When Students Don’t Show Up, It’s Not the Kids Failing. What Schools Should Do

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Chronic absenteeism is one of the most urgent and misunderstood signals that students are struggling to connect with school or facing significant challenges outside of it. Nearly 1 in 3 students missed 18 or more school days last year, and in some districts, more than half did. The pandemic didn’t cause this problem, but it intensified it. Before COVID-19, the absenteeism rate hovered around 16%. By 2021-22, it had nearly doubled to 31%. Attendance has improved slightly since then, but rates remain 75% above pre-pandemic levels — and in the most impacted communities, they’re still falling.

This is not a challenge schools can solve with lectures or punishments. My own early efforts to talk a student into better attendance were often met with slow eye rolls, exasperated sighs — and no change. In hindsight, I wasted time talking at students about not showing up. What I’ve learned — and now teach other school leaders — is that the only way forward is to build schools that students want to be in, families feel proud to choose and that instill confidence in their teachers.

When I was a principal, my team at Harlem West Middle School, part of the Success Academy network, stopped treating absenteeism as a compliance problem. We saw it for what it was: a culture issue. While some students were facing housing instability, coping with mental health challenges or caring for relatives, many simply didn’t feel a strong sense of belonging at school that would make attendance worthwhile.

The same was true for families. Between work, transportation and income constraints, parents faced hurdles. Their child’s absenteeism wasn’t due to a lack of care — it was the result of life’s complexities.

It became the job of my faculty and staff to recognize what was making it hard for students to show up or fully engage, and then offer practical ways to help them make the most out of their school day.

One of the most powerful — and surprisingly simple — shifts we made was giving students more ownership of their school. They helped shape how we started our mornings by making daily announcements: researching and delivering news stories, providing schoolwide updates or interviewing classmates, often showcasing their own talents. They also offered ideas for celebrating peers and created engaging student-run organizations, such as chess, theater and book clubs, along with student-organized competitions and leadership opportunities within the school community.

Instead of talking at students when they showed up to school, we made it a point to speak with them, and more importantly, to listen. We asked what school needed to look and feel like for them in order to show up. When students returned after an absence, we didn’t lead with scolding or suspicion. We said, “We missed you yesterday,” sending a message: You belong and you matter. These reconnections were not formal interrogations or overengineered workshops. They happened in the in-between spaces — while walking to class, sitting side-by-side in the cafeteria or helping set up for an event. The best conversations started with soft questions like: “What’ve you been up to?” or “What’s good?” or “What did you think of [add a local event]?” I often asked students for help as a way to invite connection: “Can you give me a hand with these?” Walking shoulder to shoulder, we created quiet moments to talk — or just be together. Sometimes the silence was just as valuable as the words. 

We worked just as hard to re-engage families. For younger students, we used drop-off and pick-up times as natural opportunities to connect — moments that didn’t require extra trips or schedule changes. For older students, we prioritized showing up at sporting events and performances — not just to be seen, but to listen and learn. We asked families what was exciting their kids, what made them anxious and what they needed from us to rebuild trust. 

We documented those conversations and brought them back to our regular meetings with our teaching and leadership staff. There, we looked for patterns and designed responses that were consistent across classrooms. These included deliberate attendance recognition — shoutouts to students by name during morning meetings, personalized notes or celebrations of progress — and flexible academic support time, where students could catch up, study quietly or get targeted help during the school day. These weren’t new programs; they were daily choices made by our staff, built on strong connections with students, that gave them the time and chance to be truly engaged and focused.

Today, as managing director of K12 Coalition, I employ those lessons to help educators use attendance as a lever to design better schools. That includes leadership coaching, academic redesign and strategic planning that prioritizes enrollment, engagement and better outcomes.

Across the country, I’ve seen low-cost, high-impact strategies that work: greeting every student each morning, elevating student voices through clubs and leadership roles and creating moments for peers to celebrate one another. These culture shifts work because they put the people in the building first.

Chronic absenteeism won’t be solved with incentives or threats. But it can be addressed by building schools that students are drawn to. It starts with school leaders. I encourage every administrator, district leader and principal to build a school they’d be proud to send their own child to. When students feel a school is worth showing up for, they will.

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