1. Scaling in Districts and States to Achieve Community-Wide Results
Or this one as the title slide.
Attendance
Scaling in Districts and States to Achieve Community-Wide Results

2. Move the darker colored circle to the appropriate intersection
Move the darker colored circle to the appropriate intersection. Delete the darker colored circles that don’t apply to your session. Leadership and Coalitions and Stacking for Bigger Outcomes should delete this slide.

3. Bring this slide up and encourage folks to join online conversation.

4. What is Chronic Absence?
Chronic absence is missing so much school for any reason that a student is academically at risk. Attendance Works recommends defining it as missing 10% or more of school for any reason.
Chronic
Absence
Excused absences
Unexcused absences
Suspensions
Chronic absence is different from truancy (unexcused absences only) or average daily attendance (how many students show up to school each day).

5. Multiple Measures of Attendance
Average Daily Attendance
How many students show up to school every day? The percent of enrolled students who attend school each day. It is used in some states for allocating funding.
Who is missing school without permission? Typically refers only to unexcused absences. Each state has the authority to define truancy and when it triggers legal intervention.
Truancy
Who is missing so much school they are academically at risk? Broadly means missing too much school for any reason -- excused, unexcused, etc. Researchers commonly define it as missing 10% of school. OCR currently defines it as missing 15 days. Chronic absence is a required reporting metric in ESSA.
Chronic
Absence

6. Reflects New Paradigm on Attendance
Truancy
Counts unexcused absences
Emphasizes compliance with school rules
Uses legal, typically more punitive solutions
Chronic Absence
Counts all absences
Emphasizes academic impact of missed days.
Uses preventive strategies, positive messaging

7. Invest in Prevention and Early Intervention

8. Interactive Discussion
What are the 1-2 most successful attendance improvement strategies used in your community?
What did you feel most helped your community to take your attendance strategies to scale?
What did you try that didn’t work? What lessons can you draw from that experience?
How do you create a system that keeps going despite changes in leadership?
What are the opportunities and dangers of chronic absence being added to your state’s accountability system?

9. Take a Data Driven Systemic Approach
Positive Engagement:
Uses caring relationships, effective messaging and a positive school climate to motivate daily attendance.
Actionable Data:
Is accurate, accessible, and regularly reported in an understandable format.
Community
District
Positive Engagement
Actionable Data
Students & Families
Schools
Shared Accountability
Capacity Building
Capacity Building Expands ability to work together to interpret data, engage in problem solving, and adopt best practices to improve attendance.
Shared Accountability:
Ensures chronic absence is monitoring & reinforced by policy.
At same time, we know schools and communities can understand why kids aren’t in school and turn attendance around when they implement these five strategies with fidelity. How schools carry them out can be tailored to their own realities and strengths.
Then – I go through and offer examples of what each one of these might look like. I also clarify that recognizing good and improved attendance isn’t just providing perfect attendance awards for a semester or year– which doesn’t help to motivate improvement among the students with the most problematic attendance.
Strategic partnerships
between district and community partners address specific attendance barriers and mobilize support for all ingredients.

11. Proposed Pathway for Change:
Cultivating peer learning to inform broader policy change and practice
Advance practice through peer learning
Inform actions w/ insights from local practice
Spread work through TA and policy
Advance practice through peer learning
Locality A
Locality B
Locality C: Early Innovator
Locality C
Policymakers
Education Leaders & Assoc. (K-12 & ECE)
Associations of public health agencies (housing, health, social services, transportation
Unions
Parent Organizations
Advocacy organizations
Philanthropy
Others
Ongoing peer learning,
technical assistance, administrative guidance, regulations, legislation, etc. promote best practices & systemic change
Peer opportunities to:
Compare data
Share, demonstrate & learn about best practices
Identify & problem-solve common challenges

12. Superintendent’s Call to Action
Own the issue
Mobilize the Community
Drive with Data
To sign-up for the Call to Action, or to learn more, please visit:

13. Resources
Please check the Campaign Ap to download these materials:
Count Us In! (Community toolkit for Attendance Awareness Month)
Bringing Attendance Home (Toolkit for engaging families)
Preventing Missed Opportunity
Superintendents Call to Action
Inclusion of Chronic Absence in State ESSA Plans
Leveraging ESSA’s New Accountability Requirements for Chronic Absence

14. Takeaway
Question
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