Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Ferdinand T. Day (FTD), a Title 1 elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia, noticed an alarming increase in chronic absenteeism rates that disproportionately impacted Hispanic students. This report describes the work undertaken by an improvement team at FTD over the course of a school year to better understand drivers of absenteeism, select interventions, and test high-leverage solutions. The key finding is that small but consistent steps added up to a big impact, with a 7 percentage point increase in attendance rates for the target group during a single two-month stretch.
Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) is a public school division in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. ACPS serves upwards of 16,000 students who hail from more than 119 countries and speak 124 languages. The district comprises 18 schools, including two middle schools, two K-8 schools, two early childhood education centers, and Alexandria City High School.
Ferdinand T. Day opened in 2018 and is the newest elementary school in Alexandria. FTD is a Title I school that serves just over 600 students. It has high student turnover, with 15 percent of students leaving and 20 percent enrolling throughout the course of a school year. About 75 percent of students are English Language Learners, speaking a total of 35 languages other than English. Figure 1 breaks down the student population by race and ethnicity.
Figure 1: Ferdinand T. Day Student Population by Race and Ethnicity
Like many school divisions across the country, ACPS has seen a spike in chronic absenteeism since in-person school resumed following COVID-19 closures.
At FTD, the spike was hard to miss. In 2018–2019, the year the school opened, the absentee rate was 7 percent. In 2019–2020 the rate was 13 percent. In 2020–2021, school was remote for most of the year. Some students returned in-person March 2021, but there was no chronic absenteeism calculation. When school resumed normally in 2021–2022, the absentee rate was 27 percent (see Table 1).
Table 1: Absenteeism at ACPS, 2018–2022
| School year | Absentee rate (%) |
| 2018–2019 | 7 |
| 2019–2020 | 13 |
| 2020–2021 | — |
| 2021–2022 | 27 |
When the improvement team disaggregated chronic absenteeism data by ethnicity, they found that in 2021–2022, 42 percent of Hispanic students were chronically absent (see Figure 2). When they disaggregated by English learner status within ethnicities, they found that within Hispanic and White subgroups, English learners were more likely than their peers to be chronically absent in 2021–2022.
Figure 2: 2021–2022 Chronic Absenteeism Data Disaggregated by Ethnicity
Chronic absenteeism matters to school performance. A literature review by Dr. Ben Daley of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education found the following:
Frequent absences in kindergarten have been found to be predictive of lower likelihood of reading proficiency by the end of third grade (Ginsburg & Chang, 2014; Bruner & Chang, 2011) and lower achievement on test scores in fifth grade (Buehler, Topagna, & Chang, 2012; Bruner & Chang, 2011). Chronic absenteeism has been found to predict lower National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores (Ginsburg & Chang, 2014) dropping out of high school (Hill, 2014), and lower rates of college persistence (Ginsburg & Chang, 2014).
In Virginia specifically, data from 2023–2024 indicate that chronically absent students performed 19 percentage points below their peers in reading and 26 percentage points below in math (Virginia Department of Education, 2022).
Perhaps less obvious is that chronic absenteeism is also a big problem for staff, because state and federal law mandate a labor-intensive and time-consuming response to truancy (defined as five or more unexcused absences). While truancy and chronic absenteeism are defined differently, they are closely correlated, so higher rates of chronic absenteeism are associated with a greater number of students needing truancy outreach. With so many students missing so many classes, the burden on school staff was unsustainable.
For nearly a decade, ACPS central office staff have been increasing their capacity in improvement science and integrating it into their work. Simultaneously, FTD’s founding principal, Rachael Dischner, has been investing in professional learning about improvement science by sending staff members to the annual Carnegie Summit (now the National Summit on Improvement in Education). With both the school and division committed to improvement science, it was natural for them to partner to tackle chronic absenteeism.
