In the Plano Independent School District, attendance is more than just a number, it’s the foundation for student success, school funding, and community growth. With 73 campuses serving 48,000 students who speak 82 different languages, the district faces complex challenges around chronic absenteeism. Yet, by weaving together communication, family engagement, and strategic partnerships, Plano ISD is building a model of how districts can maintain high attendance rates while supporting diverse student needs.

A Clear Vision: 96% Attendance for All Students

Plano ISD has set an ambitious but achievable goal: maintaining a 96% or higher attendance rate across all student groups. This commitment reflects a district-wide belief that consistent attendance is essential for learning, equity, and long-term achievement.

To support this vision, district leaders developed a comprehensive action plan that integrates early identification, tiered interventions, and campus-level accountability. Attendance is no longer treated as an isolated issue but as a shared responsibility across teachers, principals, families, and community partners.

Meeting the Challenges of a Diverse District

Plano ISD has experienced a significant rise in its emerging bilingual population since 2015. Recognizing that language can be a barrier to engagement, the district prioritizes multilingual communication, from newsletters to social media updates, so every family feels seen and supported.

The emphasis on clear, caring communication is woven into every touchpoint. Instead of traditional tardy slips, the district now issues “welcome slips”, a small but powerful shift that reframes attendance as belonging rather than punishment.

Partnerships that Drive Engagement and Funding

A standout feature of Plano ISD’s strategy is its ability to rally the community around attendance. Partnerships extend across:

Local businesses and faith-based organizations that provide wraparound support for families.
Professional sports teams like the Dallas Mavericks, who reward students with game tickets for strong attendance.
Education foundations and nonprofits, which help fill gaps in funding and services.

These partnerships not only incentivize students but also strengthen public awareness of why attendance matters. The district has even tracked the financial impact, noting $300,000 in savings linked to improved attendance interventions.

Engaging Families as Partners

Parents are central to Plano ISD’s attendance improvement efforts. Through surveys like the family partnership essay, the district gathers direct feedback on barriers families face and resources they need. Parent liaisons host in-person sessions, helping families connect the dots between attendance and long-term academic outcomes.

By creating opportunities for two-way communication, the district ensures solutions aren’t just top-down but co-created with families who understand their children’s unique challenges.

Restorative Practices and Wraparound Services

Plano ISD’s efforts go beyond monitoring attendance numbers. Restorative practices and the Plano Attendance Review Board give students and families the chance to address underlying challenges, whether social, emotional, or economic. Counselors and social workers provide wraparound services, ensuring students not only show up to school but are also ready to learn.

Recognizing and Celebrating Progress

To keep momentum strong, Plano ISD celebrates schools that make gains through its Attendance Campus Champions program. Competitive elements, posters, and monthly recognition help keep attendance top of mind for staff and students alike.

Lessons for Other Districts

Plano ISD’s approach shows that tackling chronic absenteeism requires a balance of data-driven strategy and human-centered engagement. By aligning communication, partnerships, and restorative supports, the district is making attendance a shared community priority.

The takeaway for other districts? Attendance improves when families feel supported, students feel celebrated, and the community feels invested.

About the Presenter

Sharon Bradley is a Texas education leader with more than 25 years of experience in student engagement, equity, and dropout prevention. She has served as a teacher, principal, and district administrator, leading initiatives that significantly reduced chronic absenteeism and built stronger systems of support for students and families. Widely recognized for her innovative and equity-driven approach, Sharon has been honored nationally for her impact in helping districts reimagine attendance and student success. She now serves as a Principal Consultant at RaaWee K12.

Summary

Mr. Carampatan from Aldine ISD presented strategies to boost student attendance and combat absenteeism, emphasizing the importance of RaaWee Attendance+ tools. The district saw a 1.08% increase in ADA, with 52% of campuses achieving at least a 1% growth. RaaWee’s warning letters and attendance contracts significantly improved attendance. The district’s plan involved data-driven decisions, weekly monitoring, Triad’s parental support, and monthly rewards to boost attendance.

Data-Driven Absenteeism Reduction

Aldine ISD implemented RaaWee Attendance+ to enhance student attendance across 83 campuses. After a year of use, the district saw a 1.08% increase in Average Daily Attendance (ADA), with 52% of campuses achieving at least a 1% improvement. Automated warning letters and attendance contracts played a crucial role in this success.

Stakeholder Collaboration and Strategic Planning

Aldine emphasized a structured approach by defining roles, engaging stakeholders, and leveraging data from E-School for decision-making. Weekly monitoring, structured support, and positive reinforcement, such as financial incentives and monthly competitions, sustained progress.

Targeted Attendance Support for Schools

To address varying attendance challenges, campuses were categorized using SAC criteria. Schools with higher absenteeism received tailored action plans and additional support to drive improvement.

