Kids still aren't going to school. Here are six big ideas to get absenteeism under control.
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Is there any hope to turn things around? The Globe went looking for
big
ideas that might work. Here's what we found:
Pay students for attendance
Boston School Committee member Brandon Cardet-Hernandez has called for
Think that's extreme? This approach has been
The Detroit program, which officials recently decided to extend, caps out at $1,000 per student per year. That may sound exorbitant, but Massachusetts spends more than $21,000 per student per year; spending a fraction to make sure those students actually attend school could be worth it.
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Cardet-Hernandez said it was missed opportunity to not use the state's federal pandemic relief funds on paying for attendance. Doing so would be an 'upfront investment' in the future of the region's students and economy.
'When we have young people who are years behind in literacy and math skills, is there an opportunity for us to think differently about our values and to create a financial incentive to grow those skills?' he asked.
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Make kids get some sleep
Tim Daly, chief executive officer of the education nonprofit EdNavigator, pointed to
Sleep is a hard problem for schools to address — it happens when children are at home — but Daly had one idea for how schools could help: disabling school-issued devices.
'Sometimes when kids stay up too late, they're using the devices to 'do homework' but really they're using them to stream,' Daly said. 'Not only would [disabling them] prevent them that, [schools] can message to parents, when that goes off, it's time to go to sleep.'
Some school-issued devices have restrictions on non-academic uses, but often those only apply on district internet, and committed children can get around them. Even if the devices are being used for homework, staying up late working on homework is bad for sleep. Parents can also restrict screentime, whether schools step in or not.
'The most important thing we need to do is help kids with their nighttime routines,' Daly said.
Some districts have also moved high school start times later to better align them with adolescent sleep cycles.
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Focus on the neediest students
Lawrence Public Schools, a high-poverty district that serves large numbers of immigrants, has made major gains from its peak in 2022, when the majority of students were chronically absent. Its overall rate is higher than the state, but rapid progress has continued.
As of March of this year, absenteeism was down to 21 percent, a 4.5 point improvement from 2024, and many groups — low income students, English learners, and Black students — have lower absenteeism rates than peers statewide.
Ralph Carrero, the superintendent, said the district's Homeless/Newcomer Coalition was the key intervention. The coalition brings together more than a dozen of the city's social service agencies and nonprofits
— housing, healthcare, transportation, food, and more. The members meet monthly to individually discuss every homeless or new-to-the-country
immigrant student in the district and make sure their needs are being met, in and outside of school.
'It's not a formula, it's not a secret, it's paying attention,'
Carrero said.
The district has about 500 homeless students each year and many recent
immigrants, so focusing on meeting their needs has a big impact on attendance.
Get pediatricians involved
Mary Beth Miotto, a pediatrician and former president of the state chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, encourages her colleagues to consider school attendance a 'vital sign,' just like blood pressure.
Because pediatricians are not part of the school system, Miotto has found she can have positive conversations with parents without unintentionally invoking the specter of truancy.
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Absenteeism is highest among high-needs populations, including
low income students, who may not have primary care physicians, so Miotto said everyone in the medical profession, including ER and urgent care doctors, should be asking about school attendance.
'We can pour all the money into schools and teachers, but if kids aren't showing up, it's not helping,' she said.
Restructure schools around relationships
Hedy Chang, founder and director of the nonprofit Attendance Works, praised Providence's Nathanael Greene Middle School, which cut its absenteeism rate from more than 50 percent in 2021-22 to 30 percent in 2023-24, about equal to its pre-pandemic level.
Attendance experts swear by relationship-building, as students have to believe people will miss them when they're gone, but just deciding to build relationships isn't necessarily enough. The school's principal, W. Jackson Reilly, 'reorganized the school so relationship-building was built into how it operated,' Chang said.
Students are divided into cohorts, with a specified team of teachers sticking to one of them, Chang said. Each cohort also had classrooms close to each other.
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This meant that the students were face-to-face with the same group of classmates and teachers, every day, rather than bouncing around to far-flung parts of the school. Districts need to design schools so relationships don't depend on 'happenstance,' Chang said.
Robert Balfanz, the director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Education, suggested bringing in outside mentors, such as local college students, for a similar reason.
'If you're a school with 200 or 300 chronically absent kids, you're going to have to form some partnerships,' he said. 'Get more adults in the school.'
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Even tutoring, which can be hamstrung by high absenteeism,
In some cases, incentivize through consequences
Absenteeism has risen in every type of district since the pandemic, and in some places, 'negative nudges' could help, Balfanz said.
For example, he said, many high schoolers play hooky regularly but still turn in the assignments posted online by their teachers so their grades aren't negatively affected. Some of those students might attend regularly if their grades were on the line for attendance or if the homework wasn't online.
'The benefits of being in school are more than just the assignments,' Balfanz noted. 'If I'm on a four-day-a-week plan and think I can skate by, a more negative nudge might get me to make that fifth day.'
But he warned the approach has risks: if a student is avoiding school due to bullying, for example, punitive options might instead drive them further away.
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at
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