Below is a list of key research related to attendance for Elementary School
For the full list of research and reports, please visit the All Research page.
Using Behavioral Insights to Improve School Administrative Communications: The Case of Truancy Notifications
Lasky-Fink, Jessica, Carly D. Robinson, Hedy Nai-Lin Chang and Todd Rodgers. Harvard Kennedy School, March 2018. Truancy notifications often use long passages of punitive legal jargon that are confusing and threatening to families. By randomly assigning parents to receive a modified truancy notification with simplified language and constructive information, the researchers saw a reduction in absenteeism.
The Effect of Serving “Breakfast After-the-Bell” Meals on School Absenteeism: Comparing Results From Regression Discontinuity Designs
Kirskey, J. Jacob and Michael A. Gottfried. The University of California, Santa Barbara, No Kid Hungry Campaign, February 2021. An analysis of longitudinal statewide datasets in Colorado and Nevada containing school breakfast information and national data on chronic absenteeism rates finds that schools serving ‘Breakfast After the Bell’ reported declines in chronic absenteeism.
The Effects of Absenteeism on Academic and Social-Emotional Outcomes: Lessons for COVID-19
Santibañez, Lucrecia and Cassandra Guarino. Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), October 2020. An evaluation of six large CORE school districts in California suggests that if students missed more than a few weeks of instruction — which is likely, particularly among low-income and other disadvantaged students — their test scores and social, emotional learning (SEL) outcomes are likely to be…
Rethinking the Role of the Juvenile Justice System: Improving Youth’s School Attendance and Educational Outcomes
The Council of State Governments Justice Center, September 16, 2020. This report summarizes key findings from an unprecedented research study on the impact of juvenile justice system involvement — particularly probation — on school attendance. It reveals that kids involved in the juvenile justice system in South Carolina not only didn’t experience attendance improvements, but their attendance actually got worse.…
Can Texting Parents Improve Attendance in Elementary School? A Test of an Adaptive Messaging Strategy
Heppen, Jessica, Kurki, A., & Brown, S. American Institutes for Research (AIR) for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). This report presents findings from a study that tested four versions of an adaptive text messaging strategy to see which, if any, would reduce chronic absence and improve achievement among 26,000 elementary school students. All four versions of the adaptive text…
The COVID-19 slide: What summer learning loss can tell us about the potential impact of school closures on student academic achievement
Kuhfeld, Megan and Beth Tarasawa, NWEA Collaborative for Student Growth, April 2020. This brief leverages research on summer loss and uses a national sample of over five million students in grades 3–8 who took assessment tests in 2017–2018. The authors examined growth trajectories of a standard school year compared to projected COVID-19 school closures and slowdown.
Principal Quality and Student Attendance
Bartanen, Brendan. Educational Researcher, Vol. 49, Issue 2, p 101-113. March 2020. This paper utilizes a value-added framework and draws on a decade of statewide data from Tennessee to determine principals’ effects on student absences, and finds these effects on student absences are significant and comparable in magnitude to their effects on student performance.