Summer break is here—and as education leaders heave a huge sigh of relief, they’re rolling up their sleeves getting to work building a foundation for the 2022-23 school year.
One of their top priorities will be getting students back in school. Attendance fell to unusually low levels this past year. Some of the absences were due to COVID-19 illnesses and quarantines, but they don’t account for the full drop. Factors like trauma and housing instability also contributed to the decline.
Before the pandemic, around 8 million students were considered chronically absent, meaning they had missed more than 10% of school days. Numbers are harder to come by since the pandemic—but experts worry that chronic absenteeism may be three times higher.
This has wide-ranging impacts. Student learning and engagement suffers. Teachers have more stress to deal with as they try to get everyone caught up. State funding based on attendance and enrollment declines. And down the road, more young people are likely to leave high school without a diploma. If historic correlations between absenteeism and graduation rates hold true, that could mean 1.8 million to 3.3 million more students dropping out.
Numbers like those are prompting administrators to plan and implement new and renewed attendance and engagement efforts—and summer is an ideal time to roll them out. Our new ebook Re-Establishing and Refining Attendance and Engagement Strategies Over the Summer offers ideas for getting started, addressing specific challenges, and leveraging technology to help with communication when staff time is in short supply.
The ebook also highlights how AllHere’s adaptive, evidence-based system can be integrated into your solution for preventing absenteeism. It’s affordable, easy to implement, and accessible for families.
Together, the strategies in the ebook contribute to cultivating a culture of engagement and attendance—something the nonprofit Attendance Works emphasizes as a key to decreasing the number of days missed next year.
Access and download Re-Establishing and Refining Attendance and Engagement Strategies Over the Summer here.