Reilly has managed to reduce her chronic absenteeism rate from half to 25% in the past 2024-25. It’s always high. One in four students missed more than 18 days of school per year. But it’s better.
He started by identifying 150 children who were just above the threshold of chronic absenteeism, those who missed between 18 and 35 days, hoping that these children would be easier to attract to school than those who were more disengaged. Reilly and a group of directors and guidance counselors each took 10 to 15 students and showed their families how many schools they had lacked and how weak their notes. His team asked, “What do you need to make your child come to school?” »»
The two most common responses: transport and food.
Many students only lived at a mile from there, too close to school to qualify for the bus service. However, the promenade dissuaded a lot, especially if it was raining or was not doing snow. The yellow buses often passed these houses of these children while they were carrying children who lived below, and Reilly convinced the district to add stops for these chronically absent children.
Ninety percent of its students come from families poor enough to qualify for the federal free lunch or reduced price program and 80% are Hispanic. Although many children were fed on breakfast and lunch at school, their families admitted that their children were so hungry this weekend that they did not want to wake up and come to school on Monday. Reilly has teamed up with a pantry and sent bags of meat and pasta home with students on Friday.
Individual attention has also helped. At the start of each school day, Reilly and her team check with their assigned students. The children who arise have five “green bucks” to spend on snacks and prices. The administrators call the houses of those who have not come to school. “If they did not answer the phone, we were going to visit at home,” said Reilly.
The most dramatic overhaul was planning. Reilly deleted the individual schedules for students and awarded four teachers to 104 students. Children are now moving into cloves of 26 that take all their lessons together, turning the same four teachers throughout the day. The classrooms are just close to each other, creating a smaller community within the school.
“This is the establishment of relations,” said Reilly. When the students look forward to seeing their classmates and their teachers, he said, they are more motivated to come to school.
Researchers say that relationship promotion is effective. Hedy Chang, Executive Director of Service Works, a non -profit organization that advises schools on how to increase attendance rates, said that it was always a battle to persuade school heads (and members of the school board) than to make school a more welcoming place is more productive than to punish children and families for skipping the school.
Reilly said that her school now publishes chronic absenteeism of the lowest students and teachers in Providence. And he said that his school was the most efficient college in the city and among the highest on the state of reading.
New York: catch butterflies
A group of high schools in New York adopts a more data -based approach, guided by new visions, a consulting organization that supports 71 secondary schools in the city.
After a certain experimentation, New Visions staff experienced a strong improvement in attendance in a subgroup of students who were about to miss 10% of school days, but had not yet crossed the threshold of chronic absenteeism. These are students who could miss a day or two every week or every two weeks, but who were relatively committed to school. Jonathan Green, a new coach of the improvement of visions schools who directs me this effort, calls them “butterflies”. “They floated and came out every week,” he said.
Green suggested that someone at school meets each week with these butterflies and show them their attendance data, set goals for the coming week and explain how their attendance led to better grades. The intervention lasted two to five minutes. “There have been changes marked in the presence,” said Green.
New Visions built a website where school administrators could print two -page documents for each student so that data, including monthly attendance and delay, appeared in an easy -to -digest format. Rapid meetings took place for eight to 10 weeks during the final classification period of the semester. “This is where there is the greatest opportunity to transform these potentially failed notes into passing notes,” said Green. “We found these points Sweet in the school calendar to make this very high resource and a weekly high -energy recording. It is not something that anyone can easily evolve in a school. ”
The staff had to understand the calendar of the bell for each child and intercept it between the classes. One managed to hold all of their students’ charge below the threshold of chronic absenteeism. Not everyone thought it was a good idea: some school administrators asked why so many efforts had to be done to students who were not yet chronically absent rather than students in addition to problems.
Dramatic results help answer this question. Among the schools of the Bronx which have volunteered to participate in the intervention of butterflies, chronic absenteeism rates fell by 15 percentage points of 47% in 2021 to 32% in 2025, still high. But other secondary schools in the Bronx of the new Visions network which did not try this butterfly intervention still had a chronic absenteeism of 46%.
