Principal Investigator
Leah Walker – TalkingPoints
Project Description
This study involved over 30,000 students from 71 schools within the Tulsa Public School district. The research team used observational data and propensity score matching to evaluate the impact of TalkingPoints on student attendance rates. The study compared the outcomes of TalkingPoints users and non-users during the spring term (March-June 2021). It was impossible for the team to create comparable matches for some grades. As such, those grades are excluded from analyses. The team used administrative data on student attendance, demographic information, and data on students’ NWEA MAP scores in fall, winter, and spring.
Research Questions
- How did school-wide adoption of TalkingPoints affect student attendance outcomes?
- Did the impact vary between students from Spanish-speaking and English-speaking households?
Key Findings
Findings revealed that the use of TalkingPoints was associated with improvements in student attendance across all grades with sufficient sample sizes and adequate matches (kindergarten through fifth grade, seventh grade). The magnitude of the findings translates into about two additional days in school during the study period. On average, the research team estimated that use of TalkingPoints was associated with a 24 percent reduction in absenteeism for grades included in the analyses.
Study Citation
Tan, X., Walker, L. & Luczkow, A. (2024). Effective family-school partnerships lead to improved student attendance: How the TalkingPoints universal family engagement platform decreased absence in Tulsa Public Schools. TalkingPoints Research Report. Retrieved from: https://learn.talkingpts.org/hubfs/pdf/TalkingPoints-Tulsa-Attendance-Research.pdf?hsLang=en
The Key Findings above were reproduced from the published report and do not necessarily reflect interpretation of Overdeck Family Foundation staff.
