School Messaging Platforms and Student Attendance
Abstract
School attendance is strongly associated with academic performance and achievement and is one of the strongest predictors of dropping out of high school (e.g., Allensworth and Easton, 2007; Balfanz and Byrnes, 2012). For example, estimated graduation rates for students missing fewer than 10 days in middle school is 70-79 percent, compared to 51-52 percent for students missing 11-20 days (Barge, 2011). Each year in the United States an estimated 5-7.5 million students miss nearly a month of school; that is one in every seven students (Balfanz and Byrnes, 2012; Ginsburg et al., 2014). In Georgia, around 11 percent of students miss more than 15 days of school each year, which, according to the federal definition, categorizes them as chronically absent
The Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education (MAPLE) partnered with four metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia school districts to conduct an experiment to improve attendance by informing parents about their child’s attendance.