagement.
First, assess what you know about the reasons students do or don’t attend school. Reasons for absences typically fall into four broad categories: Barriers to attendance, aversion to school, disengagement from school and misconceptions about the impact of absences. The figure below describes common reasons for absences that fall within each category.
Download the Identifying Root Causes worksheet. Working with your team, mark all the reasons that students in your district or school are absent. Which ones apply to all students? Some students? A few students?
Then confirm that you’ve correctly identified the main reasons for absence by talking with students and families. Consider using one of these Qualitative Tools to ask students and families about their perspectives.
Identifying Root Causes Worksheet
Determine what interventions might be needed to address the reasons for absence
Once you identify the most common reasons for absences, consider which interventions, supports or policy solutions you can offer. The Attendance Playbook: Smart Strategies for Reducing Student Absenteeism Post-Pandemic, was developed by FutureEd in partnership with Attendance Works. Find strategies to address chronic absence, divided into Tiers 1, 2 and 3.
Use the Guide to Using the Attendance Playbook to determine which interventions address the most common reasons for absence for your school’s students and their families. Be sure to start with Tier 1 schoolwide interventions such as positive greetings at the door, rethinking recess or free meals for all.
Note that when you see a high level of chronic absence in a school, the root cause may be a school policy or practice. In such cases, the solution is not an intervention but a change in policy or school practice. For example, if suspensions for minor infractions (e.g. not abiding by the dress code) are causing a large number of students to miss school and disengage, then a policy solution might be needed. In this case, the school could establish clear criteria for suspension and offer professional development to teach staff about alternative approaches to behavior management.
Data on chronic absence can help identify which students, or groups of students, might be in need of additional Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions. Once you know how many, and which groups of students are at risk due to poor attendance, assess what you know about the reasons they do or don’t attend school. Then select the intervention or interventions most likely to remove identified barriers or change behavior.
Updated September 2025