Utilizing RaaWee Attendance+ for Effective Interventions

RaaWee Attendance+ streamlined attendance tracking, automated alerts, and ensured timely interventions. The district also partnered with Triad, a Harris County service, to provide parental training and prevent truancy.

Sustaining a Culture of Accountability

Aldine ISD ensured a smooth implementation through clear communication and phased rollouts. By celebrating successes and refining strategies, the district continues to foster a culture of accountability and engagement, applying consistent attendance policies across all grade levels.

About the Presenter

Paul Carampatan, Director of School Administration at Aldine ISD.

Paul Carampatan is dedicated to student success as the Director of Student Services at Aldine ISD in Texas. He oversees programs that support diverse student needs and focuses on equity and access.

With over a decade of experience in educational administration, Paul collaborates with teachers, parents, and community partners to foster a supportive environment. He advocates for mental health awareness and social-emotional learning.

In his free time, Paul enjoys family activities and exploring Texas’s cultural diversity, making a positive impact on Aldine ISD students.

Strategies to Tackle Chronic Absenteeism

Hedy Chang from Attendance Works discussed tackling chronic absenteeism post-pandemic through empathy interviews, student focus groups, and a tiered support system. She also referenced the ‘Back to the Classroom’ report by the Ad Council Research Institute, highlighting the importance of positive, supportive messaging. To reduce chronic absenteeism by 50% over five years, Chang emphasized the need for systemic, data-informed strategies, an approach shared by RaaWee Attendance+, which supports schools in making informed, student-centered attendance interventions.

understanding the Root Causes of Chronic Absenteeism
Hedy Chang from Attendance Works emphasized the critical need to understand why students miss school, advocating for tools like empathy interviews, student focus groups, and attendance cafés to gather meaningful insights. She highlighted a post-pandemic surge in chronic absenteeism driven by weakened learning conditions, such as reduced student engagement, safety concerns, and a lack of belonging.

Tiered Support Systems for Sustainable Change
Chang introduced a tiered support system to address absenteeism, beginning with foundational strategies like clear communication and positive reinforcement, and escalating to more targeted interventions.

Positive Messaging and Trusted Relationships
Referencing the “Back to the Classroom” report by the Ad Council Research Institute, Chang emphasized the power of positive, supportive messaging over shaming families. She underscored the importance of trusted messengers like teachers in effectively communicating the value of attendance.

A Nationwide Commitment to Reducing Chronic Absenteeism
Chang proposed a nationwide goal of reducing chronic absenteeism by 50% over five years, a vision already backed by 14 states and Washington, D.C. She called on districts to adopt this goal and work with community partners to build long-lasting, systemic improvements. Like RaaWee Attendance+, Chang’s vision centers on using data-informed strategies and community engagement to drive meaningful, long-term change in student attendance.

About the Presenter

Hedy Chang is the founder and executive director of the nonprofit initiative, Attendance Works. Founded in 2010, Attendance Works is the nation’s go-to resource for attendance policy and practice. A skilled presenter, facilitator, researcher and writer, Hedy co-authored the seminal report, Present, Engaged and Accounted For: The Critical Importance of Addressing Chronic Absence in the Early Grades, as well as numerous other articles about student attendance.

Deeply committed to promoting two-generation solutions to achieving a more just society, Hedy has spent over three decades working in the fields of family support, family economic success, education and child development. She served as a senior program officer at the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund and as co-director of California Tomorrow. Hedy has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and B.A. from Occidental College. In 2024, Hedy was named as the Policy Leader of the Year by the National Association of State Boards of Education.

In the US, she is a leader in absenteeism, understanding school attendance problems and translating this into practice models for implementation. She is forging partnerships in colleges to establish the area as a formal field of study.

Improving Overall Student Attendance

Angela Daniels from Garland Independent School District (ISD) in Garland, TX, recently shared valuable strategies her team employed for student attendance improvement and dropout recovery, showcasing remarkable success in increasing high school attendance from 90.59% in 2023 to 93.2% in 2024. With a student population of 51,000 spread across 70 campuses, Garland ISD faces significant challenges in terms of truancy, which affects approximately 14% of students, and chronic absenteeism, impacting around 9%. Given that 72% of students are economically disadvantaged and 50% classified as at-risk, addressing attendance issues is paramount for the success and well-being of students in the district.

To support their attendance intervention efforts, Garland ISD utilizes the RaaWee Attendance+ system, which provides essential tools and reporting capabilities. This system aids the district in tracking attendance interventions, showcasing proof points, and analyzing trends related to student instructional minutes and funding recovery efforts. By leveraging data effectively, the district can pinpoint areas needing improvement and measure the impact of their strategies.

Addressing Dropout Recovery

Focusing specifically on high school students, particularly ninth graders, the district implemented root cause analysis and flexible scheduling to identify key problem areas affecting attendance. Attendance specialists were designated at each campus, and data was meticulously analyzed by grade level, race, gender, and teacher impact. Recognizing that transition years, such as moving from eighth to ninth grade, often present challenges, the district prioritized these students through home visits and summer outreach initiatives.

