Giving Compass' Take:

• New research shows that mailing parents letters with the number of days their child had been best reduced chronic absenteeism by 10%. 

• How can schools take advantage of this information to improve attendance? Is there a more cost-effective way (like email) to get the same, or better results? 

• Learn about a nudge that can help students avoid high schools with low graduation rates. 

Families can drastically underestimate how often their children miss school. When researchers asked parents whose kids clocked nearly 18 absences in one school year how many days they thought their child missed, they thought it was more like 10.

But when parents are given accurate information about their children’s absences, new research shows, they can become valuable players in making sure their kids show up at school. The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, found that sending parents mail multiple times over a school year informing them how many times their child had missed class reduced chronic absenteeism by 10 percent.

In a randomized control trial, researchers sent different types of mail to 28,000 families in the school district of Philadelphia during the 2014–15 school year. One group received mail that said absences matter and they could help their kids get to class. Another group received the same message, but with a tracker showing how many days of class their children had missed so far. A third received a letter not only tracking their kids’ absences but showing their classmates’ average absences as well. A control group received no information from the study team.

The letter that proved most effective — reducing chronic absenteeism by 10 percent — was the one that simply reported the total absences over time.

Read the full article about reducing absenteeism by Taylor Stringer at The 74.