The improvement team was a mix of division and school-level staff members, and did not include any classroom teachers. This was deliberate: while classroom teachers provided insights through empathy interviews and other mechanisms, having a team without classroom teachers meant the team could meet often, at different times during the day, without needing to find substitutes. The weekly cadence of meetings helped keep the project momentum going.
The team’s composition was as follows:
Project sponsors:
Improvement coaches:
FTD school staff
The project’s initial goal was to reduce the rate of chronic absenteeism in the school. After some preliminary research, including empathy interviews with staff and parent focus groups held in multiple languages, we made this goal more specific—to reduce the school’s second quarter absenteeism rate of 26 percent to 21 percent by the fourth quarter of the 2022–2023 school year.
The improvement team began by making a “fishbone diagram”—a tool for beginning the process of uncovering what was causing the problem they were tackling (in this case, chronic absenteeism) (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Fishbone Diagram
Creating a fishbone diagram can be cathartic for a team. Here, participants freely share their thoughts about why a problem exists and also find that others on the team may have the same theories. As is often the case at the start of an improvement project, this team began by focusing on causes that were outside their control—especially the wider lives of students’ families. A fishbone diagram can be refined over multiple iterations to help a team tune the language and focus on factors inside their locus of control. In this case though, the coaches decided to leave it as it was, as an “artifact” of the team’s shared understanding of the problem at that time. The coaches recognized the value of this imperfect fishbone as a starting point for investigating the true roots of the problem without taking a more directive coaching stance to “fix” the fishbone.
The team continued their investigation by conducting empathy interviews with staff and parent focus groups in multiple languages. When they started the interviews, the team was still focused on external factors such as helping families improve their morning drop-off routines. However, equipped with the added perspective of staff and parents, the team refined the causes identified in the fishbone diagram by conducting an interrelationship digraph protocol (see Figure 4).
To make an interrelationship digraph, a team plots the “causes” identified in the fishbone diagram and puts them in a circle on a piece of paper. Then they look at each cause in turn. If one cause has a relationship with another cause, the team determines, in the words of the protocol, “which one causes the other the most,” and then draws an arrow from the “causal” element to the “impacted” element. The number of inward and outward arrows are counted for each cause, and the causes with the most outward arrows rise to the top as those that have the most impact on the other causes. In sum:
Figure 4: Interrelationship Digraph
When the web showed that factors that took place within the school (the boxed material in Figure 4) were more impactful than home factors, the team had an “ah ha!” moment. This activity shifted the team to focus on things within their control, and they used these causal factors to create a driver diagram and begin researching change ideas.
At the end of this process the team identified three principle drivers of the problem of chronic absenteeism:
They decided to focus their efforts on the first two.
Once the team identified two drivers to focus on, they plotted these on a “driver diagram” (see Figure 5) and started researching potential change options. Once they had a few ideas, they used the Generating High-Leverage Change Ideas Protocol to decide which to focus their energy on.
They decided to start with the following change ideas (see Figure 6):
Figure 5: Working Theory of Change Driver Diagram
While researching change ideas, the team learned about adaptive texting from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science (IES). At the heart of the adaptive texting strategy was a key issue the team had identified through their ongoing outreach to families about attendance: Most families had a shared understanding that unexcused absences are a problem, but many did not see excused absences as a problem, even though the educational impact of prolonged absence is the same, whether excused or not!
Once the team decided to tackle this, it brought up another, connected issue: School communications were not reaching all families. As luck would have it, the school had a new tool available for parent communication—a product called ParentSquare, which was adopted across all ACPS schools in 2021–2022. ParentSquare provides translation according to the parent’s preferred language, making it possible to translate school text messages into over 100 languages. FTD hosted a series of community outreach events where parents could sign up for the service and select their preferred language.
