Schools across the nation are trying to reduce chronic absentee levels. A recent study from The GRAD Partnership, Everyone Graduates Center and the Partnership for Student Success, finds that small and rural districts are recovering attendance rates faster than larger, more urban and suburban districts. 

The study reported that rural districts with fewer than 1,000 students brought their chronic absenteeism back to within 2% of their pre-pandemic baseline by the 2024-25 school year at about twice the rate as urban districts with more than 50,000 students. 

While some small and rural districts have bounced back, many districts across the country still have a long way to go to get back to pre-pandemic attendance rates. EdSurge talked with a deputy superintendent, a director of attendance and student supports, and an instructional coach at different districts nationwide to understand how they tackle the issue.

The researchers couldn’t find a clear reason as to why small and rural districts have bounced back quicker. California and Iowa accounted for over 30% of the small and rural districts that bounced back, despite taking two different approaches.

California opted for a larger scale approach, changing its absenteeism and truancy laws and investing more funding in schools’ pandemic recovery statewide. On the other hand, Iowa took the more granular path, offering technical assistance and templates to districts and using data to identify needs and increase attendance.

Finding the connection among the standout bounce-back states and districts is the next central research question, according to the study, which looked at 8,586 school districts across 34 states and the District of Columbia. 

A Proactive Approach

At Earlville Community Unit School District 9 in Illinois, School Social Worker Michele Fahrlander uses a proactive program to ensure attendance. 

“Because we are a smaller district, we are able to take a more individualized approach,” she says. That means family outreach centers on early intervention and consistent communication.

“We try not to wait until attendance becomes a major concern before reaching out. When we start noticing a pattern of absences or a decline in attendance, we make contact to try to better understand what might be contributing to the student’s absences and how we can support both the student and the family,” she says.

The program helped increase district-wide attendance from 62% in 2022 to 88% in 2026, with high school attendance climbing from 61% to 90%.

“We use several different methods of communication depending on what works best for each family. This might include phone calls, texts, emails, letters, or meetings,” she says. “The frequency of contact really depends on the individual student and their needs.”

For some, a single conversation and some additional support may be enough. For students with more significant or ongoing attendance concerns, “we increase communication and may have regular check-ins with students, attendance meetings, or develop an individualized attendance plan or contract,” she says.

Should a student’s absences increase, “families receive attendance letters at specific thresholds, including after five and 10 days of absence,” she says. “The 10-day letter also communicates the additional documentation requirements for future absences.”

Along with this general approach, “we also focus on creating positive motivation for students to want to attend school,” she said. At the junior high level, for example, Earlville Community Unit School District 9 offers the Not Being Absent (NBA) Attendance Incentive Program. “Students earn points for attendance as part of their homeroom team, which creates some friendly competition and gives students recognition for being at school,” Fahrlander says.

At the high school level, there are quarterly attendance incentive field trips for students who meet the attendance expectations.

“Overall, our goal is to combine positive motivation for all students with more individualized support for students who are at greater risk,” she says. “In a small, rural district, it is often easier to notice when a student starts to struggle with attendance because our staff know the students and families well. A student is not just a name or number on an attendance report.”

Reframe the Messaging

At Moline Coal Valley School District in Illinois, a small district serving about 7,300 students across 15 schools, Deputy Superintendent Brian Prybil focuses on the content of the outreach. He encourages a positive tone, with an eye toward building trust.

“For example, I had one principal who intentionally worked on making personal phone calls to the parents,” he says.

The calls were never scolding. “It was, ‘Hey, hope everything’s going OK. This is what Billy missed today,’ instead of building a punitive type message,” says Prybil, who is also the co-author of “Sixth Essential: A Playbook For School Leaders.”

There are many reasons for absenteeism, some of which schools can help families to address. With that in mind, Prybil says a key message in those calls is, “If you need anything, let us know.” 

Teachers can support that effort. “The number one thing for teachers is to build trust with their students,” he says. “Not every day is going to be perfect. But we can invest in getting to know our students and letting them know that we're all in this together.”

In high school in particular, “it's really easy to blame kids” for not showing up, he says. But as long as they are present, teachers can “try to be positive with them, try to build that relationship and accomplish what you can accomplish with the time you have with them.”

Automated Routines

Automating the logistics around attendance frees staff to focus on those human conversations.

Chris Miller serves as director of attendance and student support at the North Central Ohio Educational Service, which supports schools in multiple rural districts. Previously, as an assistant principal at a high school, he was in charge of attendance, and it was a logistical nightmare.

“It was difficult to keep up,” he says. “Every day, kids are missing, and your report that you run on Monday, on Tuesday is outdated already. And we’ve got to do it again and again and again.” When manual tracking proved ineffective, he built an app, Attendance K12.

With help from technology, “we’ve curbed the time on figuring out the who, and now we can spend people's time discussing with families about the why,” he says. “That’s where the rural districts really have an advantage, because those conversations often fall on the ears of people who are familiar with [school staff].”

Teachers play a key role: Technology can help to track and manage absenteeism, but educators are the front line of remediation.

Rather than just focusing on missed work when a kid returns to class, teachers should be focused on “creating an environment that is welcoming when they return,” he says. “By creating that space that feels comfortable, it eliminates some of that return-to-school anxiety that sometimes builds when they start stacking absences.”

Coordinating a Strategic Effort

At Stanfield Elementary School in rural North Carolina, instructional coach Jessica Dunn approaches attendance response as a coordinated endeavor.

Rather than one person handling it alone, “we’re involving administration, the counselor, the social worker,” she says, with those efforts based on timely reports from a data manager. “We do it as a team, truthfully.”

When the team goes into action, it focuses on addressing the factors that cause absenteeism in the first place. For example, the team sends home bags of food that a church partner provides. “That alleviates that stress for them, and our counselor does a great job of getting those bags out,” she says. With one less thing to worry about, “they can focus on getting the kids here.”

While attendance is always hard to manage, Dunn believes the nature of a rural community makes all this a little easier. Teachers, counselors, and administrators “know everybody, they can connect to them,” she says. In a rural community, or a small school, keeping attendance up “is all about support, connection, and relationships.”