Every summer, district leaders unveil their professional development priorities for the year ahead. It might be project-based learning or the latest literacy curriculum. These initiatives matter. But here's my radical proposal: What if every district in America made attendance their singular PD focus for 2025-2026?
Before you dismiss this as too narrow, consider this: With nearly a quarter of U.S. students chronically absent, we're facing an epidemic that undermines every other educational effort. You can't implement project-based learning with empty seats. The best curriculum in the world doesn't work when students aren't there to learn it.
That's why we're launching Mission: Attendance, a year-long initiative delivering free resources twice monthly to any educator ready to tackle this crisis. Beyond sharing tools, we’re fundamentally rethinking how to approach attendance, especially as students get older.
The Hidden Pattern We Can't Ignore
A new analysis of over 1.3 million students across 172 districts revealed something that should alarm every secondary educator: chronic absenteeism increases steadily from 5th grade (14.22%) through 12th grade (32.13%). Think of it as a black diamond ski slope from 6th grade through 12th, with students picking up speed as they descend.
Here's what gives me hope: elementary school. In 5th grade, with a 14.22% chronic rate and 94.51% attendance rate, we're still keeping kids engaged. Fifth grade is our sweet spot. We know how to keep students connected and families involved at this age. The question becomes: how do we maintain that momentum?
We can make educated guesses about what changes. We know that bullying ramps up in middle school. Students find themselves in a new mix and might feel lost academically or socially. Middle school is a time of figuring out what it means to be a friend, to fit in, to be a member of a community. And if those things are too hard, it often means staying home.
The more school students miss, the more isolated they feel. The more behind they get academically, the more overwhelming it becomes to make up the work. Each absence pushes them further down that ski slope.
We know these things. Which means we can be proactive about them. We can apply what's working in elementary school to the secondary years. What would that look like in your middle school, if maintaining that 5th-grade momentum was everyone's focus?
Built on a Foundation of Shared Expertise
Throughout my career, I've learned that transformative change in education happens when we stop treating educators as isolated practitioners and start treating them as a community of experts. When I was a middle school principal, our biggest attendance breakthroughs came from teachers sharing what worked in their classrooms, not from top-down mandates.
Mission: Attendance builds on this same principle by centering educators as both experts and continuous learners. Because somewhere, in some district, someone has figured out how to reengage their chronically absent 10th graders. Someone else has cracked the code on getting families with teenagers more involved. Another team has solved their transportation barriers.
The question is: How do we share these solutions systematically rather than hoping for organic spread through conference conversations and social media threads?
A Year of Systematic Support, Not Another Initiative
Here's what years of building professional learning programs taught me: one-off workshops don't create change. Sustained, systematic effort does.
Mission: Attendance delivers concrete resources twice monthly throughout the entire school year. September kicks off with an Attendance Awareness Month toolkit, including social media posts and printable flyers in English and Spanish, plus a 30-Day Attendance Challenge complete with student and teacher calendars and tracking tools. October brings a deep dive into behavior and building community. November focuses on pre-holiday engagement strategies. December offers celebration templates and reset protocols. And so on.
Each month builds intentionally on the last. By February, you're not starting from scratch with "Attendance 2.0"; you're adding another block to five months of relationship-building. By April, when we tackle "Attendance is Academic," you have the foundational connections to make that message land.
Here's the crucial part: these are frameworks you can adapt. The Goal Setting Worksheet will help your team identify your specific challenges. The Attendance Needs Assessment Protocol will guide you through analyzing your unique data. The Family Engagement Workbook will help you understand your community's particular barriers.
Why Family Engagement Can't Stop at Fifth Grade
As chronic absenteeism accelerates in middle school, many districts begin reducing family outreach efforts. It’s no coincidence. We want students to learn independence and responsibility, and so we communicate less with the adults at home. But think about it: at the exact moment when students are navigating social dynamics, bullying, and academic challenges, why would we pull back on their main support system? Parents and guardians want to help their struggling middle schoolers, and they need the school to keep that door open.
Districts seeing improvements are maintaining ongoing family partnerships through 12th grade. These partnerships focus on genuine engagement that treats parents as partners in solving attendance challenges, rather than sending compliance-driven messages like "Your child was absent today."
The Mission: Attendance resources reflect this reality. Our message templates are translated into multiple languages and written to spark conversation. The Family Feedback Survey asks "What support would help your family maintain consistent attendance?" rather than focusing on blame or compliance.
Four Shifts That Actually Move the Needle
Through our work with hundreds of districts, we've identified the mindset shifts that separate successful attendance initiatives from those that fall flat:
- From Reactive to Proactive: Stop waiting for chronic absenteeism to develop. Our 30-Day Challenge and attendance tracking calendars help you celebrate positive patterns before problems emerge.
- From School-Centered to Student-Partnered: The Student Connection Audit helps identify which students feel genuinely seen and which are slipping through the cracks. When students help design solutions, buy-in follows.
- From Seasonal Pushes to Year-Long Momentum: Attendance Awareness Month in September is great, but what about October? November? April? Our year-long calendar ensures you have timely, relevant resources from the first day of school to the last.
- From Isolation to Collaboration: Every Mission: Attendance participant becomes part of a national community tackling this challenge together. Your success stories become another district's breakthrough strategies.
The Multiplication Effect
When attendance improves, everything else accelerates. Academic achievement rises not just because students are present for instruction, but because consistent attendance builds learning habits and peer connections. Behavioral issues decrease when students feel connected to their school community. Even teacher satisfaction improves when educators aren’t constantly reteaching material to students cycling in and out.
This is why making attendance the year's PD focus isn't limiting; it's foundational. It's the intervention that makes all other progress possible.
A Challenge to Every District Leader
I'll end where I began, with a challenge: What if your district made 2025-2026 the year of attendance? The year we took what's working in elementary school and extended it through graduation? The foundation that supports everything else.
Mission: Attendance provides the structure from attendance tracking calendars to Smore newsletter templates, crisis communication playbooks to summer outreach guides. All free, all created by educators who understand the daily realities of this work.
But I know that resources alone won't solve this crisis. It takes leadership willing to say: "We're getting this right in elementary school. Now let's band together and keep that momentum going through 12th grade. Everything else we want to accomplish depends on first getting kids to class."
It also takes humility to acknowledge we can't do this alone. The beauty of making attendance a district-wide PD focus is that it creates shared ownership. Every teacher, counselor, administrator, and support staff member becomes part of the solution. And through Mission: Attendance, your district becomes part of a national community of educators sharing what works.
The students stepping off buses tomorrow morning, or not stepping off buses, are counting on us to make this choice. Those chronic absenteeism statistics? They represent millions of young people disconnecting from their education, their peers, and their future opportunities.
We can change this. We have the tools. We have the collective expertise. The question is whether we have the will to make attendance not just another initiative, but the top priority that enables all others.
Join us at schoolstatus.com/mission-attendance. Because this isn't work any of us can do alone. But together, sharing what works and learning from what doesn't, we can bring our students back.
Dr. Kara Stern is Director of Education for SchoolStatus. A former teacher, middle school principal, and head of school, she designed Mission: Attendance to provide systematic support for educators working to improve student attendance. She holds a Ph.D. in Teaching & Learning from NYU.