Adaptive texting meant that parents would receive text messages using ParentSquare with information about attendance and chronic absenteeism. The texts were “adaptive” because when FTD first implemented the texting, all families in the school received the same text with general information about the importance of school attendance. After six weeks, families of chronically absent students (plus almost chronically absent—students with an absence rate of 8 percent or more) received a customized message specific to the student. Based on examples from the IES study, the improvement team crafted the following message:
“Dear parent/guardian, [Student] has been absent X total days this school year. When students are absent, they miss learning and connecting with the school community. Research shows that students in grades K-5 who miss 18 days or more per year, whether excused or unexcused, are less likely to graduate from high school. As always, we are here to support you. Please let us know how we can help.”
Some families responded defensively to this message, but it started a conversation that usually became very helpful for everyone. A key piece of what made this successful was using a team to respond to the messages; in the past, this would have been the sole responsibility of the school social worker. The team shared common parent responses and collaborated on the best ways to use these conversations to strengthen relationships with families.Figure 7 shows lessons learned and next steps from the adaptive text messaging Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle.
Figure 7: Learnings and Next Steps from the Adaptive Text Messaging PDSA
The team used a regularly scheduled staff meeting to share an update about this work and provide information about chronic absenteeism. The meeting was designed to help teachers feel a sense of shared responsibility for chronic absenteeism at the school—that is, to make it “everyone’s problem.” The improvement team shared the following research-based strategies for reducing chronic absenteeism that teachers could quickly implement and easily integrate into their existing routines:
At the end of the staff meeting, teachers completed an exit ticket where they indicated which strategy they wanted to incorporate into their teaching. Improvement coaches were then able to follow up with teachers to offer support on the strategy the teacher had chosen.
Figure 9 shows lessons learned and next steps from the professional learning and teacher goal-setting PDSAs.
Figure 9: Learnings and Next Steps from the Professional Learning and Teacher Goal-Setting PDSAs
When FTD started this improvement project, overall chronic absenteeism in the previous year (2021–2022) was 27 percent. However, after two years of work, the rate of chronic absenteeism for the 2023–2024 school year was 11 percent. Across ACPS, chronic absenteeism was 13 percent, and across Virginia it was 16 percent.
During this same period (2021–2024) the rate of chronic absenteeism specifically among English learners at FTD dropped from 29 percent to 10 percent. For comparison, chronic absenteeism among English learners across ACPS was only 17 percent in the 2021–2022 school year—12 percentage points below the rate at FTD. However, in the 2023–2024 school year, that rate was 16 percent, 6 percentage points higher than at FTD. In other words, in three years FTD’s chronic absenteeism among English learners went from being much higher than the district average to being lower than the district average. For more comparisons between chronic absenteeism at FTD, ACPS, and Virginia, see Figures 10–12.
Figure 10: Chronic Absenteeism—FTD, ACPS, and Virginia 
Figure 11: Chronic Absenteeism for English Learners—FTD, ACPS, and Virginia
Figure 12: Chronic Absenteeism for Hispanic students—FTD, ACPS, and Virginia
The evidence for the value of adaptive text messaging is particularly striking. When the school began sending weekly attendance messages schoolwide, attendance among students with 8 percent or higher absenteeism rates rose from 86 percent to 90 percent. When the school started sending custom messages to individual families, the percentage rose again to 93 percent (Figure 13).
Figure 13: Attendance Rates Before and After the Introduction of Adaptive Text Messaging
From a coaching perspective, we found that momentum matters. The improvement team met weekly beginning in September. The prospect of a new weekly meeting in everyone’s already busy schedules is not always appealing, but the team found they minimized the amount of work that needed to be done outside of meetings and helped them to keep taking small steps forward.
Chronic absenteeism was an urgent issue impacting students and possibly the school’s accreditation. The school, understandably, wanted a quick fix. In-the-moment problem solving is a big part of working in a school; faculty are used to moving quickly. However, the team’s initial hunches and biases, as shown in the fishbone diagram, turned out to be wrong, and if they had acted on those without taking time to investigate the system, they likely would not have been as successful.
