This year the Attendance Awareness Campaign was celebrated with a flurry of activity from schools and communities across the country. Our theme this year, We Belong in School, encourages everyone to keep in mind that students are more likely to attend school when they feel emotionally and physically safe, connected and supported, and believe they can learn and achieve.
To kick off the school year, we saw participants post videos, hold rallies, issue proclamations, hang posters in hallways and at school entrances, put up billboards on local roads, and many calculated their chronic absenteeism data. Each activity helps to create a culture of attendance that can ensure every student has an equal opportunity to reach for their dreams by being in school every day.
The campaign broke a record this year with the 803 local Superintendents who signed the Superintendents Call to Action. They all pledged to prioritize attendance, mobilize their community and drive with data in the 2019-20 school year. Read our press release to find out the states with the most superintendents who signed on. The names are also listed on our website.
This year saw a surge in proclamations issued by governors, mayors, school board and Superintendents that declared September as Attendance Awareness Month. We were delighted to see that 64 Superintendents in North Carolina signed a proclamation. Find their names on our website.
Here are a few of the metrics we’ve gathered:
- 8,426 people registered for one of our Attendance Awareness Campaign webinars, compared to 6,306 last year. (Find all 4 webinar recordings here.)
- 21,200+ people signed up for our newsletters.
- 12 attendance awareness updates emailed (go here to see them all).
- 92 national and state level partners disseminated information to their constituents.
- 2,253 news stories and blog posts featured attendance issues or Attendance Awareness Month in July, August and September.
- 7,091 tweets featured the #SchoolEveryDay hashtag in July, August and September, generating 25 million potential impressions.
- 555,328 website page views in July, August and September.
Our September Brief, Using Chronic Absence Data to Improve Conditions for Learning, has been viewed or downloaded 4,400 times on our website and continues to be widely read. The report, developed by Attendance Works and American Institutes for Research (AIR), shows how education, community and policy leaders can use chronic absence data to create positive conditions for learning for teachers and students while also addressing educational inequities.
Here are a few more highlights:
- August 21, Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and Foundation, Inc. hosted Preparing for a New Year! Twitter chat with Foundations, Inc.
- September 19, Mentor hosted Mentoring In Real Life Attendance Chat, with SchoolHouse Connection and Attendance Works
- September 10, Attendance Works and AIR released, Using Chronic Absence to Improve Conditions for Learning
- September 10, The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution released the interactive data map, Chronic Absence: School and Community Factors
- September 12, America’s Promise Alliance hosted How Creating Safe and Supportive Learning Environments Can Improve Attendance, with FutureEd and Attendance Works
- October 16, Attendance Works published press release announcing a Record-breaking 803 Superintendents Pledge to Prioritize Attendance in 2019-20 School Year by signing the Superintendents Call to Action
We owe a special thank you to the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation for its generous general support, as well as to this year’s Attendance Awareness Campaign corporate sponsors (French Toast, InClass Today and Safe & Civil Schools). Their investment helps make it possible for us to provide strategies and materials at no cost to thousands of practitioners throughout the country!
