What We’re Learning From Our Investments in Reducing Chronic Absenteeism

This post is authored by Meghan McCormick, Research & Impact Officer, and Jessica Siegel, a research fellow at Overdeck Family Foundation.

Chronic absenteeism—defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year—has emerged as one of the most pressing challenges facing schools today. During the COVID-19 pandemic, national rates of chronic absenteeism nearly doubled, rising from 15 percent in 2019 to 28.5 percent in 2022. Two years later, those numbers still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, with 23.5 percent of students considered chronically absent in 2024. The consequences for learning are profound: students who are chronically absent in the early grades are less likely to read proficiently by third grade, more likely to fall behind academically, and at higher risk of dropping out of high school.

Despite the urgency of this issue, the field lacks rigorous evidence on what drives chronic absenteeism—particularly post-pandemic—and which solutions are most effective at reducing it. Policymakers, school leaders, and teachers have long recognized the importance of attendance, but have often lacked clear guidance on where to focus resources and which strategies are most likely to succeed.

Recognizing this gap, in August 2024, Overdeck Family Foundation awarded $1 million to support five new studies designed to generate actionable insights into boosting attendance from Pre-K through high school. We also funded the nonprofit Attendance Works to convene a national learning network of researchers engaged in evidence-building on reducing absenteeism, enabling them to share and align on findings to maximize impact on policy and practice.

Now, a year into this investment, early lessons are beginning to emerge. While the research is still underway and no results are final, the initial findings provide important signals about where schools and districts can focus their efforts. Taken together, they suggest three areas of opportunity: 1) strengthening real-time data and early warning systems; 2) investing in school climate and relationships; and 3) testing scalable, cost-effective interventions that connect families and schools.

Early data can unlock timely intervention

Researchers are finding that attendance problems emerge early in the school year and can be predicted with surprising accuracy. That means schools with strong, real-time data systems are better positioned to quickly identify students at risk of chronic absenteeism and act before the problem becomes entrenched.

For example, researchers from Texas Tech University are finding that absenteeism in the first six weeks of school reliably predicts whether a student will become chronically absent by the end of the academic year. This pattern appears to hold across grade levels and demographics, underscoring the early weeks of school as a critical intervention window.

Similarly, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania are currently studying attendance in West Virginia’s K-12 public school system, which serves about 250,000 students. Early findings indicate that 85 percent of students who ended up being chronically absent post-pandemic had missed at least five days of school in the first six weeks during all years studied. Notably, these absences were often “random” days off rather than long illnesses or vacations—patterns that are harder to identify without robust data.

These findings suggest a key takeaway: by investing in real-time data systems that allow for close monitoring of attendance in the first weeks of the academic year, schools can take steps to intervene before absences become chronic.

Relationships and school climate are critical

While early data matter, numbers alone cannot solve the problem of absenteeism. Research is finding that students and families make decisions about attendance in the context of relationships with teachers, peers, and administrators, as well as their perceptions of whether school feels safe, welcoming, and worthwhile.

By analyzing attendance for nearly 95,000 middle school students, researchers at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research are finding initial evidence that post-pandemic absenteeism varies widely between schools with similar pre-pandemic attendance rates. What appear to be key predictors are student-reported measures of climate, such as safety, connectedness, and trust between teachers and parents. These are stronger predictors of attendance than neighborhood poverty or family education levels, suggesting that strong relationships are a critical factor driving students’ engagement in learning.

Similarly, a UC Davis study of 600 California districts is finding that stronger family engagement practices correlate with lower chronic absence rates. Districts where leaders report investing in building partnerships with parents and incorporating family input into decision-making have seen meaningful reductions in absenteeism. Specifically, a one-point increase in the researchers’ family engagement index is associated with a 1.5 percentage point decrease in absenteeism for multilingual learners and a 1.8 percentage point decrease for kindergarteners.

Though findings are preliminary, these studies reinforce what educators have long observed: attendance is, in part, shaped by belonging. When students feel connected and families are valued as partners, absences may be lower and less likely to negatively affect learning outcomes.

Tailored, low-cost interventions hold promise

Lastly, researchers are finding evidence that small, low-cost interventions can have outsized effects, particularly when they help strengthen school-family partnerships.

In a randomized controlled trial of Show Up 2 Group Up, a text message-based intervention designed to reduce absenteeism in preschool and kindergarten, researchers from the University of Chicago Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab found that preschoolers whose parents received light-touch behavioral text messages attended 4.3 percent more days than peers. Next, researchers will test whether an updated version can improve attendance at scale.

These findings align with earlier work by researchers at Harvard University that found low-cost “nudges” can meaningfully improve attendance. For example, in a pre-pandemic study done in Philadelphia, a single mailed postcard encouraging guardians to prioritize school reduced absences by approximately 2.4 percent. In a separate study, the team found that messages providing clear and accurate information to parents about their child’s accumulated number of absences reduced chronic absenteeism by 10 percent.

Together, these insights demonstrate that reducing absenteeism does not always require resource-intensive solutions. Well-designed, cost-effective approaches can move the needle when supported by strong data and relationships.

Looking ahead

Chronic absenteeism is not inevitable. With the right systems, relationships, and supports, schools can ensure students are present, learning, and thriving. The biggest challenge now is to make the investments that deliver on that promise.

Aligned with our core value of “learn better, together,” our team is committed to promoting transparent research practices by lifting up timely findings of the research we fund. While these studies are ongoing and findings have yet to be finalized and published, we believe they point to actionable priorities for school and district leaders to help increase attendance this school year.

To stay up-to-date on the latest news from our Foundation, subscribe to our newsletter and explore the findings from our latest research grants in our Research Repository.

This post reflects the views and interpretations of the research team at Overdeck Family Foundation.

Header image by Jan Budomo on Unsplash