Leaders benefit from filling rooms with different experts, perspectives, and experiences. The improvement team engaged various stakeholders, such as staff, families, and division leadership, both as part of their core team and as consultants throughout the project. Schools are filled with incredible experts. Lean on your group and their diverse knowledge and input.
At the beginning of this project, the school was at a rock-bottom of sorts. The pandemic was extremely trying for educators, and the return to in-person school, though welcomed and celebrated, brought a new set of challenges. Although things felt dire, the improvement team held hope it could be better and that the school was capable of getting there together. When they felt discouraged or overwhelmed, they took time as a group to talk about it, and then kept taking small steps forward.
This work was not easy, but it has been immensely rewarding. In particular, the team at FTD taught me a great deal about vulnerability. This was a high stakes problem during an intensely stressful time for educators. I was consistently amazed by their ability to stay hopeful and keep showing up every week, holding space for the frustration they felt but continuing to move forward on behalf of the students we care about. I also want to acknowledge my co-coach Farah’s richness of insight that consistently brings out the best in me (and everyone around her). Finally, thank you to our leaders Rachael and Clint for protecting our time and empowering us to take action.
Buehler M.H., Tapogna J., & Chang H. (2012). Why being in school matters: Chronic absenteeism in Oregon public schools. Attendance Works. https://www.attendanceworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Oregon-Research-Brief-1.pdf
Daley, B. (2024). Notice and act: An improvement project to reduce chronic absenteeism in a system of public charter schools. https://docs.google.com/document/d/16j5suWOZHidJ221lxfn1PHAYIgYcnj97ngLpPW-2qX4/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.7o2i1jsvu7ji
Ginsburg A., Jordan P., & Chang H. (2014). Absences add up: How school attendance influences student success. Attendance Works. https://www.attendanceworks.org/absences-add-up/
Virginia Department of Education. (2022). Chronic absenteeism. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/state-board-data-funding/accreditation-accountability/school-performance-and-support-framework/supporting-virginia-learners/educator-supports/chronic-absenteeism
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Ferdinand T. Day (FTD), a Title 1 elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia, noticed an alarming increase in chronic absenteeism rates that disproportionately impacted Hispanic students. This report describes the work undertaken by an improvement team at FTD over the course of a school year to better understand drivers of absenteeism, select interventions, and test high-leverage solutions. The key finding is that small but consistent steps added up to a big impact, with a 7 percentage point increase in attendance rates for the target group during a single two-month stretch.
Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) is a public school division in Northern Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. ACPS serves upwards of 16,000 students who hail from more than 119 countries and speak 124 languages. The district comprises 18 schools, including two middle schools, two K-8 schools, two early childhood education centers, and Alexandria City High School.
Ferdinand T. Day opened in 2018 and is the newest elementary school in Alexandria. FTD is a Title I school that serves just over 600 students. It has high student turnover, with 15 percent of students leaving and 20 percent enrolling throughout the course of a school year. About 75 percent of students are English Language Learners, speaking a total of 35 languages other than English. Figure 1 breaks down the student population by race and ethnicity.
Figure 1: Ferdinand T. Day Student Population by Race and Ethnicity
Like many school divisions across the country, ACPS has seen a spike in chronic absenteeism since in-person school resumed following COVID-19 closures.
At FTD, the spike was hard to miss. In 2018–2019, the year the school opened, the absentee rate was 7 percent. In 2019–2020 the rate was 13 percent. In 2020–2021, school was remote for most of the year. Some students returned in-person March 2021, but there was no chronic absenteeism calculation. When school resumed normally in 2021–2022, the absentee rate was 27 percent (see Table 1).
Table 1: Absenteeism at ACPS, 2018–2022
| School year | Absentee rate (%) |
| 2018–2019 | 7 |
| 2019–2020 | 13 |
| 2020–2021 | — |
| 2021–2022 | 27 |
When the improvement team disaggregated chronic absenteeism data by ethnicity, they found that in 2021–2022, 42 percent of Hispanic students were chronically absent (see Figure 2). When they disaggregated by English learner status within ethnicities, they found that within Hispanic and White subgroups, English learners were more likely than their peers to be chronically absent in 2021–2022.
