Showing up Together: Learning and Attendance Go Hand in Hand

“Every day matters. Instruction builds on the day before. If you miss a day, you can have gaps in your learning. Attendance also helps you build relationships with your friends and your teachers and the staff at your school.” – Hortensia Hernandez, Community School Coordinator, Caldwell Idaho

During this Learning Loss Recovery Challenge webinar, “Showing Up Together: Learning and Attendance Go Hand in Hand,” the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading showcased the importance and value of communities of all types launching their own attendance awareness campaigns and partnering with schools and families to identify and address barriers to children getting to school every day.

Moderated by Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, the lively panel conversation began with data showing the extraordinary increase in chronic absence and research showing how kindergarten chronic absence contributes to a literacy gap in third grade and affects learning outcomes in middle school and beyond, especially for economically challenged children. She encouraged participants to find out about the proven strategies backed by research in the updated, Attendance Playbook, developed by FutureEd and Attendance Works.

Gisela Ariza, associate director of programs for Attendance Works, discussed the nonprofit’s 11th annual Attendance Awareness Campaign (AAC). This year’s theme, Showing Up Together, communicates the critical need for building and sustaining trusting relationships among students, families and educators. Ariza encouraged taking advantage of the AAC’s many resources, including its website, social media materials, webinar series and Count Us In Toolkits. 

Rosie Grant, executive director of the Paterson Education Foundation, shared how Paterson, New Jersey, initially became involved in keeping kids in school to end the school-to-prison pipeline. Her organization and its partners raised awareness about the importance of daily attendance through banners stretched across roadways, an attendance video featured in movie trailers and social media. Paterson also established school attendance teams as well as mentors to build relationships with chronically absent students. Sadly, the reductions achieved were lost during the pandemic. Paterson is now re-launching its attendance improvement efforts informed by insights from parent focus groups. Parents shared challenges with inadequate transportation, conflicting school start times, screen time distraction and the lack of clear protocols for when to keep children home or send them to school when they have minor illness.

Hortensia Hernandez, a community school coordinator for Idaho’s Caldwell School District, shared a video, in English and Spanish, on reasons why daily attendance is important. The video ensures a consistent message is heard throughout the community. Principal leadership helps encourage attendance, as does championship by community leaders. Hernandez encourages establishing relationships not just with teachers but with someone a student and families trust — a coach, custodian, security guard or nurse. Her experience also showed how the district’s investments in community schools have been critical to helping schools feel they have the capacity to tackle attendance.

Ken Livingston, director of Get Delaware Reading at United Way of Delaware, shared how when he was a community school coordinator, he found the key was working with the parents and the surrounding community to understand and address barriers families face. Transiency and the lack of stable housing are particularly difficult at this time. Livingston is leveraging the power of United Ways to cultivate partners, like Parent As Teachers, to conduct home visits to students throughout the community. As he looks to the next year, Livingston plans to be even more intentional about partnerships and personal relationships. Inspired by Caldwell, he hopes to create a video that can help raise awareness and galvanize action in Delaware.

Changing the trajectory of record-setting chronic absence is essential to recovery from the pandemic. It will require schools, communities and families to join forces to rebuild a regular routine of attendance and address the challenges preventing students and families from getting to school.