A Path to Progress Amid the National School Attendance Crisis

Last week, a student at St. Francis School in Cleveland threw a pie in the face of Principal Molly Hanna. The student was not defying authority; instead, she was defying a national trend. With perfect attendance for the month, the student, her parents, and the administration at St. Francis are making progress rebuilding attendance habits weakened across the U.S. during the pandemic. 

Last year, around one out of four American school children was chronically absent from school; in Cleveland’s public schools, just over half of students were chronically absent–missing ten percent or more of school days. According to research shared by the State of Ohio, students who are chronically absent are 65 percent less likely to read on grade level by third grade and a whopping 89 percent less likely to graduate on time. 

Partnership Schools’ chronic absenteeism was a bit better than the city’s public schools last year. Yet we knew with certainty that if we want our students’ academic achievement to improve, we must make progress on having them with us every day. So from Day 1 this year, our schools began an all-out push to improve daily attendance–an effort that hasn’t let up, even months later. That work is producing heartening results.

By mid-November, the percentage of students chronically absent dropped by a quarter compared with the prior year. We have routinely seen days when schools and families hit our target of at least 95% students present. 

Daily attendance remains a daily effort, and we are aiming for far better attendance. Yet we are heartened not just by the progress our schools are making so far, but also by the way they are making it—using approaches propelled by some of the unique tools a Catholic school network can bring to bear. Four factors are, we believe, instrumental to the progress:

  • Network/school collaboration: The network set ambitious, customized goals for each school’s attendance before the school year began, and then the school support team has worked with each school leadership team to find the most effective levers for improving results. From the beginning, the network-school collaboration has been anchored in research we analyzed together—including a finding that if a student misses two-five days in September, they are five times more likely to be chronically absent that year. 
  • Effective use of data: The network team is also supporting the schools with actionable data gathering and collaborative analysis. Together, the network-wide operations team helps schools monitor progress while also drilling into the data to identify families whose struggles with attendance may be flying under the radar. For example, every Friday, the network team and school leaders take a look together at a quick snapshot like the one above. The shared data helps prompt collaboration between the network team and school leaders—and among school leaders—on next steps for further progress or problem identification when new trends appear.
  • Clear, frequent, and urgent communication: Rachael Dengler shared that during the welcome-back activities for St. Thomas families in August, she and Dean Tali Collins talked with every family individually, sharing a copy of the attendance policy and the reasons why daily attendance is so important, discussing each family’s hurdles and plans, and then having each family sign a copy of the policy. The administration communicates weekly with families about how the whole community is progressing toward shared goals, and they follow up individually with families to work on problem-solving. All four schools have adopted similar strategies—and are seeing progress as a result.
  • Powerful relationship-building: By far the most important tool for improving attendance is proving to be relationships. As Principal Manager Nick Green explains, “In the past, following up with families when students are out was just a formality. We were just going through the motions.” Rachael Dengler shares one way that looks in practice: “no more robocalls.”  

Nick elaborates: “Now, our school teams are making calls with care and curiosity, making sure families know just how badly we want to see their children’s smiling faces in our building each day. Our leaders are meeting with families regularly and with urgency to intervene and prevent any further missed learning opportunities. They are sending the message that we love their kids and we all need them to be present and learning.”

Students holding monthly perfect attendance certificates
Just some of the Archbishop Lyke students with perfect attendance in October.

St. Francis principal Molly Hanna echoes the importance of relationships when it comes to finding the incentives that inspire students to keep up attendance. “We provided a McDonald’s lunch to students with perfect attendance for the month, and that wasn’t nearly as effective as other activities like the pie throwing or other activities that students get to do together. So we are adapting our rewards as a result. Our next one will be a surprise dance party. It’s free, and it gives students what they want the most: fun time together.”

It can be alarmingly easy to slip into chronic absenteeism; just two or more days absent a month put a student at risk of falling behind. The biggest challenges to regular attendance? “Transportation,” Rachael says without hesitation, adding that “we continue to see too that when one student is sick, a parent keeps all the children home—in some cases, so that older children can help with younger siblings who are sick.” 