One notable initiative is the RISE program, which allows students to customize their schedules to accommodate personal and family challenges. This program encourages collaboration with counseling, special programs, and other stakeholders to establish fair and equitable criteria for participation. Impressively, 85% of participants in the RISE program continued their education or graduated, highlighting the program’s effectiveness.

Angela emphasized the importance of data analysis, collaboration, and celebrating small wins throughout the process. She also stressed the necessity of structured plans, ongoing checkpoints, and stakeholder involvement that extends beyond just the attendance team. By creating equitable solutions and fostering engagement and positive attendance, Garland ISD is dedicated to supporting students in staying present, connected, and thriving in their educational journeys. Their comprehensive approach serves as a model for other districts striving to improve student attendance and overall success.

About the Presenter

Angela Daniels, M.Ed., Student Engagement Administrator, Student Services, Garland ISD, TX

Angela is a former Intervention Coordinator and teacher with 20 years of experience developing unique opportunities to help all students succeed. She has led initiatives that have reduced dropout rates and enhanced student engagement. She holds certifications in Education Leadership and Dropout Prevention.

The Collective Approach to Chronic Absenteeism

Widespread Problem in Schools

Chronic absenteeism is rising in schools nationwide as the latest national data reveals that approx. 70% of schools are experiencing increased student absences. Student absenteeism has a ripple effect on the school, family, and community. This urgent crisis demands immediate, effective action from all school community stakeholders.

Addressing Truancy Through Collaboration

To tackle the rise in chronic absenteeism, school leaders and educators must focus on working together through multi-tiered interventions. Solving truancy needs a united effort from schools, families, and community members to create effective solutions. Understanding why students miss school and finding ways to re-engage them involves teachers, counselors, and community support.

Tiered Support for Improvement

Members of “the collective” need effective support at three levels: preventative (Tier 1), targeted (Tier 2), and individualized (Tier 3). Universal strategies should help all students, and training sessions can help staff spot early signs of disengagement. Information on truancy and attendance rules should be shared with parents during registration, and classes in different languages should be offered throughout the year. Students should also learn about good attendance habits during the first week of school.

The Importance of School Attendance

Daily school attendance is key to student success, affecting academic performance and behavior. Absenteeism impacts schools, families, and communities. Districts must create systems that bring together staff, families, and partners to address attendance challenges. Dan Heath’s book “Upstream” discusses strategies to gather the right people to solve root problems, inspiring leaders to work together on improving attendance.

Building Partnerships for Attendance Improvement

Strong partnerships between schools, families, and communities are essential for overcoming attendance barriers. Join my online webinar, “Where Are Our Students?” at Chronic Absenteeism Online Training | ED311 Events for strategies aimed at administrators, teachers, school nurses, counselors, businesses, and community organizations.

Resources

Quick Reference Attendance Guide: www.nprinc.com/chronic-absenteeism/ RestorativeFlo Consulting Website: www.restorativefloeducationalsolutions.com
LinkedIn: Sharon Bradley, M.Ed. | LinkedIn

About the Author

Sharon Bradley is the Principal Consultant of RestorativeFlo Educational Solutions, LLC and also serves as a school district administrator where she has helped shape the district’s approach to social and emotional development and truancy prevention for all students. Throughout her 22 years in education, she has served as director, alternative high school principal, assistant principal, dropout prevention program coordinator, special education teacher, and behavior specialist. In her current role, she supports programs such as: Attendance, Social Emotional Learning, Restorative Practices, and Parent Education and Engagement. Sharon Bradley has recently been recognized by Education-First “SEL in Action” and D CEO Magazine for her innovative efforts of leveraging SEL to help decrease chronic absenteeism. Sharon is the author of the reference guide “Chronic Absenteeism: Prevention and Intervention Strategies for Schools, Families and Communities”. She is a graduate of Mississippi State University where she earned her bachelor’s degree in Special Education; and her master’s degree in Educational Administration from Prairie View A & M University.

Description

We are dedicated to helping educators get their students back to school. The purpose of this information is to point out some roadblocks that impede progress; to help schools reduce chronic absenteeism and get their school-avoidant kids back to learning. We will propose solutions that you can employ to remove these barriers and improve successful school returns.

Problem: School Avoidance Disrupts Families and Challenges Schools.

School avoidance wreaks havoc on families. The following are some examples of how families in our school avoidance alliance community describe it:

Pernicious, Isolating, Overwhelming, Draining, Gut wrenching, Hopeless, Stressful, and Torturous.

School avoidance also profoundly impacts educators who want to help these kids. These are some ways educators describe it:

Frustrating, Confounding, Helpless, Discouraging, Time-Consuming, Lack of Interventions, Feeling like a failure, and Tiring.

