');
	document.write('

October 7, 2015

Dear Colleague:

A growing and compelling body of research demonstrates that  chronic absence from school—typically defined as missing at least 10 percent of  school days in a year for any reason, excused or unexcused**[ 1 ]**—is  a primary cause of low academic achievement and a powerful predictor of which  students will eventually drop out of school.**[ 2 ]** With an estimated five to seven and a half  million students chronically absent each year,**[ 3 ]** chronic absenteeism is a national problem that seriously undermines our  collective efforts to improve education and life outcomes among our youth.

Today, we, the leaders of the U.S.  Departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), Housing and  Urban Development (HUD), and Justice (DOJ), announce our long-term commitment to building capacity across the Federal government to support States and local  communities in the work of addressing and eliminating chronic absenteeism. We also call upon States and local education, health, housing, and justice agencies and organizations, in partnership with  community stakeholders, to join forces and commit to creating or enhancing coordinated, cross-sector systems for identifying and supporting students who are, or are at  risk of becoming, chronically absent, with the goal of reducing chronic absenteeism  by at least 10 percent each year, beginning in the 2015-16 school year.

In order to support communities in addressing and  eliminating barriers to students’ daily attendance at, and meaningful  engagement with, school—particularly for students who are low-income, of color,  homeless, highly mobile, juvenile justice-involved, and/or who are students  with disabilities—we are pleased to  announce the release of the*Community Toolkit to  Address and Eliminate Chronic Absenteeism*, which is available  at http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/chronicabsenteeism/index.html. This Toolkit will provide community  stakeholders with information and resources to help ensure that all young  people are in school every day and benefitting from coordinated systems of  support. Further, to achieve our  ambitious but attainable goal of reducing chronic absenteeism by at least 10 percent per year, we ask that leaders of State and local education, health, housing,  and justice systems work immediately and collaboratively to take the following  action steps:

**Action Step 1:  Generate and act on absenteeism data.**Prioritize the development of early warning  prevention and intervention systems that identify students who are, or are at risk  of becoming, chronically absent before they miss enough school that it is  nearly impossible for them to catch up. Data from such systems should be shared—in a manner consistent with  applicable State law and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act  (FERPA)—between school districts and other key public and private organizations  to ensure coordinated systems of support for students who are chronically  absent.**[ 4 ]**

**Action Step 2:  Create and deploy positive messages  and measures.**Focus on  developing positive messages for youth and families as well as implementing  supportive engagement strategies. For  instance, these strategies may include mentoring, counseling, and creating safe  and supportive school climates through approaches such as Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports**[ 5 ]** to improve students' attendance at, connection to, and success in school. Punitive messages and measures are often ineffective and can lead to disproportionate suspensions and expulsions from school and inappropriate referrals of students and families to law enforcement.**[ 6 ]**

**Action Step 3:  Focus communities on addressing chronic absenteeism.**  Launch local initiatives to raise public awareness about the causes and effects of chronic absenteeism, including awareness among families and youth. Prioritize training within communities and across sectors to conduct root-cause analyses of local absenteeism trends.Implement  research and evidence-based strategies and programs—such as *Check & Connect***[ 7 ]**—that  effectively engage and support students who are, or are at risk of becoming,  chronically absent.

**Action  Step 4:  Ensure responsibility across  sectors.**Regularly  communicate that chronic absenteeism is a problem that affects the whole  community, not just those students who are chronically absent and their  families. Drive and evaluate  cross-sector performance, at least in part, based on that principle. Education, health, housing, and justice system  leaders should work together to ensure shared accountability within and across  sectors to successfully address the local, underlying causes of chronic  absenteeism.

As a nation, we must acknowledge that frequent absences from  school can be devastating to a child's future. For example, children who are chronically absent in preschool,  kindergarten, and first grade are much less likely to read at grade level by the third grade.**[ 8 ]**Students who cannot read at grade level by  the end of third grade are four times more likely than proficient readers to  drop out of high school.**[ 9 ]**By high school, irregular attendance is a  better predictor of school dropout than test scores.  A study of public school students in Utah  found that a student who is chronically absent in even a single school year  between the eighth and twelfth grades is over seven times more likely to drop  out of school than a student who is not chronically absent.**[ 10 ]** Students who are homeless and those who reside in public housing are also particularly at risk of being chronically  absent from school.**[ 11 ]**

Research further demonstrates that completing high school is  not only a strong predictor of adult success but also of adult physical and  mental health outcomes and involvement with the criminal justice system.  Students who do not graduate from high school  have worse health and greater health risks as adults than their peers who  graduate.**[ 12 ]** They also have more frequent, negative  contact with law enforcement,**[ 13 ]**contributing to a cycle of poverty, poor health, homelessness, and  incarceration. These data strongly  suggest that the long-term consequence  of chronic absenteeism is a population that is less educated, less healthy,  underemployed, less financially stable, and more disenfranchised.

We recognize that attendance tracking systems in many school districts across the country are not required  or designed to measure chronic absenteeism among local youth. In fact, efforts to improve average daily attendance often mask the extent of a school’s chronic absenteeism problem and  fail to address its underlying causes.**[ 14 ]**Adding to the challenge, educators, families, and youth are not sufficiently aware of the frequency and negative impact of  chronic absence from school.**[ 15 ]**In many school districts and communities, the  focus is on "unexcused" absences or truancy at the middle and high school  level, even though research shows that chronic absence in the early grades is also  a major problem, whether excused or unexcused.**[ 16 ]**Common interventions are often punitive in  nature and blame is frequently placed on students and their families. Ultimately, such responses have the  deleterious, if unintended, effect of making school less, not more, engaging  for students and families, and these practices undermine efforts to assist our most struggling schools and students.**[ 17 ]**

In spring 2016, ED will release  the 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), including the first-ever  school-level data on all students across the nation who missed at least 15 days  of school for any reason, which translates into approximately 8.5 percent of a typical school year.  We anticipate that the CRDC will shed new light on the scope of the chronic absenteeism problem, including where it is most prevalent and whom it most affects, and further catalyze efforts to engage students who are, or are at risk of becoming, chronically absent.