Since the Partnership began, the three pillars of focus, excellence, and support have guided our work. In the case of attendance, all three pillars are essential. A relentless, network-wide focus on making ambitious progress, along with meaningful support from the network team for work that is best done by school personnel with the closest relationships with families—are helping us tackle attendance challenges that are as varied as the families we serve.

*Data in this post have been updated.

Every Minute Matters: The National School Attendance Crisis

Posted on the walls of several Partnership Schools and lived out in their daily routines is this root belief: Every minute matters. When it comes to school attendance, ample research demonstrates that to be true; every minute in school matters. And yet in the last few years, too many schools have sent the opposite message. They have communicated that school is inessential. The result? We are facing historic declines in student achievement and historic increases in chronic absenteeism, and a generation of children is at risk. 

The data is as stark as it is clear. Among low-income Kindergarteners, missing just two school days a month is a strong predictor that a student will perform in the lowest levels of reading and math even years later, in fifth grade. By sixth grade, students who miss ten percent or more of school—the equivalent of just two days per month—are far more likely to drop out of high school than those who attend school regularly. 

Alarmingly, the number of students who are “chronically absent”—i.e., the number who miss 10 percent of school each year—has doubled since 2020, from 8 million in 2019 to 16 million by the Spring of 2022. 

There are many factors that have contributed to this sharp rise in absenteeism, but one is the culture that we, as a nation, unintentionally created when we shuttered schools for far longer than was necessary–and for far longer than any other developed nation. Too many national, state, and district leaders put reopening bars and restaurants ahead of schools, and too many told parents “not to worry” if their children fell behind. A post widely shared on social media in the spring of 2020—even by schools—demonstrates this cavalier treatment of the harm that even then school closures were causing:

Across the Partnership Schools, we also experienced a decline in daily attendance, but because we reopened as soon as we were able in fall, 2020—and because we have prioritized rebuilding a culture of daily attendance—that decline is miniscule. Prior to Covid, our schools had daily attendance rates greater than 95 percent. Since Covid, our daily attendance rate has hovered around 91 percent—a number that, while obviously quite strong, we remain committed to improving.

“I watch what I do to see what I believe,” Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ, once said—reminding us that to have integrity, our actions must match our words. Continuing to live out our belief that every minute in school matters is a daily call to action that our school leaders are meeting head-on, with a range of intentional strategies.

For example, when the team at St. Athanasius found that the school’s information system didn’t give them the quick, holistic view of attendance they sought each morning, they created their own tracker to speed up identification of students and classes with emerging attendance issues, so teachers and the administration can respond to them quickly. 

They’ve increased communication with all parents about attendance, emphasizing its importance and clarifying what constitutes a legitimate absence. “Please don’t come to school when you are sick,” Principal Jessica Aybar explains. “But if it’s raining, if your uniform pants are still in the dryer, if we’ve got a half-day of school on Friday—none of those are acceptable reasons to miss school, and we make that clear.” 

St. Athanasius Principal Jessica Aybar.

Jessica and other principals also have “courageous, honest, transparent conversations about the very real effect of being absent” with parents whose children are absent often. “I explain that it’s not just two days at home; that’s two math lessons, two English Language Arts lessons. And the truth is that if your child is missing many lessons each month, we can’t catch them up for all that. The teacher is never going to teach that whole lesson again. We are always here to support our students along the way, but the larger the gaps, the harder it is to fill.” She describes the setbacks of frequent absences layered on top of pandemic learning delays as “running on a treadmill and going nowhere.” 

She also works sympathetically with parents on the unglamorous parenting routines that guard the school’s belief that “learning is sacred work.” She says that she and other administrators “need to work with parents to find solutions–’yeah, I really do have to get them to bed earlier’, or pack lunches or lay out uniforms the night before. We’re not calling just to get on your case, but because we really care and want to see your child here,” she adds.

The school also makes the collective impact of individual attendance transparent to students. Every day that a whole class is present, it is a cause for celebration—perhaps a snack or additional free time that can mean a lot to students. “We make it clear to the kids that it is a very good thing when all of you are here.” 

Over the course of months, collective action broke the habit of consistent school attendance for millions of American students, including some of ours. Rebuilding that habit is essential—not just for the sake of the students we are so happy to see every day, but for our communities as a whole.