Reduced Absenteeism Relies on Family Engagement

A study released last year by Learning Heroes and The New Teacher Project (TNTP) detailed groundbreaking data that connects strong prepandemic family engagement to positive postpandemic student outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, schools with strong family engagement saw much smaller increases in chronic absenteeism and smaller decreases in English and math proficiency rates.

While the connection wasn’t surprising, the magnitude of the effect of strong family engagement was unexpected. Armed with this data, how can we support principals in building the skills and knowledge needed to improve their family engagement strategies? Having worked closely with cohorts of principals and district leaders over the past few years, we can offer some ideas.

Connecting engagement to Attendance

After schools were shuttered in March 2020, we found anecdotal evidence that schools with stronger relationships with families were better equipped to withstand the disruptions. Tapping data from the UChicago 5Essentials survey of Illinois schools, we isolated the effect of a single support—“involved families”—on student outcomes.

The results were clear: While most schools were seeing tremendous increases in chronic absenteeism, those with superior prepandemic family engagement scores had considerably lower increases. In fact, schools with a family engagement score in the 90th percentile saw an increase in chronic absenteeism that was 6.2 percent lower than the increases seen by schools with scores in the 10th percentile. This equates to a 39 percent smaller increase in chronic absenteeism rates.

In a school with 1,000 students, that’s 62 fewer chronically absent children—multiple classrooms of kids. In terms of overall attendance, the hypothetical 1,000-student school would see 1,600 fewer absences per year.

Such an impact can also be significant in terms of school funding. In states like Illinois, where districts are funded based on average daily attendance, that 1,000-student school would be able to access $90,000 more in funding.

The relationships between family engagement and chronic absenteeism are so powerful, the Learning Heroes/TNTP study found, they might actually be stronger than the effect of poverty. In other words, when a school invests in building relationships with families, it presents a real opportunity to address inequities.

The final key finding on chronic absenteeism dispels the myth that family engagement is effective only in the early grades. Relationships were strong at every age, with middle schools showing the greatest disparities between high and low engagement scores.

Identifying Promising Practices

Findings regarding the relationships between strong prepandemic family engagement and student attendance and achievement can help move the field of education forward in big ways. But the question is: How can educators take what they know from research and implement it in impactful ways in their own school communities?

The old ways of encouraging family engagement are no longer sufficient—back-to-school nights and parent-­teacher conferences often fail to build trusting relationships or drive productive collaboration. Learning Heroes is always studying ways to measure and strengthen family engagement, and it offers the Family Engagement Leadership Institute (FELI) to help principals develop family engagement strategies that meaningfully impact student learning and well-being.

Participants in the nine-month program learn the essential research on family engagement in schools and apply best practices and leadership moves at their school. They work closely with a team of staff and families to develop and implement a plan and receive coaching throughout the year.

Anchor texts build upon the “Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships (Version 2).” First, “Embracing a New Normal: Toward a More Liberatory Approach to Family Engagement” describes the racialized power imbalances that have shaped historical relationships between home and school. It calls for family engagement strategies that are liberatory, solidarity-driven, and equity-​focused.

“Unlocking the How: Designing Family Engagement Strategies That Lead to School Success” offers more of a ground-level view of strategies school leaders can apply immediately and includes examples from schools across the country. This helps participants focus on the three core pillars of any effective engagement strategy:

Trust. Effective family engagement begins with building trusting relationships with families. Families have to trust schools in order to feel empowered as equal partners in the work of student and school success.

Student learning and well-being. Strategies should be anchored in student learning and well-being to truly impact student and school outcomes.

Infrastructure and resource allocation. Principals must learn to allocate resources to integrate family engagement goals into school plans and priorities. This might include teacher professional development (PD) surrounding engagement strategies, scheduling dedicated relationship-building time, and other policies.

Supporting Enhanced Engagement

FELI’s national cohort convenes virtually for professional development sessions throughout the year, and participants receive one-on-one and peer coaching from leaders with strong track records of success. By the end of a school year, participants develop an equity-​focused family engagement strategy for the following year that integrates into existing school priorities.

When a family engagement strategy is equity-​focused, it works intentionally to reduce the power imbalances that often exist between families and schools. Educators unlearn deficit-based mental models that characterize families as unwilling or unable to support student and school success. Equity-focused family engagement strategies treat families as equal partners, listening to families and bringing them to the table as co-designers of learning.

Practically speaking, this involves allocating time and resources for staff to build relationships with families in ways that disrupt power imbalances—for example, by hosting meetings in the community instead of the school and turning the agenda over to families. It also means dedicating staff meetings and professional learning community time to unearthing biases about families.

Families face challenges when it comes to building trusting relationships with schools, and schools struggle to communicate with families. Building trusting relationships and increasing positive, consistent, two-way communication allows for honest conversations about the importance of regular and consistent attendance.

Seeing a Shift

When we support principals in meaningful ways and help them identify key learnings, they can apply their leadership skills and contextual awareness to drive meaningful change for their school communities.

One best practice is home visits. Home visits can provide educators with an opportunity to reflect on engagement practices and biases, while also building relational trust with families. Multiple FELI participants have designed innovative home-visit strategies for their schools in the past year.

Some built all-new home-visit strategies, and some repurposed existing teams. One San Diego principal previously had an attendance team make home visits to families who struggled with chronic absenteeism, but she realized that those visits left families feeling “blamed” for absenteeism.

The principal rechristened her home-visit squad as the Family Engagement Team and created new goals for it: getting to know families, building relationships, and having organic conversations about student learning, well-being, and attendance. With supporting PD, the shift “made such a big difference,” she says. “It’s changing our mindsets as [a] team, [and] also our parents’ mindsets.” 

Another principal noted that employing a whole-school strategy for conducting home visits has cut chronic absenteeism rates in half—from 30 percent to 15 percent.

That’s what can happen when family engagement strategies move from being transactional—based on what the school needs the parents to do for them—to being built on a foundation of trust.

In a sea of disheartening data, early findings from the Family Engagement Impact Study offer a lifeline to schools hoping to improve family engagement, decrease rates of chronic absenteeism, and improve achievement. But data is not enough—any efforts to decrease chronic absenteeism must invest in opportunities for principals to build capacity around effective, equitable family engagement. The districts and schools that apply these lessons will be the ones that see improved outcomes.

Eyal Bergman is senior vice president of Learning Heroes.

Zenzile Riddick is project manager of the Family Engagement Impact Study and the Knowledge Capture lead for the Family Engagement Leadership Institute.