Michigan study spots attendance winners

A new Michigan attendance study is useful because it narrows the question from “why are kids absent?” to “which schools are getting more kids to show up, and what are they doing differently?” Researchers found that some schools in Michigan were substantially better than comparable peers at improving attendance, even after accounting for differences in student background and prior records. (future-ed.org) That matters because chronic absenteeism is often discussed as if it were mostly fixed by neighborhood conditions, poverty, transportation, health, or family instability. (future-ed.org) Those factors still matter, and the study does not say schools control all of them. (edworkingpapers.com) But the Michigan results suggest school routines and follow-through may explain more of the gap than many educators assume. ### How did researchers try to separate school effects from student background? The research team, led by Jeremy Singer of the University of Michigan-Flint and Sarah Winchell Lenhoff of Wayne State University, looked at students who switched schools, such as during normal grade-span transitions. (future-ed.org) That design let them compare largely similar students across different school environments instead of simply rewarding schools that already enrolled more consistent attenders. Researchers then adjusted comparisons further to account for similar backgrounds and academic records. In all, they analyzed roughly 2,700 Michigan schools between 2022 and 2025 and grouped them by how much they improved student attendance. (future-ed.org) ### What was the clearest difference between stronger and weaker schools? The headline number was seven days. Students in the top quarter of schools attended about seven more days per year than similar students in the bottom quarter. Since chronic absenteeism is commonly defined as missing 10% of the school year, or about 18 days, that gap is large enough to matter in practice. (future-ed.org) The gains also appeared durable. The schools that improved attendance the most tended to keep showing stronger results across all three years in the study period, rather than posting a one-year blip. (future-ed.org) ### So what were the stronger schools actually doing? The reporting points most clearly to frequent home visits. Schools that were more successful at improving attendance were much more likely to visit families daily or weekly when students were missing school. Monthly or occasional visits did not appear to separate schools in the same way, and schools using less frequent visits performed about the same as schools that did none. (future-ed.org) FutureEd’s account of the findings pushes the point beyond home visits alone. The practical difference, it argues, is likely in operating routines: who notices an absence, who contacts the family, how quickly that happens, and what support comes next. (future-ed.org) That is an interpretation of the pattern, not a claim that one tactic alone solves absenteeism. ### Does the study say absenteeism is mostly a school management problem now? No. Jeremy Singer told Hechinger that even some of the most effective schools in the state still had chronic absenteeism rates above 40% or 50%. That means better practice can coexist with very high absence levels, especially in hard-hit communities. (future-ed.org) What the study does say is narrower and more actionable: school effects are real, and they are measurable. That shifts part of the conversation from fatalism to execution. If two schools serve similar students and one gets meaningfully better attendance, the gap is at least partly about what adults in the building are doing repeatedly and on time. (future-ed.org) That is an inference drawn from the study design and reported findings. ### Where does this leave schools looking for next steps? The January 2026 working paper by Singer, Lenhoff, Jerome Graham and Richard O. Welsh found schools in Michigan and Georgia rely heavily on communication-based attendance strategies, while practices aimed at removing barriers or improving students’ school experience are less common. (future-ed.org) That leaves a practical next question for districts: whether their attendance systems are built around generic reminders, or around fast identification, personal contact, and concrete support. The Michigan findings do not offer a universal fix. They do offer a clearer place to look. (edworkingpapers.com) (future-ed.org)