There has been an underwhelming amount of guidance on this issue, so schools and educators must seek solutions independently.

The good news is that you and your colleagues have the power to improve student outcomes.

Schools have to commit to addressing this problem.
Misinformation and misconceptions will hamper your efforts to engage effectively with students and their families.
School staff must be thoroughly educated to start tackling this problem. Once the team is educated, they will feel empowered to utilize appropriate interventions, strategies, and engagement.

Problem: Truancy and School Avoidance are Different.

School avoidance is motivated by severe emotional distress; the parents know the child is not attending and usually are trying to help their kids back. On the other hand, truancy is usually motivated by pleasure and not anxiety-based, it is concealed from the parents, and kids seek to increase positive emotions.

Labeling school-avoidant kids as truants causes inappropriate and often damaging responses.
Kids with school avoidance are not deliberately ditching school. Internal feelings of distress, discomfort and fear cause their avoidant behavior.
An excellent first step would be to adjust how you define truancy and label kids with school avoidance as truant.

Another huge issue that should be evaluated is punitive responses. And responses that feel punitive to families and their students. Family feedback on this issue reveals the following school responses make families think the school is unfeeling, unkind, and punishing.

Curt and cold attendance letters with threats of fines, truancy charges, and court appearances.
Sending police officers to the home
Failing students without considering their school avoidance is caused by mental health challenges or learning differences.
Utilizing grade retention.
Calling in child protective services with no evidence of parental neglect.

The school attendance, mental health, and SEL community have promoted restorative practices over punitive ones for several years. Unfortunately, this guidance needs to trickle down to individual schools faster. These responses often create acrimony between school and home, countering best practices for getting kids back to school.

Problem: Early Interventions Take Work to Achieve.

Early interventions are among the most critical drivers for reducing school avoidance and getting students back quicker. Performing early action is dependent on the following factors:

Educating families on school avoidance, since most parents are unaware of it, they often miss early signs and are unsure how to help the situation.
Families don’t realize their school has a team of mental health professionals available to help them.
Provide your staff with school avoidance professional development to recognize signs, signals, and triggers. Being educated on this unique challenge will show them how to respond and strategically approach each school-avoidant student according to their individual needs.
Another essential suggestion to help improve early interventions is to include your school counselors, attendance staff, school nurses, and truancy folks when you provide school avoidance professional development. These professionals are on the front lines and have access to these students first. They can intervene in the early stages before absenteeism becomes chronic.

Closing

The problem of school avoidance will continue to grow if schools don’t reevaluate their responses and interventions. You may not realize it, but you are an agent of change. It takes one person to start the process. Educators like you deserve that feeling of self-satisfaction and gratitude when you contribute to helping a child back to school and improve their life trajectory.

About the Author

For the past decade, Jayne has been helping families get kids with school avoidance back to school. In 2014, she started the School Avoidance Alliance to educate families and schools on school avoidance best practices and evidence -based solutions. In additional to the School Avoidance Alliance website, Jayne developed one-of-a-kind educational resources for both parents and educators. Some of their resources are, The School Avoidance Parent’s Ultimate Guide to Working with Your School, The School Avoidance Master Class for Parents: A Tier 2 and Tier 3 Intervention for chronic absenteeism, a course schools purchase for parents, and an Educator training course called, Everything You Need to Know to Get Your Students Back to School.

Jayne serves on the International Network for School Attendance (INSA) conference committee and was recently honored as a featured speaker at INSA’s Making Waves in School Attendance Annual Conference in the Netherlands in October 2022. She’s also been featured in Education Week, The Washington Post, CBS News, Yahool Life and USA Today.

from EDMS Expert Series: 02/17/2023

Interventions for Chronic Absenteeism

You cannot punish me if I am not there. Absent students have been screaming this at schools forever. It is a scapegoat complex. Schools believe adding more punishments or rewards will change behavior. It’s true, but only if the student shows up. Students with prolonged absences, for any number of reasons, become separated from the people and the process. No amount of incentives, positive or negative, will get them back. Wholistic targeted interventions, emphasizing people and services, aimed at re-establishing bonds at tier 3 is what is required. This session engages the participants in reviewing a common few interventions, some emerging ones, and top three tips on how to develop your own. In sum, prolonged absence, and avoidance, is more about the school and the people than the academics.

Beware the Likes

With every social media post comes the “likes” and “shares.” Whether we had a great dinner, passed a test, or just went somewhere new, our experiences are being rated. Of late, the rating has moved beyond the experience to a reflection of how much the person and their experiences are liked or un-liked.

The video RATED asked how many stars would you give yourself, if you were truly being honest about your actions, behaviors, and thoughts around others. Then imagine, based on that rating, you walked around with everyone knowing whether you were a 5 or a 1-star person. Even further, imagine your star now influencing your experiences; where ate, services you received, who talked to you, and how others perceived you?

