4
Knitting Effective Strategies for Attendance Success
Emulating the craftsmanship of a skilled weaver who intertwines threads to create a rich and vibrant tapestry, the attendance team can interweave six strategies to bolster their effectiveness and, in turn, foster each student’s connection with education.
Establish a Strong Foundation for Collaboration
The attendance team begins by establishing a strong foundation for collaboration. The team fosters a shared understanding of roles, responsibilities, and terminology, ensuring everyone is on the same page. This includes defining clear communication protocols, establishing resource-sharing practices, and implementing accountability measures for follow-through on action items (Attendance Works, 2018).
Formulate a Driving Purpose
Enhance Attendance Practices through Self-Assessment
Leverage the Pyramid Framework
The pyramid framework, also known as the multidimensional, multi-tiered system of supports model (Kearney & Graczyk, 2020), builds upon the response-to-intervention model (Kearney & Graczyk, 2014; Richardson, 2013). While the response-to-intervention model represents attendance supports and interventions as a two-dimensional triangle, the pyramid framework expands this to a three-dimensional structure (discussed further below). However, they share a common feature: the organization of attendance supports and interventions into three levels. Level 1 comprises efforts to promote attendance and prevent absence, typically referred to as ‘supports’. Efforts to reduce absence at Level 2 and Level 3 are typically referred to as ‘interventions’. Regardless of the terminology used, the attendance team’s intention is to foster a positive relationship with education for every student.
Level 1 – Schoolwide Attendance Promotion and Absence Prevention
At this foundational level, the focus is on fostering a culture of attendance and proactively preventing absences, for all students. This includes implementing high-quality instruction and an engaging curriculum; schoolwide attendance policies; creating a safe school environment; fostering awareness among school staff, families, and students about the benefits of regular attendance and the impact of absences; and ; acknowledging good attendance and improved attendance; informing school staff about how they can support the work of the attendance team; and informing families about access to resources that reduce barriers to attendance.
Level 2 – Early Support in Response to Non-Chronic Attendance Concerns
For students exhibiting early signs of attendance issues, mild absence patterns, or other risk factors for chronic absence, Level 2 interventions provide prompt tailored support to address emerging concerns before they escalate. This may involve mentoring, individualized interventions such as anxiety management, and targeted communication with families, along with close monitoring of attendance patterns.
Level 3 – Intensive Support in Response to Chronic Absence Concerns
Students experiencing chronic absence (persisting over time) or severe absence (high proportion of absence relative to attendance) require more intensive support to address the underlying causes of their absences. Level 3 interventions may involve comprehensive assessment, individualized case management, and collaboration with community partners to address non-school factors contributing to absence.
Establishing Attendance Criteria for Each Level
There are currently no universally accepted benchmarks for determining the proportion of attendance/absence associated with each level of the pyramid (Kearney & Graczyk, 2020). However, the following recommendations by Dubay and Holla (2016) serve as a guide for the school attendance team’s decision-making. In general, Level 1, considered “satisfactory” attendance, encompasses students with 95% or more attendance, translating to no more than 5% absences. Level 2, deemed “at risk” for chronic absence, includes students with attendance ranging between 90-94%, indicating absences of more than 5% and up to 10%. Finally, Level 3, categorized as “chronic absence,” comprises students with attendance below 90%, representing more than 10% absences. Notably, these recommended attendance/absence rates consider all absences, regardless of whether absences have been classified as authorized or unauthorized.
Setting Targets for Each Level
The distribution of students among the three levels plays a crucial role in determining how effective an attendance team’s efforts have been. As a general guideline, presented by Kearney and Graczyk (2022), Level 1 should encompass the majority of students, ideally around 80-85% of the school population. This suggests that most students should be able to maintain satisfactory attendance with schoolwide supports. However, some students, around 10-15%, may require extra support at Level 2, while the most severely affected group, representing 1-5% of the student body, may necessitate more intensive support at Level 3.In practice, the actual distribution of students among the three levels may deviate from this guideline. When a school embarks on improving attendance, the proportion of students in Levels 2 and 3 may initially be higher, potentially putting Level 1 below the recommended 80-85% target, at around 65-75% of students (Kearney & Graczyk, 2014). This emphasizes the importance of establishing realistic targets for each level when an attendance team is beginning its work. This is particularly critical for schools in districts with high absenteeism rates (Kearney & Graczyk, 2022).
Unlocking the 3D Attendance Pyramid
By adopting the pyramid framework, the school attendance team does not need to abandon existing attendance initiatives. Rather, the framework serves as a scaffolding for the team to conceptualize, refine, and extend upon current efforts. Like other multi-tiered frameworks employed in schools, the pyramid framework for attendance promotes a proactive, data-driven problem-solving approach to identifying, implementing, and evaluating evidence-based interventions that address student needs (Kearney & Graczyk, 2020). These frameworks offer valuable guidance for professionals in schools who are responsible for identifying students in need of extra support and responsible for selecting effective interventions to meet these needs (Harrison, 2023). They also assist schools in optimizing their resource allocation (Goodman & Bohanon, 2018). As a case in point related to students’ academic skills, studies have demonstrated that a robust emphasis on Level 1 supports, the foundational layer of multi-tiered systems, not only proves effective in reducing the need for time-consuming Level 2 and Level 3 interventions (Stoiber & Gettinger, 2016) but also underscores the pivotal role of these frameworks in fostering student success.
Maximize the Impact of Team Meetings
To enhance the impact of their efforts, the attendance team can implement these practical guidelines for effective meetings.
Meeting Frequency
The team’s commitment to meeting regularly fosters ongoing communication, collaboration, and evaluation. But what exactly does ‘regularly’ mean? Attendance Works (2018) recommends weekly meetings when chronic absence surpasses 5% of students. Otherwise, meeting once every two weeks can serve as the standard (Kearney & Graczyk, 2014), but then with weekly meetings at the start of each school term to clarify goals and align strategies (Kearney, 2016).
The designated facilitator:
Maybe the Core Four administrator or a skilled facilitator they appoint.
Guides the meetings.
Serves as the “champion coordinator” of the team’s efforts, demonstrating empathy for
students and organizational competence (Reid, 2003).
Responsibilities During Meetings
Clearly defined responsibilities are essential for efficient and effective team meetings. The responsibilities are shaped – but not limited – by the role that each member has within the Core Four or beyond (see Part 3).
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