Absenteeism is a big and seemingly intractable problem for the country’s public schools. And Michigan has among the worst presence rates in the nation. That makes it a prime target for scientists. In numerous schools, more than 3 out of 5 trainees were chronically missing before the pandemic. When classes resumed, persistent absence approached 4 out of 5 students in the state’s worst-attended schools.
Yet a new research study released in May offers hope. Researchers found that some Michigan schools seem substantially much better than others at getting students to appear, and recognized one intervention– frequent home sees to households whose children are absent from class– that was used more often by schools making a difference.
Schools that were more effective in increasing presence were a lot more most likely to conduct these check outs frequently– day-to-day or weekly. Regular monthly or occasional home check outs did not appear to make as much difference. Schools that visited less often performed about the like those that did not carry out home sees at all.
Measuring a school’s influence on presence is difficult. If a trainee participates in school 95 percent of the time, it can be difficult to tell whether the trainee was currently conscientious, or whether the school itself is having a positive impact.
To isolate a school’s influence, researchers at the University of Michigan-Flint and Wayne State University concentrated on students who changed schools, such as those transitioning from middle to high school. The trainees themselves remained largely the exact same while their school environments changed so scientists could more credibly estimate whether particular schools made a difference. To account for the reality that more persistent students might be picked or funneled into higher-performing schools, scientists even more changed their calculations to compare students with comparable backgrounds and academic records as they changed schools.
Researchers evaluated roughly 2,700 Michigan schools between 2022 and 2025 and divided them into quarters based upon how much they improved their trainees’ participation rates. Students in the top quarter of schools showed up for class about 7 more days per year than comparable trainees in the bottom quarter. 7 days is significant since missing out on 18 days a year is the threshold for persistent absenteeism.
Encouragingly, these attendance gains were not short-term. The schools that made the most development tended to show improvement throughout all three years of the study.
But enhancement does not necessarily indicate success. A few of the most effective schools in the state still had persistent absence rates above 40 or 50 percent, stated Jeremy Singer, assistant teacher at the University of Michigan-Flint and lead author of the research study.
The schools making the most progress tend to educate lots of children in poverty, often clustered in the state’s poorest cities, such as Detroit, Flint and Saginaw, or in financially depressed backwoods where farms are rapidly failing. Throughout the nation, absenteeism rates are highest in poor communities where evictions, addiction, transport problems, health concerns and household duties interfere with school presence.
High-poverty schools know absence is a problem and have many programs and personnel in place to resolve it. Scientist wished to see if there prevailed methods used by schools that were making development. And so they integrated their analysis with a Michigan school survey where principals disclosed how they were tackling the problem.
That’s how the value of frequent home visits increased to the top, which also supports other research study in Connecticut. An extensive home going to program to improve participation has likewise shown strong results there.
Still, these sees are not a guaranteed solution. Some Michigan schools carrying out weekly home check outs saw no enhancement in attendance– or perhaps getting worse absenteeism. To put it simply, while lots of schools using regular home check outs achieved success, others were not. “They’re certainly no silver bullet,” stated Singer.
Vocalist says that researchers need to dig deeper into what makes home sees effective because they are pricey and time-intensive. Possible aspects include who conducts them, what time of day they occur, whether they are arranged or surprise sees, and what discussions occur.
Schools in the research study are trying lots of other interventions, however the scientists didn’t find a strong connection in between most of those efforts and improved participation. These other interventions consist of early caution systems, letters home, automated text messages and call. Schools that had support from district personnel, such as truancy officers or liaisons, did refrain from doing better than schools without these staffers.
Personalized and frequent text messages were decently more typical amongst more schools with improving participation. Scientists also found that schools making more progress were a little more likely to report actively helping households address outside barriers such as real estate and transport.
The correlation between interventions and schools that work in increasing presence is a hint about what works, but the scientists can not say whether the interventions are driving the attendance improvements. It might be that the most reliable schools are doing other things not caught in the study, such as employing particularly knowledgeable instructors or constructing more powerful relationships with trainees that make school feel worth going to.
The findings are a pointer that “finest practices” suggestions frequently overemphasize what scientists in fact know. Schools can make a significant distinction in presence, however recognizing genuinely effective schools is hard, isolating why they succeed is even harder, and basic options seldom hold up under analysis.
Contact staffwriter Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or [email protected].
This story about addressing absence in Michigan was produced by The Hechinger Report, a not-for-profit, independent wire service that covers education. Register for Proof Pointsand other Hechinger newsletters.
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