The audience was asked to give their reactions on how they felt after watching the video trailer. Evident below some said it would feel good. Presumably, those were the ones with 4 or 5 stars who would want others to see that they have been good, kind, and trustworthy. On the contrary, many noted they feel bad, ashamed, pressured, embarrassed, frustrated, worried, and even nervous.

Embracing Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS)

The exercise gives us a glimpse into the thinking of students who have higher degree of absenteeism. Though we have embraced evidence-based practices like the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) grounded in public health and framed as an organizing model for response and interventions, the model rates students. Upon reflection, it is a structure, which inadvertently labels students and limits service access based on that label. Thus, when trying to encourage students with prolonged absences to return and engage, they too feel bad, nervous, pressured, frustrated, ashamed, worried, judged, and so on. They feel their good may have been overlooked. The one or two wrong was judged incorrectly and there is no recovery.

Viewing Intervention through a New Lens

The topic my absence, your problem speaks to our response to interventions. We must be able to view interventions through a difference lens. For instance, simply adopting practice that became ‘best practices’ under curated circumstances to our own acculturated student body and resource-gaps is flawed. We must choose interventions to our situated context, leverage the data we have in defining DIY solutions, explore emerging practices in our own schools, and feel free to learn from others to curate our own circumstances. This is imperative because the students are finding themselves in tier 3 of the MTSS model are often less than 5% of our student bodies and require not wholesale interventions but as much specialized attention as possible.

We cannot go any further without defining absenteeism. My definition of absenteeism is

“Absenteeism is the total sum of a student’s in-school and out-of-school experiences”

Each experience fuels the pull and push factor of the student’s engagement in school.

In-school experiences are everything in and about the school environment, everyone in the school environment and all decisions having to do with the school. The converse is also true,
Out-of-school experiences involves everything NOT in or about the school environment, persons in it, and decisions having to do with school.

Therefore, if absenteeism is a problem about experiences, then interventions must be about solving problems. The interventions must solve problems by those who have decision-making power for those who will be impacted through any means (activity, behavior, technology) to disrupt a chain or create an outcome.

My absence means my experiences have created a problem for which YOU must find a solution because it has created a problem for you in keeping me engaged in education. Prolonged absence and school avoidance is more about the school and people in it than the academics. The child still wants to learn and fit in but the dynamics in the school or getting to and staying in the school have affected this desire.

Schools are exceptional in defining and implementing interventions to create outcomes. However, there has never been a true formula simply to enable good or better outcomes for students versus old models of increased punishment. I offer one formula to aid in decision making. Assume A squared is defined as excessive absenteeism and our discussion on experiences and interventions. Then the formula would read A²E + I.

Adjusting the Narrative of Control

The assumption being that anytime we have high rates of excessive absenteeism we would first aim to modify the student experiences in and out of school through interventions that are dialed up or down based on the severity and intensity of the push and pull factors impacting the student. In doing so we are clear that we know no number of in-school incentives will work with the student is absent and that holistic and targeted interventions are the best for the students where emphasize attention to people and services out-of-school to reengage through support, build school bonds, and better relationships. In the end control matters. Students who have moved from direct control to internal control do not respond to rewards and punishment nor pro-social relationships but to their own personal compass. As such, to reclaim them we must do the reverse. We must first appeal to their personal compass, what is important to them through out-of-school supports. Move into building pro-social relationships, which eventually moves them under a surveillance of influence where rewards and punishment can make an impact on decision-making.

Positive outcomes however depend on partnerships. Consider cross-system streaming to share and connect to out-of-school interventions and supports. When doing the intervention via:

DIY – Do. It. Yourself Method:

Be sure to leverage the current data you have and use the formula presented herein. Be sure to Devise, Define, Determine, and Deploy

CURRENT EXAMPLES:

When using a method already in place it is important to ensure that there is a direct match between the defined problem and Solution like the examples below.

EMERGING PRACTICES:

There are many organizations responding to how to effectively meet students where they are. One area is in socio-emotional learning. Some have used training of staff and personnel (like GCSORED)while others have used technology, AI, and other software like (Fight for Life Foundation). The goal is the same identify the problem and match with solution to enable measurement.

Relationships vs Punishment

Sadly, most interventions have been negative and punitive. We have data to show interventions like PBIS, MTSS, Science of Reading, Extra Curricular, etc. can change behavior but many times, we cannot define if the problem for which it was instituted has been solved. We must use the right type of interventions at the right time to make the best impact. Build relationships!

About the Author

Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty, founder, lead consultant, and Chief Education Officer for Pivot Attendance Solutions, has inspired many administrators, educators, students, and school social workers as a past chair of the school’s concentration Masters Curriculum, tenured professor, and Director of the Bachelors for Social Work Program. Having worked closely with Indiana Department of Education to assist school counselors in acquiring a school counselor license and coordinating curriculum mapping and application, she knows the intricacies of working with school-community partnerships. She has been a forerunner in responding to school absenteeism, truancy, and social bonding. She has over 30 years in youth development, 20 years in dropout and truancy and more specifically she brings over 12 years studying, researching, presenting, and writing about absenteeism locally, nationally, and internationally. In the US she is a leader in absenteeism and understanding school attendance problems and translating such into practice models for implementation. She is forging partnerships in colleges to establish the area as a formal field of study.

