Schools face many challenges post-pandemic, but the large number of children simply not showing up may be the most alarming. The White House has called for an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to the problem, and urged states, cities, towns and schools to “cultivate a ‘culture of attendance’ and send a clear message that students need to be in school.”
Chronic absenteeism, which is defined as missing at least 10% of the school year, was already a problem before the pandemic, but got much worse when schools closed and education went online. Many kids stopped showing up for virtual learning — and some never came back when schools opened their doors again. According to an analysis by the American Enterprise Institute, chronic absenteeism almost doubled — from 15% in the 2018 school year to 28% in 2022. There was some improvement in 2023, but rates still languish at 26% — “75% higher than the pre-pandemic baseline,” according to AEI. The analysis also found that rates of chronic absenteeism were highest in high-poverty school districts and were higher among Hispanic and Black students than white and Asian students.
One philanthropic funder on the case is the Overdeck Family Foundation, which recently added chronic absenteeism to its list of priorities, as IP’s Mike Scutari reported in his recent profile. The foundation is already busy. It is supporting programs to boost family engagement, which has multiple benefits, including reducing chronic absence. In August, it provided $1 million in grants to promote research on absenteeism. In September, Overdeck announced the release of a report and toolkit developed by the Ad Council Research Institute. The report, “Back to the Classroom: How to Overcome Chronic Absenteeism and Encourage Parents to Send Kids to School Consistently,” offers information on effective messaging for school officials, teachers and community partners.
Education is the primary focus of the Overdeck Family Foundation, which was started by Two Sigma Investments cofounder and co-chairman John Overdeck and his then-wife, Laura, in 2011. Chronic absenteeism impacts all of that work, as the foundation’s vice president Anu Malipatil explained.
“The foundation funds efforts — both inside and outside of school — in areas ranging from early childhood to hands-on STEM education,” she said. “That work includes supporting educators and student-centered learning environments. So we see chronic absenteeism as an issue that stretches across all of our foundation’s grantmaking areas, and impacts our grantees’ work throughout the Pre-K-12 education sector. We landed on this strategy because we realized that it doesn’t really matter how effective an intervention is at improving outcomes if a child isn’t at school to receive it.”
Attendance works
Few people in the country know as much about chronic absenteeism as Hedy Chang. Chang is the founder and executive director of Attendance Works, an Overdeck grantee, which works to “[advance] student success by reducing chronic absence.” Chang and her team have developed data and research and a deep well of resources; the organization works with state governments, school districts and policymakers to raise awareness of the issue and develop strategies to combat it. (The website even has a section about what philanthropists and foundations can do to combat the problem.)
When Chang first began looking into the issue in 2006, there was little information available because few schools or school districts were tracking absenteeism overall. “Most people looked at truancy, which is unexcused absences, or they looked at average daily attendance,” she said. “There were very few places that actually looked at kids missing too much school for any reason.” (Attendance Works makes a distinction between truancy, or unexcused absences, and chronic absenteeism, which includes excused and unexcused absences, and suspensions). Chang founded Attendance Works in 2010, which has since then developed information on the root causes of the problem, its impacts and strategies for reducing it.
Chronic absenteeism is linked to factors like physical and mental health, lack of reliable transportation or safe routes to school, and poverty-related challenges like food and housing insecurity. The devastating effects of missing significant amounts of school start early and escalate through a student’s academic career, as Attendance Works makes clear: “Research shows the clear benefits of regular school attendance and the high costs related to absenteeism, including students not being able to read by third grade, lower achievement in middle school and dropping out of high school.”
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All hands on deck
Last summer, Attendance Works teamed up with the American Enterprise Institute and Education Trust to tackle chronic absenteeism. The partnership is notable in part because AEI and EdTrust sit on very different sides of the political spectrum. But chronic absenteeism is an issue that crosses political lines, as the leaders of the three organizations explained in an opinion piece announcing the joint effort: “Despite our differences on other education issues, we three agree that all states and school districts must make this the top priority for this school year by adopting an ambitious goal: Cut chronic absenteeism by 50% over five years.”
