USED Resource: Chronic Absenteeism Roundtable Resources
December 18, 2024
Earlier this week AASA was pleased to be part of the US Education Department Roundtable with philanthropic and community leaders, focused on chronic absenteeism. The report out and resources shared below stem from that event. The roundtable, convened by both the White House and Education Department, focused on addressing chronic absenteeism in schools. During the convening, White House Domestic Policy Advisor Neera Tanden and Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten led a discussion with education leaders as well as researchers, philanthropy, private sector and non-profit leaders to discuss actions they are taking to support states, districts, and community-based organizations in making progress on increasing everyday school attendance. As part of this roundtable, several participants announced new commitments and resources to support the critical work of keeping children and youth consistently engaged in school moving forward.
These new commitments and resources include:
- The U.S. Department of Education released a resource highlighting model state attendance data systems. This resource describes how those data systems were designed and implemented to increase student attendance and it provides actionable recommendations for state and local leaders, philanthropy, and others to engage in this work.
- The National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS) will support an additional 23 Community Collaboration Challenge mini-grant awards in 2025 totaling $163,000 to support local communities in 21 states with expanding or piloting evidence-based student supports—including tutors, mentors, student success coaches, wraparound/integrated student support coordinators, and/or post-secondary transition coaches—in communities across the country. Additionally, NPSS will continue to provide more than 11,000 schools access to a range of supports through a series of engagement events designed to address chronic absence and improve student engagement through the Attendance Solutions Network. NPSS is a public-private partnership between the Department, AmeriCorps, and the Johns Hopkins University Everyone Graduates Center.
- Through Every Day Counts, a collaboration between NPSS and the Project Unicorn organization, several education technology companies have committed to developing new data features within their platforms at no additional cost to help schools and districts reduce chronic absence. These new features will help educators and leaders to identify struggling students, engage families, and foster a supportive learning environment.
- The Kresge Foundation published a resource for schools and districts on addressing chronic absenteeism, containing a summary of leading practices and lessons from its work on this topic. These strategies emphasize place-based approaches that leverage community-based organizations to work alongside government and philanthropic entities to drive collective action and accountability.
- Researchers from The Ohio State University, University of Texas at Austin, University of California Davis, University of Pennsylvania, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Wayne State University released a new resource about addressing out-of-school barriers to chronic absenteeism. The resource, called “Before the Bell: Obstacles Preventing Children from Attending School,” as a starting point for conversations recognizing and addressing beyond-school barriers and encouraging education leaders and stakeholders to work together in new, cross-agency collaborative ways including how we think about and collect data.
- The Kresge Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, along with other philanthropic partners have committed to convening the participants of this roundtable for future collaboration in efforts to support local communities and districts.
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