Reilly has managed to cut its chronic absenteeism rate by half to 25% over the past 2024-25 years. Still very high. A quarter of students missed more than 18 days of school each year. But, better.
First, he identified 150 children who had just lost, those who had missed 18 to 35 days, hoping that these children would be more likely to lure back to school than those who were more disengaged. Reilly and a group of administrators and mentors each took 10 to 15 students and showed their families how many schools they missed and their low grades. His team asked, “What do you need to get your kids to school?”
Two of the most common answers: transport and food.
Many students live only one mile away and are too close to the school to qualify for bus service. However, walking has stopped many people, especially when it rains or snows. Yellow buses often pass through these children’s homes as they transport children who live further away, and Riley convinces the area to add stops for these long-absent children.
90% of his students come from families who are poor enough to qualify for a federal free or reduced-price lunch program, while 80% of Hispanics are Hispanic. Although many children have had breakfast and lunch at school, their families admit that their children will become so hungry on weekends that they don’t want to wake up and go to school on Mondays. Reilly worked with the pantry and sent a bag of meat and pasta home with students on Friday.
Personal attention can also help. At each school time, Reilly and his team check in with assigned students. The child who appears will get five “green stags” and spend them on snacks and prizes. The administrator calls the home of people who are not in school. “If they don’t answer the phone, we’ll have a home visit,” Riley said.
The most dramatic overhaul was arranged. Reilly canceled the personal schedule for students and assigned four teachers to every 104 students. Now, the kids move in 26 pods, they fuse all the lessons together and spin the same four teachers all day. Classrooms are close to each other, creating a smaller community within the school.
“It’s all about building relationships,” Riley said, saying that when students look forward to meeting classmates and teachers, they are more motivated to go to school.
The researchers say that building relationships is effective. Hedy Chang, executive director of attendance at the nonprofit, gave schools advice on how to improve attendance, which he said remains a struggle to convince school leaders (and school board members) even if schools become a more enthusiastic place than punishing children and families for skipping schools.
Reilly said his school now releases the lowest rate of chronic absenteeism among students and teachers in Providence. He said his school is the highest performing middle school in the city and the highest school in the state.
New York City: Catching Butterflies
A group of people in New York City’s high schools are taking a more data-driven approach, a consulting organization that supports 71 city middle schools in the new vision.
After an experiment, new vision staff made a big improvement in attendance among a group of students in a small group who encountered 10% of school days but had not crossed the chronic absenteeism threshold. These students may miss a day or two every week, but interact relatively in school. Jonathan Green, a new Visions school improvement coach, led the work, calling them “butterflies.” “They tremble every week,” he said.
Green advises someone to meet these butterflies once a week and show them their attendance data, set goals for the next week, and explain how their attendance rate leads to better grades. The intervention takes two to five minutes. “There has been a significant change in attendance,” Green said.
The new vision creates a website where school administrators can print two pages of documents for each student, so data including monthly attendance and procrastination appears in an easy-to-digest format. The quick meeting was held for eight to ten weeks during the last minute of the semester. “That was the biggest opportunity to have the opportunity to turn those who could fail into passing grades,” Green said. “We found these sweet spots in the school calendar for this very high resource, high energy intensive weekly check-in. It’s not easy for anyone to expand in school.”
Staff must find out each child’s timetable and intercept them between classes. One person successfully takes their entire student under the chronic absenteeism threshold. Not everyone thinks it is a good idea: Some school administrators question why so much should be put into the work for students who have not been absent for a long time rather than in greater trouble.
The dramatic results help answer this question. Chronic absenteeism rates in Bronx schools that volunteered to participate in butterfly intervention fell from 47% in 2021 to 32% in 2025, which is still high. However, other Bronx high schools in the new visual network did not attempt this butterfly intervention with chronic absenteeism rate of 46%.
Green said the solution was not effective for other high school students. He said some people have difficulty organizing study time and need more intensive help from teachers. “A two to five minutes of check-in won’t help them,” Green said.
Indianapolis: Cookies and Gravy
The leader of an Indiana charter school told me he used a reward and punishment system that reduced the rate of chronic absences in kindergartens from 64% in 2021-22 to 10% in 2024-25.
Jordan Habayeb, chief operating officer of Adelante Schools, said he used federal funds to school breakfast and lunch programs to create a restaurant-style buffet restaurant. “The interesting fact: During the time of homemade cookies and gravy, we saw the lowest speed of lateness,” he said.
Researchers recommend avoiding punishment because it won’t bring students back to school. But Habayib said he strictly abides by state law, requiring schools to report 10 absences to the state Department of Children’s Services and submit reports to county prosecutors. Habayb told me that his school accounts for one-fifth of the county’s prosecutors.
The school created an automatic warning system after five absences instead of waiting for a critical loss of 10 days. Habayib said he sent a van’s safety and attendance officer to “have a real conversation with his family, rather than being buried in paperwork.” Meanwhile, students did appear from locker decorations to T-shirts.
Parental education is also very important. During mandatory family orientation, the school described normal attendance rates even for young children. “We shared something a kid might have missed in the three-day ‘Charlotte Network’, which shows that students’ completely different understanding of the book is easy to leave,” Habayeb said. “This helps change perspectives and raises the urgency of the problem.”
Kansas City: Candy and Notes
School leaders in Kansas City, Kansas shared tips for them during a webinar hosted by attendance earlier this month. A primary school reduces its chronic absenteeism from 55% in 2021 to 38% in 2024 by allocating all 300 students to adults in the building and encouraging them to build “real” relationships. The teacher was given a list of ideas, but was free to do what seemed natural. A teacher left the candy and took notes on the assigned student’s desk. A preschooler proudly pasted his notes, saying he was a “genius” at the front door of his home. “The smiles on the kids’ faces are great,” said Zaneta Boles, principal of Silver City Primary School.
When students missed the school, Bowles said educators were trying to take a “non-deception approach” so families were more likely to leak what happened. This can help schools refer them to other community agencies for help.
Albuquerque: A shining example of reorganization
Alamosa Elementary School in Albuquerque, New Mexico was once a brilliant example of a school that convinced more families to send their children to classes. In 2018, Hechinger’s report wrote that chronic absenteeism was as low as one-quarter of students.
But Alamosa is not immune to the surge in absenteeism that plagues schools across the country. During the 2021-22 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate reached 64% for students, when the Covid variant was still in circulation. And it’s still shocking, with 38% of students missing over 10% of the 2024-25 school year, matching the 50% increase in long-term absenteeism nationwide since 2019.
“We’re working on it,” said Daphne Strader, director of school health at Albuquerque Public Schools.
Strad said Alamosa and other Albuquerque schools made some successful changes to how they addressed the problem. But the number of absenteeism is still overwhelming. “There are a lot of kids with kids in need,” Starder said. “We need more staff.”
Strad said attending the intervention was “too isolated” and they focused more on “the whole child.” She encouraged schools to combine attendance with other initiatives to improve academic achievement and improve student behavior. “Students are hungry, they are out of tune and have no courage,” Strad said. All these problems have led to absenteeism. But she also acknowledged that some students have more serious needs and it is not clear who can solve these problems in the system.
Her biggest advice for school is to focus on relationships. “Relationships drive everything,” Strad said. “One of the main consequences of the pandemic is isolation. If I feel a sense of belonging, I’m more likely to come to school.”
