Connect-Text: Leveraging Text-Message Communication to Mitigate Chronic Absenteeism and Improve Parental Engagement in the Earliest Years of Schooling
ARTICLE
Kenneth Smythe-Leistico, Lindsay C. Page
Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk Volume 23, Number 1, ISSN 1082-4669
Abstract
Poor school attendance in the early grades is predictive of poor subsequent educational outcomes. We report on a pilot intervention aiming to reduce chronic absenteeism in kindergarten. We designed and implemented a two-way, text-based parent-school communication system to encourage daily attendance, provide parents with personalized feedback on their child's attendance, and provide support to mitigate challenges that threatened parents' ability to get their child to school regularly. The program was well received, with nearly all families registering for participation, and three-quarters of those receiving outreach responding and engaging with school personnel via text. The pilot school's kindergarten chronic absenteeism rate was substantially lower in the intervention year relative to prior trends. Further, in the intervention year, the pilot school's kindergarten chronic absenteeism rate (13%) was substantially lower than for that of a synthetically constructed comparison school (24%). We discuss implications for sustainability and scaling of an effort such as this.
Citation
Smythe-Leistico, K. & Page, L.C. (2018). Connect-Text: Leveraging Text-Message Communication to Mitigate Chronic Absenteeism and Improve Parental Engagement in the Earliest Years of Schooling. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 23(1), 139-152. Retrieved March 19, 2024 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/189327/.
ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the U.S. Department of Education.
Copyright for this record is held by the content creator. For more details see ERIC's copyright policy.