Figure 2: 2021–2022 Chronic Absenteeism Data Disaggregated by Ethnicity
Chronic absenteeism matters to school performance. A literature review by Dr. Ben Daley of the High Tech High Graduate School of Education found the following:
Frequent absences in kindergarten have been found to be predictive of lower likelihood of reading proficiency by the end of third grade (Ginsburg & Chang, 2014; Bruner & Chang, 2011) and lower achievement on test scores in fifth grade (Buehler, Topagna, & Chang, 2012; Bruner & Chang, 2011). Chronic absenteeism has been found to predict lower National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores (Ginsburg & Chang, 2014) dropping out of high school (Hill, 2014), and lower rates of college persistence (Ginsburg & Chang, 2014).
In Virginia specifically, data from 2023–2024 indicate that chronically absent students performed 19 percentage points below their peers in reading and 26 percentage points below in math (Virginia Department of Education, 2022).
Perhaps less obvious is that chronic absenteeism is also a big problem for staff, because state and federal law mandate a labor-intensive and time-consuming response to truancy (defined as five or more unexcused absences). While truancy and chronic absenteeism are defined differently, they are closely correlated, so higher rates of chronic absenteeism are associated with a greater number of students needing truancy outreach. With so many students missing so many classes, the burden on school staff was unsustainable.
For nearly a decade, ACPS central office staff have been increasing their capacity in improvement science and integrating it into their work. Simultaneously, FTD’s founding principal, Rachael Dischner, has been investing in professional learning about improvement science by sending staff members to the annual Carnegie Summit (now the National Summit on Improvement in Education). With both the school and division committed to improvement science, it was natural for them to partner to tackle chronic absenteeism.
The improvement team was a mix of division and school-level staff members, and did not include any classroom teachers. This was deliberate: while classroom teachers provided insights through empathy interviews and other mechanisms, having a team without classroom teachers meant the team could meet often, at different times during the day, without needing to find substitutes. The weekly cadence of meetings helped keep the project momentum going.
The team’s composition was as follows:
Project sponsors:
Improvement coaches:
FTD school staff
The project’s initial goal was to reduce the rate of chronic absenteeism in the school. After some preliminary research, including empathy interviews with staff and parent focus groups held in multiple languages, we made this goal more specific—to reduce the school’s second quarter absenteeism rate of 26 percent to 21 percent by the fourth quarter of the 2022–2023 school year.
The improvement team began by making a “fishbone diagram”—a tool for beginning the process of uncovering what was causing the problem they were tackling (in this case, chronic absenteeism) (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Fishbone Diagram
Creating a fishbone diagram can be cathartic for a team. Here, participants freely share their thoughts about why a problem exists and also find that others on the team may have the same theories. As is often the case at the start of an improvement project, this team began by focusing on causes that were outside their control—especially the wider lives of students’ families. A fishbone diagram can be refined over multiple iterations to help a team tune the language and focus on factors inside their locus of control. In this case though, the coaches decided to leave it as it was, as an “artifact” of the team’s shared understanding of the problem at that time. The coaches recognized the value of this imperfect fishbone as a starting point for investigating the true roots of the problem without taking a more directive coaching stance to “fix” the fishbone.
The team continued their investigation by conducting empathy interviews with staff and parent focus groups in multiple languages. When they started the interviews, the team was still focused on external factors such as helping families improve their morning drop-off routines. However, equipped with the added perspective of staff and parents, the team refined the causes identified in the fishbone diagram by conducting an interrelationship digraph protocol (see Figure 4).
