How Can We Improve Student Attendance? A Framework to Guide Schools

Schools in Michigan and around the country are developing new strategies to reduce chronic absenteeism and improve student attendance. This means implementing new practices, developing new organizational systems, and assigning new staff responsibilities or even creating new staff roles. As schools develop and refine their attendance strategies, what should they prioritize? How can they most effectively spend their time and resources? In this brief, we offer a framework to guide schools’ efforts to improve student attendance. The framework is based on two dimensions: the impact of different types of strategies, and the cost and effort required to implement those types of strategies. Though we have not conducted a formal cost-benefit analysis, our framework is guided by a close review of existing research on attendance interventions, considering costs, effectiveness, and implementation realities.

Detroit K-12 Education System Overview

In 2025, Detroit will elect a new mayor. Mayoral candidates have already weighed in on educational issues facing the city and its residents. Detroit PEER has released a series of briefs to address important issues impacting K-12 students and their families that are under the mayor’s purview, such as housing, transportation, and neighborhood conditions. The purpose of this brief is to provide background information about Detroit’s K-12 students and school system, as well as the mayor’s role in Detroit education. The data reported in this brief are from the 2023-24 school year.

Housing and Education in Detroit

Homelessness, housing instability, and evictions negatively impact students by increasing school mobility, disrupting education, and increasing financial strain on families as they work to ensure that their children have a safe place to live and learn. The next mayor of the City of Detroit has an important role to play in creating more affordable housing for families with school-aged children and coordinating with schools to ensure that families who are affected by housing instability receive the support they need for their children.

Neighborhoods and Education in Detroit

Decades of disinvestment and expanded school choice have led to neighborhood school closures and weakened school-neighborhood relationships. Where students live significantly shapes where they enroll in school and their experiences in school once they get there. Adverse neighborhood conditions negatively impact students’ educational and lifetime outcomes. The next Mayor of Detroit has a role to play in strengthening neighborhood conditions for families with school-aged children.

Transportation and Education in Detroit

Unreliable transportation leads to inconsistent school attendance and creates inequality in families’ access to school choices. While schools can provide school buses to some families, the City of Detroit has an important role to play in strengthening the infrastructure for school transportation and improving the conditions for students on the way to school.

Issue Brief on Attendance Incentives

Detroit PEER has worked closely with Detroit schools and community-based organizations since 2017 to identify barriers to K-12 student attendance and use research to inform improvements in attendance policy and practice. This issue brief highlights what research has shown about the effectiveness of incentive interventions and provides a framework for thinking through their use among our partners.

Before the Bell: Obstacles Preventing Children from Attending School

This collaborative issue brief synthesizes the research on barriers to regular school attendance and identifies how schools, communities, and other government agencies can work together to improve the conditions for student attendance across students’ ecosystems. The following scholars contributed to this brief: Arya Ansari (Ohio State University); Joshua Childs (University of Texas at Austin); Kevin Gee (University of California Davis); Michael Gottfried (University of Pennsylvania); Ethan Hutt (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill); and Sarah Winchell Lenhoff (Wayne State University).

Research and Resources to Support Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Every School Day Counts Detroit is a community-led collective impact effort to improve the conditions that impact student attendance and engagement in Detroit. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have worked with partners across the city to identify student needs, provide social supports, and ensure that students had the technology and other resources they needed to engage school during school closures. We gathered these research findings and resources to support school leaders as they prepare to meet students’ needs during the school year, whether students will be in face-to-face instruction or in distance learning.