Truancy is a huge and seemingly intractable problem for the nation’s public schools. And Michigan has one of the worst attendance rate in the country. This makes it a prime target for researchers. In hundreds of schools, more than 3 in 5 students were chronically absent before the pandemic. When classes resumed, chronic absenteeism approached four out of five students in the state’s least attended schools.
Yet a new study released in May offers hope. Researchers found that some Michigan schools appear significantly better than others at getting students to show up, and identified one intervention — frequent home visits to families whose children are absent from class — that was used more often by schools that made a difference.
Schools that were more successful in increasing attendance were much more likely to conduct these visits frequently, daily or weekly. Monthly or occasional home visits don’t seem to make as much difference. Schools that conducted less frequent visits performed about the same as those that did not conduct home visits at all.
Measuring the impact of a school on attendance is tricky. If a student attends school 95% of the time, it may be difficult to tell whether they were already conscientious or whether school itself is a positive influence.
To isolate the influence of one school, researchers at the University of Michigan-Flint and Wayne State University focused on students who changed schools, such as those transferring from middle school to high school. The students themselves remained largely the same while their school environments changed, so researchers could more credibly estimate whether certain schools made a difference. To account for the fact that more diligent students might be selected or funneled to higher-performing schools, the researchers adjusted their calculations to compare students with similar backgrounds and academic records when they changed schools.
Researchers analyzed approximately 2,700 Michigan schools between 2022 and 2025 and divided them into quarters based on their students’ improvement in attendance rates. Students in the top quarter of schools showed up to class about seven days more per year than students in the bottom quarter. Seven days is considerable since missing 18 days per year is the threshold for chronic absenteeism.
It is encouraging to see that these attendance gains were not short-lived. Schools that made the most progress tended to show improvement over the three years of the study.
But improvement doesn’t necessarily mean success. Some of the state’s most effective schools still had chronic absenteeism rates above 40 or 50 percent, said Jeremy Singer, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan-Flint and lead author of the study.
The schools that are making the most progress tend to enroll many poor children, often clustered in the state’s poorest cities, such as Detroit, Flint and Saginaw, or in economically depressed rural areas where farms are rapidly closing. Across the country, truancy rates are highest in poor communities where evictions, substance abuse, transportation problems, health problems and family responsibilities interfere with school attendance.
High-poverty schools know that truancy is a problem and have many programs and staff to address it. The researchers wanted to see if there were common strategies used by schools that were making progress. So they combined their analysis with a survey in a Michigan school in which principals revealed how they were approaching the problem.
This is how the value of frequent home visits reached the peak, which also corroborates other search in Connecticut. A intensive home visiting program to increase attendance has also given good results.
However, these visits are not a guaranteed solution. Some Michigan schools conducting weekly home visits have seen no improvement in attendance — or even worsening absenteeism. In other words, while many schools using frequent home visits have been successful, others have not. “They’re certainly not a silver bullet,” Singer said.
Singer says researchers need to delve deeper into what makes home visits effective because they are expensive and time-consuming. Possible factors include who drives them, what time of day they take place, whether they are scheduled or surprise visits, and what conversations take place.
The schools participating in the study are trying dozens of other interventions, but researchers have not detected a strong link between most of these efforts and improved attendance. These other interventions include early warning systems, home letters, automated text messages and phone calls. Schools that had support from district staff, such as truancy officers or liaison officers, did no better than schools without such staff.
Personalized and frequent text messages were slightly more common at more schools with improving attendance. The researchers also found that schools making the most progress were slightly more likely to report actively helping families overcome external barriers such as housing and transportation.
The correlation between interventions and schools that are effective in increasing attendance is an index of what works, but researchers cannot say whether interventions lead to improvements in attendance. The most effective schools may do other things that aren’t captured in the survey, like hiring particularly qualified teachers or building stronger relationships with students that make the school feel worth attending.
The results are a reminder that “best practice” recommendations often overestimate what researchers actually know. Schools can make a significant difference in attendance, but identifying truly high-performing schools is difficult, isolating the reasons for their success is even harder, and simple solutions rarely stand up to scrutiny.
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about fighting truancy in Michigan was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization that covers education. Register for Proof points and others Hechinger Newsletters.
The article What Michigan Schools Reveal About Combating Chronic Truancy appeared first in the Hechinger Report.
