“Our relationship with Attendance Works has been instrumental in our collective work on attendance, not only in Kent County, but across Michigan. Our research, messaging, policy and practice, strategies, and commitment to school attendance would not be where it is today without our long-standing relationship with Attendance Works."
— Carol Paine-McGovern, Executive Director, Kent School Services Network – A Community School Coalition
Mission Statement

The mission of Attendance Works is to advance student success and help close equity gaps by reducing chronic absence. 

Vision
As a National and State Initiative, Our Vision is Two-Pronged:
  • Better federal, state and local policy and practices around school attendance.
  • Every school district in the country not only tracks chronic absence data beginning in kindergarten— or earlier— but also partners with families and community agencies to intervene as soon as poor attendance becomes a problem for children or particular schools.
Objectives
Our Three Objectives are:

  • Building public awareness and political will about the need to address chronic absence. This includes extensive media outreach as well as working with key national organizations to spread the word about why this issue matters and explore the role federal government can play. It also includes explaining the critical difference between chronic absence and truancy.

  • Fostering state campaigns and partnerships by developing coalitions to advance state and local policies that promote tracking attendance for individual students and reporting on chronic absence to ensure schools, especially if they are low-performing, will intervene to improve student attendance.

  • Encouraging local practice by providing technical assistance and tools to help communities, schools and school districts monitor and work together to address chronic absence. This includes creating peer-learning networks and using our website to provide access to a variety of free tools and resources to over 275,000 visitors each year.