Imagine a knock at your door. Is it a uniformed truancy officer delivering a summons or a neighbor and community-based advocate from a block over holding a clipboard and a look of genuine concern?

When a family in crisis — immigration status, housing or food insecurity or chronic health issues — opens that door, the central question is who they trust enough to let in. The effectiveness of human-centered efforts to combat chronic absenteeism depends not just on what advocates do, but also on who they are.

Punitive efforts to return chronically absent students to the classroom fail because the outreach often triggers fear and deeper institutional distrust in the communities it is meant to help. Successful community outreach requires professionals who share cultural background, common language and lived experience.

The fundamental flaw in the traditional, compliance-based approach to chronic absenteeism is that it assumes everyone views institutional authority in the same manner. However, for marginalized families — such as undocumented households, those in poverty or those with prior experience with the judicial system — contact from official institutions inspires fear, not partnership. A recent report Redefining the Attendance Paradigm from Concentric Educational Solutions details this phenomenon.

To reconnect the chronically absent to opportunity, a new approach — and a new face — is needed.

That is why the key to reengaging the approximately 25% of American students who are chronically absent is systematic, supportive outreach conducted by local community members who know the cultural background, language, lived experience and neighborhood context of the families they serve.

This approach, which focuses on learning the “why” behind absenteeism, is about understanding why a parent might not answer the door, what a family’s silence communicates and how to build a relationship in a living room that is often a family’s safest space.

The presence of a professional who is invested in the community, who speaks a family’s language and understands its culture is qualitatively different even the most well meaning truancy officer. A shared identity is essential, ensuring advocates are perceived as trusted neighbors, not representatives of a system that may have previously failed the family.

Read the full article about community-based advocates by Molly Hebert Loyd at The 74.