Federal & State Funding Opportunities

Understanding the world of education finance can be daunting for even the most seasoned of school and district leaders. The good news is, you don’t need to be a financial wizard to make fiscal decisions that will last a lifetime for your students by investing in attendance tracking and improvement technology. Implementing a robust digital platform that includes proactive and reactive strategies, multi-tiered interventions, high quality real time data, and two-way communications has proven to be the most effective approach to truancy abatement.

While chronic absenteeism preceded the pandemic and ballooned during, it has not quite bounced back in the aftermath (if we can even say we have fully reached post-pandemic status). According to the National Center for Education Statistics (July 6, 2022) “Compared to a typical school year prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, 72 percent of U.S. public schools reported an increase in chronic absenteeism among their students. So, what’s happening? That’s what we’d all like to know.

Attendance Tracking

Discovering the root causes of absenteeism, school refusal, chronic truancy, avoidance, or whatever other terms exist to describe the post-pandemic epidemic of student non-attendance is essential before allocating funding to address the issues. Since we know that there is no single or predominant reason, but rather an intricate mix of ingredients that contribute to truancy behaviors, addressing the problem systemically requires multi-pronged approaches. If we can reframe non-attendance as a symptom rather than “the problem” we can get closer to addressing the core of why many students have not returned post-pandemic. And only then does the conversation about resource allocation follow.

Most schools and districts have not seen these incredible amounts of education funding coming through to mitigate the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in decades, if ever. Even so, dollars remain limited and often time-bound, so it’s important to leverage short-term activities with an eye on long-term solutions for attendance improvements. Distinguishing between limited-term revenue and ongoing funding can help leaders determine appropriate and sustainable allocations.

Simply put, one-time dollars, otherwise known as “soft money” should only be spent on actions or items that are expected to fulfill short-term purposes. Ongoing dollars can be relied on for longer term applications. Covid relief funds, for example, such as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act, American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, and Governor’s Emergency Relief Programs (GEER), all have a shorter shelf life than the annually distributed Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I-IV funds.

When adopting an attendance monitoring program, consider braiding different funding streams to cover your initial costs with limited-term funding, such as professional development and training, hardware purchases, technology infrastructure or upgrades, attendance incentive campaigns, or technical support. After you get up and running, ongoing funding can be used to pay for annual licensing/contracts for attendance and student information systems, support staffing, interventions, and communications.

In my experience, most school and district leaders, outside of business services departments, confess that managing budgets is their least favorite part of the job—and one they weren’t often explicitly trained for.

Try inverting your thinking from the traditional approach…

“We have a grant allocation of $500,000 that lasts for three years; what can we buy?”

…To a different mindset: “We have two major attendance issues to address—one for long-term truants and one for students who were previously attending but stopped after the pandemic.” Then ask these questions:

What tools do we need to monitor and communicate attendance issues effectively?
Which funding sources can we tap that will address each major problem?
What kinds of support are necessary to move the needle for each group?

Once you’ve asked and answered those questions, then the dollars will follow. And your inquiry before investment will pay off in the best ways for the students you serve.

About the Author

Kim Wallace, Professional Educational Consultant & Author at Process Makes Perfect

Born and raised in an educator household, Dr. Kim Wallace started her own career in public education 30 years ago as a high school English and history teacher before becoming a site principal and district office administrator. Her most recent K-12 role was as superintendent of one of the 20 largest school districts in California.

Kim joined the UC Berkeley School of Education Leadership Programs division as the Associate Director of the 21^st Century California School Leadership Academy (21CSLA) State Center in 2020. She also runs her own consulting company Process Makes Perfect, specializing in real world solutions for practitioners in the field. Kim consults, writes, and presents internationally on systems change and emerging trends in educational leadership. An award-winning, innovative educator, Kim leverages her abilities in educational administration, program management, and relationship development to optimize institutional effectiveness and deliver remarkable results.

Dr. Wallace’s book Leading the Launch: A Ten-Stage Process for Successful School District Initiatives was published by Solution Tree Press in 2021, followed by Leading Through an Equity Lens in 2023. Her upcoming book, Gamechanging Leadership in Action: An Educator’s Companion is in production with Routledge/Taylor & Francis (Fall 2025). Kim attended the University of California Santa Barbara for her undergraduate degree in history. She then earned her Master’s in Education (M.Ed.) at the University of California Los Angeles and culminated her educational goals with a Doctorate in Education (Ed.D.) from the University of California Davis.

