District-Level Efforts to Fight Chronic Absenteeism | Understanding ESSA
 

District-Level Efforts to Fight Chronic Absenteeism

District-Level Efforts to Fight Chronic Absenteeism

November 16, 2018

Deborah Yaffe writes in District Administration that it used to be “easy for districts to ignore what high average daily-attendance numbers can conceal: kids, sometimes lots of them, who miss weeks of school every year.” But ESSA changed this equation by requiring states to track and report chronic absenteeism. And now districts are tackling chronic absenteeism with “an array of strategies—some as simple and inexpensive as mailing informational letters to parents, and others as complex and costly as offering counseling, mentoring and support services.”