Reducing Chronic Absenteeism: Lessons from Community Schools

Educators, policymakers, and families share concerns about the significant decline in school attendance since the onset of pandemic-induced school closures. According to a 2023 report, the national rate of chronically absent students—those missing 10% or more of school days—nearly doubled from 2018 to 2022, reaching 28%. Although attendance has started to improve in some states, chronic absenteeism remains 75% higher, on average, than prepandemic levels. California mirrors this trend, with chronic absenteeism rising to 30% in 2022 before decreasing to 25% in 2023, still well above prepandemic levels.

When students miss school, they lose opportunities for learning and social interaction as well as access to critical services. Research shows that chronically absent students are more likely to fall behind academically, disengage socially, and drop out of school altogether. Because absenteeism is strongly associated with these important student outcomes, it is crucial that policymakers, educators, and researchers identify effective strategies to alleviate it.

Community schools have emerged as a promising approach to mitigate chronic absenteeism, as they are adept at organizing supports for students and families and creating conditions for rich learning and well-being. Support and funding for community schools has increased in recent years at both the federal and state level. California has become a leader in implementation in recent years, supported by an unprecedented $4.1 billion investment through the California Community Schools Partnership Program. The program provides grants that enable school and district partnerships with community agencies and local government to support students’ academic, physical, and mental development.

This report examines how four California community schools—Buena Vista Horace Mann, Elk Hills Elementary, Helen Keller Elementary, and Lucille Roybal-Allard Elementary—significantly reduced their chronic absenteeism rates postpandemic. Drawing on interviews with school leaders and personnel, it highlights proactive and interventionist attendance strategies that have enabled these schools to reduce chronic absenteeism. Insights from these efforts can guide educators and policymakers nationwide in addressing attendance challenges effectively.

Strategies for Reducing Chronic Absenteeism

The featured community schools use comprehensive, holistic approaches aimed at creating a culture of support to combat chronic absenteeism. Key strategies include:

• Improving Family Engagement. The selected schools utilized several strategies to build relationships with families and engage them in attendance efforts, including phone calls and texts for unexcused absences, outreach campaigns focused on the importance of consistent attendance, and home visits to connect students and families with needed resources. These strategies were crucial in supporting families to recalibrate attendance expectations, which were disrupted during the pandemic.
   
• Increasing Student Connectedness. The featured community schools prioritize student connectedness to school through relationship-building and enrichment opportunities that promote students’ enthusiasm for school attendance. These include advisory groups, mentorship programs, and a wide range of extracurricular activities that incorporate student interests and facilitate friendships between students and their peers.
   
• Systematically Tracking and Analyzing Data. Community schools included in this report have developed consistent systems for collecting, tracking, and analyzing attendance data. These systems help school staff to examine attendance patterns, identify students nearing or exceeding the chronic absenteeism threshold, and develop targeted supports and intervention strategies.
   
• Utilizing Tiered Systems of Support. The selected community schools leverage differentiated strategies to support student attendance. These include universal strategies like attendance incentives and relationship-building opportunities, as well as targeted interventions such as home visits and referrals to community resources for students who need more intensive support.
   
• Leveraging Partnerships. Partnerships with external organizations are critical for addressing specific attendance barriers. Community schools included in this report utilize partnerships to provide services like housing support, before- and after-school programming, and mental health services.
   
• Deploying Community School Coordinators. Comprehensively addressing barriers to school attendance is time-intensive and skilled work. In the featured community schools, community school coordinators play a pivotal role in identifying attendance challenges and implementing strategies to promote attendance, from data analysis to family engagement and partnership management. They are essential to building cohesive systems that effectively address the unique needs of students and families.

Key Takeaways for Reducing Chronic Absenteeism

The strategies above demonstrate key learnings about effective approaches to increasing school attendance:

• Proactive and Preventive Approaches. Rather than waiting for problems to arise, the community schools included in this report proactively engage families and students by sharing the importance of consistent attendance and information about students’ attendance data. They also focus on building family relationships and nurturing a sense of connection, making community schools places where students and families want to be.
   
• Trusting Relationships. By building trusting relationships with students and families and partnering with them to problem-solve attendance barriers together, the featured community schools adopt a restorative approach rather than a punitive approach, which might involve disciplinary actions such as employing truant officers or taking legal action against parents.
   
• Systematic Data Utilization. Utilizing robust data systems, the selected community schools identify underlying causes of absenteeism and develop targeted interventions. By leveraging a tiered system of supports, the schools offer a coherent approach to supporting attendance that builds upon their approach to addressing challenges in other areas.
   
• Dedicated Capacity. The range of challenges that contribute to chronic absenteeism necessitate additional capacity to address attendance barriers. Community school coordinators can play a key role on attendance teams, spearhead family engagement, manage external partnerships, and coordinate support services, ensuring a comprehensive approach to attendance improvement.
   
• Collaboration. Collaboration among administrators, school support teams, and community school coordinators helped schools meet student and family attendance challenges. The principals at these sites, in particular, engaged in a collaborative leadership approach that provided coordinators the support and flexibility to take this on.
   
• Systems-Level Support. The featured community schools are part of community school initiatives receiving state funding through the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP). The CCSPP prioritizes many of the strategies identified in this report, such as implementing a tiered approach to intervention and engaging community partners. The districts in which the featured community schools are located provide support for participating schools that aligns with the community schools approach. This systemic context reinforces the work of individual schools, allowing them to expand their efforts rather than battling against a misaligned system.

Reducing Chronic Absenteeism: Lessons from Community Schools by Emily Germain, Laura E. Hernández, Sarah Klevan, Rebecca S. Levine, and Anna Maier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This research was supported by the Stuart Foundation and The California Endowment. Core operating support for LPI is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Heising-Simons Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Skyline Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott. We are grateful to them for their generous support. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not those of our funders.