Introduction

On January 19, the Katy Independent School District Team shared their comprehensive approach to Attendance Improvement at the Every Day Matters Summit. Check it Out!

About Katy ISD

Katy Independent School District (Katy ISD) is located in Katy, Texas, just west of Houston. Katy ISD values unique learners and promotes personalized learning experiences. The district believes that collaboration, honoring all voices, fosters ownership and personal accountability.

Role in Attendance and Truancy

In terms of attendance and truancy, everyone at both campus and district levels plays a crucial role. The Departments of Attendance and Truancy, under School Leadership and Support, create guidelines and training to help campuses re-engage students in regular attendance. These departments ensure accurate attendance coding and systematic truancy prevention to combat low attendance rates and promote academic success.

Campus-Level Strategies

At the campus level, principals and their teams know their students best. They have the autonomy to implement strategies that maximize attendance results.

Mayde Creek High School exemplifies this approach by fostering an attendance-focused culture. Serving 2,935 culturally diverse students, 80% of whom are economically disadvantaged, the school’s support staff collaborates to meet with students, review attendance records, and create Attendance Improvement Plans.

Chronic Absenteeism Challenges and Solutions

Reaching students and families can be challenging, but persistence leads to successful home visits, which provide opportunities for connection and referrals to counseling or social services. These visits are vital for truancy prevention and should always involve two team members to address root causes and offer resources.

Utilizing Tools for Attendance Improvement

Mayde Creek High School effectively uses tools like RaaWee dashboards and internal attendance reports to track and share attendance information. Friendly competitions among grade levels and daily attendance updates motivate students to attend class consistently.

Importance of Teamwork

Working together is key to improving attendance. Dropout Prevention Facilitators, Academic Counselors, Social Workers, and other staff serve as the first point of contact for families. Regular collaboration among these roles enables the development of effective action plans for attendance improvement, ensuring that everyone makes a difference.

About the Author

Gabriela Pulido
Dropout Prevention, Intervention, and Recovery Coordinator, Katy ISD
gabrielapulido@katyisd.org

Abstract

Data is only as effective as the use it is put to. Often, data collected in K-12 schools is siphoned from data lakes and warehouses to meet state and federal compliance requirements, rather than being collected with the intent to act upon it. As a result, schools have accumulated large datasets, but they still struggle to report on impactful progress for early student intervention.

With local control, schools have the opportunity to decide the story they wish to tell with their data. While meeting compliance requirements, there can be a duality in data collection, where the data is not always collected to be acted upon.

To address this challenge, the session used a workshop format to guide participants through answering 10 questions, the most crucial being, “What story do you want your data to tell?” Researchers often use these types of questions to determine data collection protocols and define hypotheses.

Ultimately, data must offer a TIP (Train, Interpret, Problem-solve) to its users. Data must help solve problems. If we cannot Train it, Interpret it, or use it to solve Problems, it is essentially useless.

Introduction

Yuk! Math! Like math, data is a love-hate relationship, until basic tenets help you to …Train , Interpret, and Problem-solve (TIP). There is ambivalence with data. Though we ravel in what it can do and what it can say, we hesitate to engage for fear of misunderstanding, error, or embarrassment from getting it wrong. Instead, we hire it out, pass it along, and leave collection and monitoring to someone else for someone else. The fact is when data is collected to meet an external purpose, retrofitting it to aid in intervention may be misleading at best. Recycling anything suggest the ‘thing’ is being used for something different than what it was intended. The same is true with data. Simply repurposing won’t get you the right answers to influence the change or progress you need to make. Therefore, we must know what is expected, what story we want to tell, and what impact or outcomes we want to see.

Engagement is required. And the below Worksheet will assist you in engaging your entire team in the process and the IDEAL model. Click here or below to download the Worksheet.

Basic Research

The IDEAL model (Identify, Define, Explore, Action, Look back) is a popular and simplistic approach used to engage with basic research tenets. The idea is that data collected must have a purpose and work to solve a problem. To ensure it does exactly that, it is essential to establish criteria for inclusion or exclusion and explore how best to collect and analyze the information for action. Once done, it is important to reflect on your progress to determine if more data is needed to tell a complete story or if variables must be removed. Remember, looking back is a must. Storytelling with data is only as accurate as the current data you have at that time. When new data is collected or presented, go back and revisit the process.

IDEAL - Research

☐ Identify – Find and Name Problem

☐ Define – Set Criteria (inclusion and exclusion)

☐ Explore – Collect and conduct analysis

☐ Action – Do something with it. How will you address the problem?

☐ Look Back – Monitor the change; verify if there are new variables

The IDEAL steps are a part of the scientific method. The method historically requires you observe something in a systematic way, then ask a question, form an opinion about it, make a prediction, conduct an experiment, and modify your prediction based on results.

