Improving Attendance in Your School and Classroom

Create schools students don't want to miss

Chronic absenteeism continues to affect schools across the world, yet traditional approaches—rewards, punishments, and attendance campaigns—rarely address the underlying reasons students miss school. Improving Attendance in Your School and Classroom offers educators, school leaders, counselors, and support staff a comprehensive, research-grounded framework for improving attendance through relationships, engagement, systems, and support. Rather than asking, "How do we make students come to school?" Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey challenge you to ask a better question: "How do we create a school students don't want to miss?"

This practical, interactive resource provides:

• Strategies for building the conditions for attendance, including belonging, school climate, and strong adult–student relationships
• Approaches for designing engaging, meaningful instruction that gives students a reason to show up every day
• Tools for identifying and removing barriers to attendance, including practical access issues and trauma-sensitive classroom design
• Frameworks for leading schoolwide systems that sustain attendance improvement over time

When students feel known, safe, and connected to meaningful learning, attendance stops being a compliance issue and becomes the outcome of everything schools do well. This guide equips every educator to make that vision a reality—and ensures every student has a reason to return tomorrow.