The Overdeck Family Foundation supports that goal, and the $1 million it recently awarded to five teams of researchers is intended to build the informational framework necessary to achieve it. “To make that target [that is, halving chronic absenteeism over the next five years] achievable, educators and administrators need access to more high-quality evidence on the root causes of and solutions to chronic absenteeism post-pandemic,” according to the announcement.
Parent involvement is critical when it comes to getting kids to school, and helping schools and communities boost that involvement is the goal of the recent Ad Council Research Institute report and toolkit, another Overdeck initiative. “We’ve been thinking about how to improve messaging and campaigns so that schools can more effectively communicate and reach families; that’s where the Ad Council work fits in,” Malipatil said.
The report found that messages about school attendance are most effective when they come from a trusted messenger — a child’s teacher in particular. The toolkit emphasizes the importance of positive messages that don’t shame or scold parents, but rather highlight the value of school for their children. One point that resonated with parents, for example, was the idea that school “develops children holistically, beyond academic performance.” This aligns with research by Brookings that found that some parents aren’t concerned by their child’s school absences because they believe online resources are a sufficient substitute: “Online resources are useful for expanding learning opportunities, but schools must impress upon parents that they are a supplement to, not a substitute for, in-person attendance.”
The Overdeck Foundation also supports FutureEd, an independent education think tank that focuses on chronic absenteeism, among other issues. In collaboration with Attendance Works, FutureEd recently published an Attendance Playbook that identifies solutions to chronic absenteeism. Another FutureEd report zeros in on Rhode Island, where the governor organized a task force of community, political and business leaders to join schools in addressing the issue. “Rhode Island is a great example of a statewide community effort that is showing really positive early indicators,” Malipatil said.
Big tent
Chronic absenteeism is an area that could clearly use more philanthropic attention — but some funders are already lining up to tackle the problem. Along with Overdeck, other Attendance Works supporters include the Abell Foundation, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation and others.
In addition, the Dalio Foundation is committed to boosting participation for disengaged students in its home state of Connecticut. The Helios Education Foundation Foundation has taken steps to address the issue in Arizona and Florida, and the Hyde Family Foundation is doing so in Memphis, Tennessee.
Meanwhile, a number of funders support the community school education model, which provides families access to wrap-around services, including mental healthcare, food and housing support. The Learning Policy Institute calls community schools “a promising approach to mitigate chronic absenteeism, as they are adept at organizing supports for students and families and creating conditions for rich learning and wellbeing.” On its website, Attendance Works offers case studies of community schools in several areas that have seen decreased rates of chronic absence, and examples of community schools that have tapped local resources to boost school attendance.
There are many ways philanthropy can make a difference, given the complex combination of factors that contribute to chronic absenteeism. As in the realm of public health, where top philanthropies like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have long emphasized the need to tackle upstream social determinants, broader education challenges are another area where that funding philosophy can apply — in this case, by addressing the many factors that keep kids away from school. Perhaps understanding these factors could even clarify priorities in a section of the philanthrosophere that’s seen notable disruption lately.
Hedy Chang at Attendance Works encouraged funders to examine how chronic absenteeism affects their own missions. “I think it’s both how foundations invest in it and how foundations use their influence to help people think about it,” she said. “We now have attendance and chronic absence data on our website for every state in the country. Are your grantees looking at it? Are they looking at what they do that makes an impact? So it’s both investing in the field, but it’s also for foundations to think about how chronic absence intersects with their priorities.”
The urgency of the problem is something that everyone can agree on, as Anu Malipatil pointed out. “There are not that many issues, at this moment in time, that are big-tent issues like this,” she said. “We see it as a big-tent issue, a critical gap and opportunity that can support students across the spectrum, especially kids coming from the most under-resourced communities.”
