Attendance

This list contains resources to help providers address attendance issues.

The Illinois Attendance Commission was created within the Illinois State Board of Education to study the issue of chronic absenteeism in this State and make recommendations for strategies to prevent chronic absenteeism.

Every Student Counts, Every Day Matters is the official promotional video for the Illinois Commission (above) attendance awareness campaign.

The Every Student, Every Day toolkit is the national initiative to address and eliminate chronic absenteeism.

IEL Resource(s)

• Tip Sheet: Get Them to School Every Day
  Spanish | Polish | Arabic | French | Simplified Chinese | Korean
• Blog: How Teachers Can Help When a Child Says, “Mommy, I Don’t Want to Go to Preschool!” (Spanish)

Online Resource(s)

• ERSEA: Encouraging and Supporting Regular Attendance
  This Head Start initiative explains the importance of regular attendance for 4-year-old children. It also provides questions for programs and teachers to consider while they try to improve attendance.
• Health Services to Promote Attendance
  This tip sheet developed by the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness provides information about how programs can improve attendance by planning and evaluating health services and helping families learn how to keep children healthy, identify illness early, and get the right treatment quickly.
• What Makes and Attendance Incentive Program Successful?
  This blog on the Attendance Works website explains how the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is encouraging schools to address chronic absence. The blog article also describes a framework that uses incentives to promote attendance.
• Attendance in the Early Grades: Why It Matters for Reading
  Absences lead to children missing crucial instructional and educational experiences. This Attendance Works research brief discusses how attendance in the preschool years and later affects literacy skills.
• Pre-K Attendance – Why It’s Important and How to Support It
  The Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO) explains that greater attendance in early childhood programs leads to better outcomes for children. The center discusses the roots of absenteeism and strategies for tackling it.
• Pre-K Attendance Is a Strong Indicator of Future Success
  This article by New America discusses an Urban Institute research report to highlight what schools can do to decrease absenteeism.
• One Way to Improve Kindergarten Attendance: Take the School Bus This EdSource article discusses why kindergarten attendance is crucial to later success in school. While many factors contribute to absenteeism, the school bus is one way attendance can be improved.
• How to Improve School Attendance
  The Education Coordinating Council offers 14 recommendations for improving school attendance.
• Make Sure Your Child Is in School Every Day, On Time
  This one-page parent flyer created by Learn to Earn Dayton helps families understand the importance of their child being at school. The flyer also provides tips for caregivers to support their child’s success in school.
• Attendance Works Videos
  The Attendance Works website provides several videos about absenteeism and improving attendance.
• Parent Handouts
  Available in a variety of languages, these handouts put together by Attendance Works help inform families about the importance of school attendance.
• Boosting Attendance In Preschool Can Start With A Knock On The Door
  Home visits at the beginning of the school year help create a relationship and open lines of communication between the school and family. In this broadcast on National Public Radio, Elissa Nadworny explains how home visits can help improve attendance.

Organization(s)

• Attendance Works
  This national and state initiative is committed to improving school success by addressing chronic absences.