Title page
Contents
Why this study? 2
Research questions 5
Findings 7
Implications 14
References 15
Figure 1. The percentage of schools implementing attendance supports with moderate or high fidelity was highest for nudge letters, phone calls, and attendance teams and lowest for mentorship... 7
Figure 2. The chronic absenteeism rate increased by more than 2 percentage points between 2017/18 and 2018/19 in nearly two-thirds of elementary schools and over one-third of secondary schools 8
Figure 3. Schools in which chronic absenteeism decreased between 2017/18 and 2018/19 implemented text messaging with moderate or high fidelity more often than schools in which chronic... 9
Figure 4. The majority of schools with high use of attendance-related text messaging were secondary schools with chronic absenteeism rates of 30 percent or higher, 2018/19 10
Figure 5. In general, secondary schools sent more attendance-related text messages per month than elementary schools, 2018/19 11
Figure 6. Secondary schools with higher proportions of multilingual learner students were more likely to have high use of attendance-related text messaging, 2018/19 11
Figure 7. Nearly a third of attendance-related text messages sent through the text-messaging platform were in a language other than English; the vast majority of these were in Spanish, 2018/19 12
Figure 8. Five of the six schools that used the text-messaging platform to target attendance-related text messages to parents and guardians who spoke a language other than English were elementary... 13
Figure 9. During the 2018/19 school year the use of attendance-related text messaging increased more quickly in schools in which chronic absenteeism decreased between 2017/18 and 2018/19... 14
Boxes
Box 1. Key terms 3
Box 2. Data sources, sample, and methods 6