Sincerely,



/s/
      /s/Loretta Lynch
      Sylvia BurwellAttorney General of the United States
      Secretary of Health and Human Services/s/
      /s/Julián Castro
      Arne DuncanSecretary of Housing and Urban Development
      Secretary of Education


**_______________________**

**[ 1. ]** Therriault, S., Heppen, J.,  O’Cummings, M., Fryer, L., & Johnson, A. (2010).  *Early Warning System Implementation Guide:  For Use with the National High School Center’s  Early Warning System Tool v2.0*. Washington, DC: American Institutes for  Research, National High School Center.  Retrieved  from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED521686.

**[ 2. ]** Balfanz, R., & Byrnes, V.  (2012).  *The Importance of Being in  School: A Report on Absenteeism in the Nation’s Public Schools**.*  Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Center for Social  Organization of Schools. Available at http://new.every1graduates.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/FINALChronicAbsenteeismReport_May16.pdf. [ Return to text ]


**[ 3. ]** Ibid.**[ Return to text ]**


**[ 4. ]** For information on data-sharing  consistent with FERPA, please refer to guidance provided by ED’s Family Policy  Compliance Office at http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/doc/ferpa-and-community-based-orgs.pdf.**[ Return to text ]**


**[ 5. ]**For more information on  implementing positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS), please visit ED's PBIS Technical Assistance Center at www.pbis.org.**[ Return to text ]**


**[ 6. ]** Morgan, E., Salomon, N.,  Plotkin, M., Cohen, R. (2014).  *The  School Discipline Consensus Report:  Strategies  from the Field to Keep Students Engaged in School and Out of the Juvenile  Justice System.*  New York:  Council of State Governments Justice Center.  Available at http://csgjusticecenter.org/youth/school-discipline-consensus-report/.**[ Return to text ]**


**[ 7. ]** For more information on research  findings of *Check & Connect* implementation, please see http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/interventionreport.aspx?sid=78.**[ Return to text ]**


**[ 8. ]** Ehrlich, S., Gwynne, J. A.,  Pareja, A. S., and Allensworth, E. M. (2013).  *Preschool  Attendance in Chicago Public Schools: Relationships with Learning Outcomes and  Reasons for Absences.*  Chicago:  The University of Chicago Consortium on  Chicago School Reform. Available at https://ccsr.uchicago.edu/publications/preschool-attendance-chicago-public-schools-relationships-learning-outcomes-and-reasons.
**[Return to text]**


**[ 9. ]** Hernandez,  D. (2011).  *Double Jeopardy:  How Third-Grade  Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation*.  Baltimore:  The Annie E. Casey Foundation, p. 6.  Available at www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/AECF-DoubleJeopardy-2012-Full.pdf.**[ Return to text ]**


**[ 10. ]** Utah Education Policy Center at  the University of Utah. (2012).  *Research Brief:  Chronic Absenteeism*.  Available at http://www.utahdataalliance.org/downloads/ChronicAbsenteeismResearchBrief.pdf. (“2013 RAND  Study”).**[ Return to text ]**


**[ 11. ]** Nauer, K. et al. (2014).  *A Better  Picture of Poverty:  What Chronic  Absenteeism and Risk Load Reveal About NYC's Lowest-Income Elementary Schools.*  New York:  Center for New York City Affairs, The Milano  School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy.  Available at www.centernyc.org/betterpictureofpoverty/**[ Return to text ]** **[ 12. ]** Cutler, D. M., Lleras-Muney, A.  (2006).  *Education and Health:  Evaluating  Theories and Evidence.* National  Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. 12352.  Retrieved at www.econ.ucla.edu/alleras/research/books/Education_and_Health_July_2006.pdf. [ Return to text ]
 **[ 13. ]** Page, A., Petteruti, A., Walsh,  N., Ziedenberg, J. (2007).  *Education and Public Safety*.  Washington, DC:  Justice Policy Center.  Retrieved at www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/07-08_rep_educationandpublicsafety_ps-ac.pdf. [ Return to text ]
 **[ 14. ]**Bruner, C., Discher, A., Chang,  H. (2011).  *Chronic Elementary Absenteeism:  A  Problem Hidden in Plain Sight*.  Attendance Works and Child & Family  Policy Center.  Available at http://www.attendanceworks.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/ChronicAbsence.pdf. [ Return to text ]
 **[ 15. ]**Balfanz, R., & Byrnes, V.  (2012), p. 6. [ Return to text ]
 **[ 16. ]**Applied Survey Research. (2011).   *Attendance  in Early Elementary Grades:  Associations  with Student Characteristics, School Readiness, and Third Grade Outcomes*.  Report prepared for Attendance Works.  Available at http://www.attendanceworks.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/ASR-Mini-Report-Attendance-Readiness-and-Third-Grade-Outcomes-7-8-11.pdf [ Return to text ]
 **[ 17. ]**Black, A. T., Seder, R. C.,  & Kekahio, W. (2014).  *Review of research  on student nonenrollment and chronic absenteeism:  A report for the Pacific Region*(REL  2015–054).  Washington, DC:  U.S. Department of Education, Institute of  Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional  Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Pacific.  Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs [ Return to text ]