Researchers analyzed roughly 2,700 Michigan colleges between 2022 and 2025 and divided them into quarters primarily based on how a lot they improved their college students’ attendance charges. College students within the high quarter of faculties confirmed up for sophistication about seven extra days per 12 months than comparable college students within the backside quarter. Seven days is substantial since lacking 18 days a 12 months is the edge for persistent absenteeism.
Encouragingly, these attendance beneficial properties weren’t short-lived. The faculties that made essentially the most progress tended to indicate enchancment throughout all three years of the examine.
However enchancment doesn’t essentially imply success. Among the handiest colleges within the state nonetheless had absenteeism charges above 40 or 50 %, mentioned Jeremy Singer, assistant professor on the College of Michigan-Flint and lead writer of the examine.
The faculties making essentially the most progress have a tendency to teach many youngsters in poverty, typically clustered within the state’s poorest cities, equivalent to Detroit, Flint and Saginaw, or in economically depressed rural areas the place farms are quickly going out of enterprise. Throughout the nation, absenteeism charges are highest in poor communities the place evictions, habit, transportation issues, well being points and household duties intrude with college attendance.
Excessive-poverty colleges know absenteeism is an issue and have quite a few applications and workers in place to handle it. Researchers wished to see if there have been widespread methods utilized by colleges that had been making progress. And they also mixed their evaluation with a Michigan college survey the place principals disclosed how they had been tackling the issue.
That’s how the worth of frequent residence visits rose to the highest, which additionally corroborates different analysis in Connecticut. An intensive residence visiting program to spice up attendance has additionally proven robust outcomes there.
Nonetheless, these visits should not a assured answer. Some Michigan colleges conducting weekly residence visits noticed no enchancment in attendance — and even worsening absenteeism. In different phrases, whereas many faculties utilizing frequent residence visits had been profitable, others weren’t. “They’re actually no silver bullet,” mentioned Singer.
Singer says that researchers have to dig deeper into what makes residence visits efficient since they’re costly and time-intensive. Potential components embody who conducts them, what time of day they happen, whether or not they’re scheduled or shock visits, and what conversations happen.
Schools within the examine try dozens of different interventions, however the researchers didn’t detect a powerful connection between most of these efforts and improved attendance. These different interventions embody early warning methods, letters residence, automated textual content messages and telephone calls. Schools that had assist from district personnel, equivalent to truancy officers or liaisons, didn’t do higher than colleges with out these staffers.
Customized and frequent textual content messages had been modestly extra widespread amongst extra colleges with bettering attendance. Researchers additionally discovered that colleges making extra progress had been barely extra prone to report actively serving to households handle exterior boundaries equivalent to housing and transportation.
The correlation between interventions and colleges which are efficient in boosting attendance is a clue about what works, however the researchers can’t say whether or not the interventions are driving the attendance enhancements. It may very well be that the best colleges are doing different issues not captured within the survey, equivalent to hiring particularly expert lecturers or constructing stronger relationships with college students that make college really feel value attending.
The findings are a reminder that “finest practices” suggestions typically overstate what researchers truly know. Schools could make a significant distinction in attendance, however figuring out genuinely profitable colleges is tough, isolating why they succeed is even more durable, and easy options not often maintain up beneath scrutiny.
This story about addressing absenteeism in Michigan was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, impartial information group that covers schooling. Join Proof Factors and different Hechinger newsletters.
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