How elementary principals can build long-term attendance success
WASHINGTON — At Love Creek Elementary School in Lewes, Delaware, educators are doing everything they can to encourage student attendance.
There are tiered supports that increase with intensity for those students needing individualized interventions and supports. If not having clean clothes is keeping a student from attending, the school provides gently used clothes or offers to wash outfits. And then there’s an opportunity to have pancake breakfast with Principal Equetta Jones.
Last year, only 10 students out of 715 at Love Creek Elementary were chronically absent, said Jones. And although chronic absenteeism at the school is declining, attendance is always a concern.
“It gets bigger than just kids not coming to school,” said Jones, explaining absenteeism affects students’ academic performance and connections to school.
Elementary school principals are in a unique position to set good attendance habits for young students and their families as they enter the K-12 system, said Hedy Chang, CEO, president and founder of the nonprofit Attendance Works.
Chang was speaking to Jones and about 200 other elementary school principals who were in Washington, D.C., this week for the National Association of Elementary School Principals’ advocacy conference.
Chronic absence as early as pre-K can negatively impact reading proficiency by 3rd grade, achievement levels in middle school, and suspension and drop out rates in high school, Chang said. There also are impacts on chronically absent students’ executive functioning skills and social-emotional growth.
“This has to do with the whole child’s development,” Chang said.
From 2017 to 2022, the national chronic absenteeism rate nearly doubled, from 13.4% to 28.5%, according to a tracker from the American Enterprise Institute. School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic are largely to blame for reduced rates of attendance over this time period, and school, district and state leaders have developed interventions and incentives to reduce the rates.
There are signs that those efforts are working. In 2023, the rate fell to 25.4%. And in 2024, it was 23.5%.
Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% or more of school days — about 18 — for any reason in an academic year.
When examined by grade level, chronic absenteeism had high rates in kindergarten nationwide. The estimated chronic absenteeism rate in kindergarten in 2025 was 24.6%. By late elementary school and middle school, rates fell. But in high school, they rose again. The estimated chronic absenteeism rate in 2025 for 12th graders was 36.3%.
Elementary schools can face unique challenges when addressing attendance, Chang said. That’s because those schools may not have the same infrastructure and staffing as middle and high schools do to address attendance challenges.
“You’ve got to get real creative on how you work a whole school approach” to chronic absenteeism, Chang told the elementary school principals.
Using empathy to increase attendance
Chang said school leaders should take a more empathetic and supportive approach, rather than one that is punitive or places blame, when aiming to increase attendance. This could mean asking a chronically absent student “How can I help you?” rather than saying “What’s wrong with you?”
For elementary schools, where students are reliant on adults to get them prepared to start the school day on time, the outreach for whole-school intervention extends to students’ parents or caregivers. That can include informing parents of the value of consistent attendance, as well as providing a welcoming and caring school environment, Chang said.
Individualized support for families with attendance challenges is also needed, Chang said.
At Kāneʻohe Elementary School in Kāneʻohe, Hawaii, Principal Derek Minakami said there’s a lot of education on the importance of school attendance with the families of the approximately 510 pre-K-6 students. Still, there are challenges such as parents being unsure of when to send their sick child to school, families opting to take vacations on nonholidays, and the fact that the school doesn’t have bus routes for most students, Minakami said.
The school analyzes absenteeism data to determine which students and families need extra supports. There’s also a walking school bus where students who live near each other walk to school as a group with an adult.
Jennifer DeRagon, principal of George Hersey Robertson Elementary School in Coventry, Connecticut, highlighted a schoolwide attendance campaign last school year to educate families about the importance of being at school.
For the most part, the grades 3-5 school’s 375 students really want to come to class. The challenge is meeting every families’ needs when they have barriers to attendance, said DeRagon. One step the school has taken is to have teachers call families whose children were absent for at least two days in September, because that month “sets the precedent for the whole year,” she said.
Another approach the school took was to post monthly attendance rates by grade level on a bulletin board near the front entrance. The students in the grades with the highest attendance each month got rewards, like an extra 15 minutes of recess time.
“I wanted parents to see that as soon as they walked in. I wanted the kids to notice it,” DeRagon said of the attendance posters.
