Automated Attendance Updates to High School Guardians

• In Event: 41.083 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 41.083-6 - Scalable Mechanisms to Improve K–12 Attendance

Abstract

Absenteeism is increasingly being used by districts in early warning systems to identify students at risk. In
New York City high schools, the scope of the absence problem is magnified by the structure of citywide high school choice: tens of thousands of students travel across five boroughs to attend school. Improving attendance can be a low-cost way to boost graduation when compared with remediation efforts to help students make up coursework they missed.

This study compares whether attendance information provided to schools that can be used for person-to person outreach, or automated information provided directly to parents, is more effective. A New York City network of high schools has created a rich student-level dataset and easy-to-use tools. The school network provides schools with a “heat map”, a Google Sheets-based tool that updates, on a daily basis, historical and current year attendance data and color-codes it to provide immediate visual cues about students with attendance challenges. The network also built a system that automatically sends, via text message, personalized same-day updates directly to guardians of absent students and weekly updates to guardians of all students. Students in 45 school-grade blocks were randomly assigned to have their guardians receive automated attendance updates via text message or to receive school staff outreach. If successful, the automated messaging strategy represents low-burden, scalable outreach that schools could use to improve attendance while freeing up scarce staff resources. To maximize participation rates, participants were asked to opt-out.

The trial began in second semester, a period when school is frequently interrupted with vacations and holidays. It offers a way to systematically test regular and broad attendance outreach, parent engagement, and low-hassle information dissemination. It builds on the promise of recent behavioral science-driven efforts aimed at engaging parents and using technology based solutions. We provide information to key influencers of student behavior (adult contacts), through a communications channel that is noticeable and not yet overutilized (text messages rather than robocalls), as a consistent, data-driven response to demonstrated student behavior in the form of absences (frequent communication in response to behavior). Results will be available in fall 2016.

Authors

• Rekha Balu, MDRC

• Kristen Porter, University of Toledo