Green said this solution would not work for other high school students. Some have trouble organizing their study time, he said, and need more intensive help from teachers. “Two to five minutes recordings will not help them,” said Green.
Indianapolis: cookies and sauce
The head of a school at the Indiana charter told me that he had used a system of awards and punishments which reduced the rate of chronic absenteeism among his kindergarten in the eighth year of 64% in 2021-22 to 10% in 2024-25.
Jordan Habayeb, the chief of the Adelante schools, said that he had used federal funds for the breakfast and school lunch to create a catering cafeteria made by stripes. “Make fun: the days of cookies and homemade sauce, we saw the lowest late rates,” he said.
Researchers recommend avoiding punishment because it does not bring students to school. But Habayeb said that he strictly adheres to the law of the State which obliges schools to report 10 absences in the State Department of Children’s Services and to submit a report to the County Prosecutor. Habayeb told me that his school represented a fifth of the absenteeism references to the county prosecutor.
The school created an automated warning system after five absences rather than waiting for the 10 -day critical loss. And Habayeb said he had sent the security and attendance officer to a van to have “real conversations with families rather than being buried in documents”. Meanwhile, the students who presented themselves received a constant flow of rewards, from locker decorations to t-shirts.
Parents’ education was also important. During compulsory family orientations, the school illustrated how regular attendance is important for even young children. “We shared what a child could miss for a three-day section in a unit on” Charlotte’s Web “- showing the ease with which a student could leave with a completely different understanding of the book,” said Habayeb. “This has helped move the prospects and bring urgency to the question.”
Kansas City: Candy and notes
The Kansas City establishment heads, Kansas, shared some tips that worked for them during a webinar earlier this month organized by attendance work. An elementary school reduced its chronic absenteeism by 55% in 2021 to 38% in 2024 by assigning the 300 students to an adult in the building, encouraging them to build an “authentic” relationship. The teachers received a list of ideas but were free to do what seemed natural. A teacher left candy and notes on the offices of their assigned students. A preschool child proudly stuck his note, who said he was a “genius”, on the front door of his house. “The smiles that children have on their faces are incredible,” said Zaneta Boles, director of the Silver City primary school.
When the students are missing school, Boles said that educators were trying to adopt an “unusual approach” so that families are more likely to disclose what is happening. This helps school refer them to other community agencies to get help.
Albuquerque: a brilliant example is grouped together
The primary school of Alamosa in Albuquerque, in New Mexico, was once a brilliant example of a school which persuaded more families to send their children to class. Chronic absenteeism fell as weak as 1 in 4 students in 2018, when the Hechinger report wrote on the school.
But Alamosa was not immune to the rise of absenteeism which tormented the schools of the country. Chronic absenteeism increased to 64% of students during the 2021-22 school year, when cocvid variants still circulated. And he remained shocking with 38% of students missing more than 10% of the 2024-25 school year – corresponding exactly to the 50% increase in chronic absenteeism across the country since 2019.
“We were on a momentum. Then, life occurred, “said Daphne Strader, director of public schools for coordinated school health, who works to reduce absenteeism.
Strader said thatlamosa and other Albuquerque schools have made successful changes to the way they attack the problem. But the volume of absenteeism remains overwhelming. “There are so many children who have needs,” said Starde. “We need more staff on board.”
Strader said that attendance interventions had been “too closed” and that they focus more on “the whole child”. It encourages schools to integrate attendance efforts into other initiatives to stimulate academic results and improve students’ behavior. “Students are hungry, they are deregulated, they have no grain,” said Strader, and all these problems contribute to absenteeism. But she also concedes that some students have more serious needs, and we do not know who in the system can meet them.
His biggest advice for schools is to focus on relationships. “Relations are driving everything,” said Strader. “One of the main consequences of the pandemic was isolation. If I feel a feeling of belonging, I am more likely to come to school. ”
