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Prioritizing Chronic Absenteeism: 4 Actions You Can Take in May 

Julie Incitti, MSW, APSW, SSPW School Social Work Consultant

At this point in the school year, you may feel a small sense of dread when looking at your attendance reports. Students have had enough time to rack up any number of absences, excused or not. While you may have a strong urge to stuff the reports under your office rug and simply hope the school year ends as soon as possible, there is another way. May is the perfect time of year to take a few actions towards improving where your school will be in terms of absenteeism numbers at this time next year. But you have a lot on your plate, is it really worth prioritizing chronic absenteeism? 

Simply put, if students are not at school, they cannot benefit from anything else that you are working on. They miss out on important academic learning and positive social interactions. Even more of a predictor than test scores, chronic absenteeism as a data point predicts which students are more likely to drop out of high school before graduation (USDOE 2019), leaving students without the academic credentials and skills needed to hold good jobs or make enough to support their families (Attendance Works 2022; Attendance Works 2014). 

Ok, but you work in an elementary school, so there is no need to worry about absenteeism yet, right? Wrong. Students who have chronic absenteeism rates in kindergarten and first grade are at a greater risk of not being able to read by third grade (USDOE 2019). This matters, because students who are not at grade level by the time third grade ends are four times more likely to end up dropping out of high school (USDOE 2019). In fact, policy makers say that when resources are limited, it can have the most impact to focus regular attendance efforts at the elementary level.  

So, what works to improve chronic absenteeism rates? There are three main things to keep in mind as you think of solutions. Effective work in this area focuses on integrated systems, collaboration, and school belonging. What are four actions you can take in May?

  1. Proactive home visits - Identify students with chronic absenteeism rates this school year and make a list of students to visit in August. Identify staff and a template to follow. Stronger family engagement corresponds with lower rates of chronic absenteeism (Learning Heroes & TNTP, 2023).

Tips
  • Don’t just show up. Communicate with families in advance. Schedule a time to connect. Offer to meet in another location such as a library or community center.
  • Send a friendly face. Effective visits include both an administrator or trauma sensitive school resource officer (SRO) and a school social worker, school counselor, or teacher. 
  • Center student voice. 

  1. Review and revise your habitual truancy letters per Wis. Stat. § 18.16(2)(cg) -  Schools must notify parents when students become habitually truant. While specific information must be included in these letters, they are most effective when they incorporate trauma-sensitive welcoming tone and language. 

Tips

  • Before a letter is sent to families, best practice would have classroom teachers and other staff reaching out to students and families to show compassion and concern for absences. This letter would not be the first time a family is notified of truancies. 
  • Research related to the truancy letters indicates shorter and simpler letters that chunk information and highlight the most important points are most effective (Lasky-Fink et al. 2020). 

  1. Convene a cross-system truancy committee - It’s about building an integrated system specific to the local context and involves students, families, and community partners (Future Ed 2023; Attendance Works 2018; Fullan & Matsuda 2024). 

Tips

  • Engage a continuum of supports based on the unique strengths and needs of your community, school, families, and individual students.
  • Leverage Wis. Stat. § 118.162 to access your county’s truancy committee report, and to reassess your district’s truancy plan.
  • Build a shared understanding. Our approach is built upon our beliefs about what unexcused absences are telling us, and these beliefs affect our policies and procedures. When we have a shared understanding, we can build a shared vision with shared responsibility.

  1. Hold a focus group (or three) - An integrated system tracks and uses data and focuses on getting to the root causes of school-wide and individual absenteeism.  At a systemic level, analysis can help schools and community partners anticipate community needs, identify the scope of attendance issues to effectively target interventions, and investigate the strengths, needs, and solutions for sub-populations of students. 

Tips

  • Gather information from subpopulations most impacted by chronic absenteeism on their strengths and needs from their perspective.
  • When holding a focus group or community discussion, have concrete plans for how the discussion information will be used and relay this information to participants.

Maybe you have heard about a cool initiative in a local district. Can you replicate it in your district and be done? Not likely. DPI encourages local community leaders to collaborate to match local needs and strengths, which is an essential ingredient in attendance improvement (Future Ed 2023; Attendance Works 2018; Fullan & Matsuda 2024). Any way you slice it, solutions here are complex and take time, however your school district has people like you who are innovative, intelligent,  and compassionate making solutions well within reach. 

Resources

Need some background information on definitions and state reporting? 

  • Truancy:  Missing part or all of one day unexcused, “part” is defined by the district policy.
  • Habitual Truancy: Missing part or all of five days unexcused in one semester, “part” is defined by the district (often when people talk about truancy, they really mean habitual truancy).
  • Chronic Absenteeism: Missing 10 percent of the school year for any reason, excused or unexcused.

Since the definitions of truancy and habitual truancy are defined by district policy, these numbers cannot be compared across districts. Local school board policies vary widely across the state. School districts create codes in their Student Information Systems to track reasons for absences and locations of students. The district does not report the reasons for absences to DPI. DPI does not collect truancy and habitual truancy data. There are specific calculations for reporting present attendance to DPI. Chronic absenteeism data is included on the district report card, whereas truancy data is not. It is chronic absenteeism data that is linked in the research to negative outcomes. It is important for schools to use this data to help identify students who need support early. 

References