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Resources

Resources

Research

  • How Can We Improve Student Attendance? A Framework to Guide Schools

    Schools in Michigan and around the country are developing new strategies to reduce chronic absenteeism and improve student attendance. This means implementing new practices, developing new organizational systems, and assigning new staff responsibilities or even creating new staff roles. In this brief, we offer a framework to guide schools’ efforts to improve student attendance.  The framework is based on two dimensions: the impact of different types of strategies, and the cost and effort required to implement those types of strategies.

  • Identifying Effective Attendance Strategies in Michigan

    Michigan schools show consistent differences in how much they improve student attendance, but no single strategy explains those gains. Strong attendance outcomes come from coherent, well‑implemented systems that support students and address broader factors like school climate, relationships, and structural barriers.

  • Rethinking Absenteeism

    This work reframes chronic absenteeism as a symptom of broader social and economic inequities rather than a simple school accountability metric. Drawing on eight years of research in Detroit, it shows that school-based strategies alone struggle to improve attendance in high‑need contexts because the roots of absenteeism often lie beyond what schools can address.

  • What are Michigan Schools Doing to Reduce Chronic Absenteeism?

    This brief highlights results from a statewide survey of Michigan school leaders, revealing how schools are approaching chronic absenteeism. The findings provide insight into the attendance strategies, systems, and responses schools are using across the state as they work to address rising absenteeism.

Organizations

Attendance Works           US Department of Education