Defining Your Attendance Improvement Story Components through 10 Quesions

Like artificial intelligence and machine learning, the goal is to define, train, interpret, expose, and use existing data to tell a story. Supervised learning and unsupervised learning are required. This means the criteria established will dictate what must be collected (supervised) but as you attempt to solve the problem, trends, and patterns will emerge (unsupervised) which together will tell your story. Below are 10 questions to address varied components of the Attendance Improvement story you want to tell and a rationale context for each question.

10 Questions in Addressing Chronic Absenteeism

SO WHAT? NOW WHAT?

☐ What or who else is needed?

☐ Which documents inform my data?

☐ Which data brings dollars?

Data Question Context

Why do I need data? OR What will I do with data?

Determining the why and what of data are essential components of storytelling. They establish a baseline to assess change; set the performance goals which enable measurement of success; aids in organizing the information to be collected and combine to tell a convincing story through examination of trends and patterns.

What story must data tell?

Assessing good or bad depends on the story we tell. The same is true for determining urgency or a call to action. Data is often used as a call to action. As a result, it must be strategic and relevant, include examples for audience to visualize the why, be intentional with visuals to distill data, and be communicate with the action needed. In sum, data visualization with compelling narratives help to comprehend data and act.

Who must know about the outcomes of data?

If data must move the audience to action, knowing the audience is as essential as reporting the result to stakeholders. Therefore the outcomes must be communicated to those from whom the data was taken, those who must take action, those who will benefit from the action, as well as those who will monitor the change. Data is only as good as what it communicates and who it impacts.

Where must the data come from or be stored?

The location from which the data comes dictates its accuracy and effectiveness. Though we may retrieve data from student information systems, local state departments, from students and teachers, or even from community, the best place to get and store data is from a system where all variables impacted or will be impacted or may change can be added and assessed. Everything you would want to know must be collected in variable form. This will change overtime therefore the system must be able to accommodate the change.

When do I need data and how often?

Data needs change all the time. Despite data collection occurring in regular cycles such as every month, every semester, or as the states requires; it should be collected as often as available but best assessed semi-annually or annually. This is important because data must be collected around interventions or organized changes. The outcome is the ability to spot patterns and trends so when compared we are aware of where and when to intervene. In addition to create change, we are aware of where old variables must be complemented or swapped out for new ones.

How do I know the data answers my questions?

Data can be used to answer any question. The key is, can it answer your question. As such, playing a role in data collection or siphoning data from one place to use elsewhere requires early attention. Not everyone must be on board with what you collect but you must create a hypothesis with the questions you hope to answer. This is the only way you can be sure the data will answer the questions you have. Identifying a hypothesis is a way of listing your problems and identifying the solutions you anticipate.

What actions do I plan to take with data?

After collecting and assessing data, action is necessary for it to have meaning. Revisiting the hypothesis can give direction but data users must take action by informing stakeholders, defining benchmarks, assessing if goals are being met, and planning for change. Most importantly, data evaluators must identify the areas where they would want to introduce intervention or new variables for the best impact from data action. The actions can be targeted and specific to what change you want to see, within the timeframe you have identified within your system.

How do I monitor change from data?

Monitoring change, resulting from data, is simple when we run trend analysis at regular cycles. Monitoring at the start and end of each cycle ensures accuracy and timely variable change. A cycle is defined as a period for collecting information determined by the data collector. Its best to establish your own monitoring plan with all stakeholders who collects, stores, and assesses data. The goal is to use what you collect to set benchmarks, confirm hypotheses, and run trend analysis.

What interventions can facilitate change?

So, you want to use the data to facilitate change? Any intervention can facilitate change; albeit negative or positive but its best to have variable-specific interventions. Intervention success is not dependent on the number of persons impacted or the cost but, on the change anticipated by the hypothesis. In fact, intervention success is dependent on the problem to solve. If there is a match between the problem and the solution, interventions are often effective to facilitate the desired change.

How do I report on and sustain the change?

To complete the cycle, we must share the findings with all stakeholders especially those who identified the problem. Determining what to share is as important as where to share. Sharing on social media, in written or online reports, and annual general meetings are good places to start.

Summary

Data matters! However, without guidance the story it tells can change based on who and what is asked. To use data effectively, it’s important to be clear on what data you need, the story you want to tell, outcomes you want, actions you plan to take, possible interventions, monitoring and reporting plan, and how to sustain change. No matter what, Train your data, find ways to Interpret, and make sure it always solves the problem you need it to solve or identify change. This process is called TIP – Train, Interpret, Problem-solve. In the end, use the EARS process as often as you can to assess success—Elicit, Amplify, Reinforce, and Start over with each change you want to see.

Resources

Perception of School Social Bonding – Instrument and Scoring
The International Network for Student Attendance (INSA) offers other questionnaires effective for absenteeism and attendance. Click on the + sign on the far right to get access to translation versions.
Raawee K12 Solutions with whom we partner: https://raaweek12.com.