To make an interrelationship digraph, a team plots the “causes” identified in the fishbone diagram and puts them in a circle on a piece of paper. Then they look at each cause in turn. If one cause has a relationship with another cause, the team determines, in the words of the protocol, “which one causes the other the most,” and then draws an arrow from the “causal” element to the “impacted” element. The number of inward and outward arrows are counted for each cause, and the causes with the most outward arrows rise to the top as those that have the most impact on the other causes. In sum:
Figure 4: Interrelationship Digraph
When the web showed that factors that took place within the school (the boxed material in Figure 4) were more impactful than home factors, the team had an “ah ha!” moment. This activity shifted the team to focus on things within their control, and they used these causal factors to create a driver diagram and begin researching change ideas.
At the end of this process the team identified three principle drivers of the problem of chronic absenteeism:
They decided to focus their efforts on the first two.
Once the team identified two drivers to focus on, they plotted these on a “driver diagram” (see Figure 5) and started researching potential change options. Once they had a few ideas, they used the Generating High-Leverage Change Ideas Protocol to decide which to focus their energy on.
They decided to start with the following change ideas (see Figure 6):
Figure 5: Working Theory of Change Driver Diagram
While researching change ideas, the team learned about adaptive texting from the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Science (IES). At the heart of the adaptive texting strategy was a key issue the team had identified through their ongoing outreach to families about attendance: Most families had a shared understanding that unexcused absences are a problem, but many did not see excused absences as a problem, even though the educational impact of prolonged absence is the same, whether excused or not!
Once the team decided to tackle this, it brought up another, connected issue: School communications were not reaching all families. As luck would have it, the school had a new tool available for parent communication—a product called ParentSquare, which was adopted across all ACPS schools in 2021–2022. ParentSquare provides translation according to the parent’s preferred language, making it possible to translate school text messages into over 100 languages. FTD hosted a series of community outreach events where parents could sign up for the service and select their preferred language.
Adaptive texting meant that parents would receive text messages using ParentSquare with information about attendance and chronic absenteeism. The texts were “adaptive” because when FTD first implemented the texting, all families in the school received the same text with general information about the importance of school attendance. After six weeks, families of chronically absent students (plus almost chronically absent—students with an absence rate of 8 percent or more) received a customized message specific to the student. Based on examples from the IES study, the improvement team crafted the following message:
“Dear parent/guardian, [Student] has been absent X total days this school year. When students are absent, they miss learning and connecting with the school community. Research shows that students in grades K-5 who miss 18 days or more per year, whether excused or unexcused, are less likely to graduate from high school. As always, we are here to support you. Please let us know how we can help.”
Some families responded defensively to this message, but it started a conversation that usually became very helpful for everyone. A key piece of what made this successful was using a team to respond to the messages; in the past, this would have been the sole responsibility of the school social worker. The team shared common parent responses and collaborated on the best ways to use these conversations to strengthen relationships with families.Figure 7 shows lessons learned and next steps from the adaptive text messaging Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle.
Figure 7: Learnings and Next Steps from the Adaptive Text Messaging PDSA
The team used a regularly scheduled staff meeting to share an update about this work and provide information about chronic absenteeism. The meeting was designed to help teachers feel a sense of shared responsibility for chronic absenteeism at the school—that is, to make it “everyone’s problem.” The improvement team shared the following research-based strategies for reducing chronic absenteeism that teachers could quickly implement and easily integrate into their existing routines:
At the end of the staff meeting, teachers completed an exit ticket where they indicated which strategy they wanted to incorporate into their teaching. Improvement coaches were then able to follow up with teachers to offer support on the strategy the teacher had chosen.
Figure 9 shows lessons learned and next steps from the professional learning and teacher goal-setting PDSAs.
Figure 9: Learnings and Next Steps from the Professional Learning and Teacher Goal-Setting PDSAs
When FTD started this improvement project, overall chronic absenteeism in the previous year (2021–2022) was 27 percent. However, after two years of work, the rate of chronic absenteeism for the 2023–2024 school year was 11 percent. Across ACPS, chronic absenteeism was 13 percent, and across Virginia it was 16 percent.
