Chronic absenteeism in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood: addressing systemic & structural inequities through participatory action research

This study highlights the efforts of a Detroit-based community research group to understand chronic absenteeism in a way that acknowledges its underlying complexities. Employing Participatory Action Research, an intergenerational team of community members and university researchers examined the disconnect between educators’ strategies for addressing chronic absenteeism and students’ lived experiences with barriers to regular attendance. The findings reveal a school environment characterized by a punitive attendance framework that constrained teachers’ ability to address absences effectively and allowed school leaders to shift responsibility elsewhere. In contrast, students who experienced chronic absenteeism articulated a vision for improving attendance through specific structural pathways, school improvement, and social-emotional support. The discussion emphasizes the need for strategies that uphold students’ dignity and support educators’ capacity to move beyond punitive attendance policies.

Summer Youth Research Institute

We will convene up to 40 Black and Brown youth for a Summer Youth Research Institute (SYRI) to expand youth leadership in Detroit PEER’s RPP. Youth activists from our RPP member organizations will be SYRI workshop co-facilitators. They will co-create and carry out curricula to teach principles of youth leadership and organizing to a new cohort of Detroit PEER youth advisors. The new cohort will engage in Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) to develop campaigns for educational justice based on critical issues of personal importance to them. They will also receive culturally relevant learning about the educational experiences of Black and Brown youth in Detroit, engage in youth empowerment exercises, learn the foundations of critical qualitative and quantitative research, and use storytelling for liberatory educational policy change. By the end of 2024, the youth will showcase their YPAR results and develop political actions to call for the educational opportunities they identify as necessary for Detroit youth thriving.