Lifting Up Attendance in Rural Districts

Absenteeism in K-12 schools has remained high following the COVID-19 pandemic and districts need low-cost strategies to improve attendance. In 2020-21, the National Center for Rural Education Research Networks (NCRERN) piloted a personalized messaging intervention in 8 rural districts in New York and Ohio that led to a roughly 2 percent decrease in absenteeism among 1st through 12th grade students. We worked with a student information system provider to replicate the intervention in a randomized trial involving K-12 students in 47 districts in 16 states over the 2022-23 and 2023-24school years. We find that the personalized messages reduced student absences by between 1.7 and 4.4 percent. We report on implementation challenges and heterogeneous effects across student populations. Our findings have practical implications for implementing technology-based interventions in the rural context.