During this same period (2021–2024) the rate of chronic absenteeism specifically among English learners at FTD dropped from 29 percent to 10 percent. For comparison, chronic absenteeism among English learners across ACPS was only 17 percent in the 2021–2022 school year—12 percentage points below the rate at FTD. However, in the 2023–2024 school year, that rate was 16 percent, 6 percentage points higher than at FTD. In other words, in three years FTD’s chronic absenteeism among English learners went from being much higher than the district average to being lower than the district average. For more comparisons between chronic absenteeism at FTD, ACPS, and Virginia, see Figures 10–12.
Figure 10: Chronic Absenteeism—FTD, ACPS, and Virginia
Figure 11: Chronic Absenteeism for English Learners—FTD, ACPS, and Virginia
Figure 12: Chronic Absenteeism for Hispanic students—FTD, ACPS, and Virginia
The evidence for the value of adaptive text messaging is particularly striking. When the school began sending weekly attendance messages schoolwide, attendance among students with 8 percent or higher absenteeism rates rose from 86 percent to 90 percent. When the school started sending custom messages to individual families, the percentage rose again to 93 percent (Figure 13).
Figure 13: Attendance Rates Before and After the Introduction of Adaptive Text Messaging
From a coaching perspective, we found that momentum matters. The improvement team met weekly beginning in September. The prospect of a new weekly meeting in everyone’s already busy schedules is not always appealing, but the team found they minimized the amount of work that needed to be done outside of meetings and helped them to keep taking small steps forward.
Chronic absenteeism was an urgent issue impacting students and possibly the school’s accreditation. The school, understandably, wanted a quick fix. In-the-moment problem solving is a big part of working in a school; faculty are used to moving quickly. However, the team’s initial hunches and biases, as shown in the fishbone diagram, turned out to be wrong, and if they had acted on those without taking time to investigate the system, they likely would not have been as successful.
Leaders benefit from filling rooms with different experts, perspectives, and experiences. The improvement team engaged various stakeholders, such as staff, families, and division leadership, both as part of their core team and as consultants throughout the project. Schools are filled with incredible experts. Lean on your group and their diverse knowledge and input.
At the beginning of this project, the school was at a rock-bottom of sorts. The pandemic was extremely trying for educators, and the return to in-person school, though welcomed and celebrated, brought a new set of challenges. Although things felt dire, the improvement team held hope it could be better and that the school was capable of getting there together. When they felt discouraged or overwhelmed, they took time as a group to talk about it, and then kept taking small steps forward.
This work was not easy, but it has been immensely rewarding. In particular, the team at FTD taught me a great deal about vulnerability. This was a high stakes problem during an intensely stressful time for educators. I was consistently amazed by their ability to stay hopeful and keep showing up every week, holding space for the frustration they felt but continuing to move forward on behalf of the students we care about. I also want to acknowledge my co-coach Farah’s richness of insight that consistently brings out the best in me (and everyone around her). Finally, thank you to our leaders Rachael and Clint for protecting our time and empowering us to take action.
Buehler M.H., Tapogna J., & Chang H. (2012). Why being in school matters: Chronic absenteeism in Oregon public schools. Attendance Works. https://www.attendanceworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Oregon-Research-Brief-1.pdf
Daley, B. (2024). Notice and act: An improvement project to reduce chronic absenteeism in a system of public charter schools. https://docs.google.com/document/d/16j5suWOZHidJ221lxfn1PHAYIgYcnj97ngLpPW-2qX4/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.7o2i1jsvu7ji
Ginsburg A., Jordan P., & Chang H. (2014). Absences add up: How school attendance influences student success. Attendance Works. https://www.attendanceworks.org/absences-add-up/
Virginia Department of Education. (2022). Chronic absenteeism. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/state-board-data-funding/accreditation-accountability/school-performance-and-support-framework/supporting-virginia-learners/educator-supports/chronic-absenteeism
