Can Informing Parents Help High School Students Show Up for School?  

This intervention used text messaging to send daily absence updates and weekly attendance summaries to guardians of students in New York City High Schools. Students were assigned randomly to receive the messages and guardians were automatically opted in to the study with the opportunity to ‘opt out’ if they chose to. The system did not replace the existing automated robo voicemails that were already being sent to guardians. Both the control group and the text message groups still received these.  

The intervention took place during the second semester of the 2015 – 16 school year. 

Text messages were sent between 6pm and 10pm on the day of absence and did not frame the information in a positive or negative way or prompt guardians to take any further action. Each message was sent in the student’s first language, to any guardian whose phone number was associated with them. The school contact information was also included within the messages.  

The evaluation found that there was no change in attendance for those students who received the text message information. Both groups had second semester attendance of about 86%. There was a pattern of attendance noted for both groups across the semester; attendance declined across the course of the semester, after a holiday and after the weekend. Attendance for both groups declined in the second semester compared to the first.  

There were no statistical differences in attendance for different sub groups e.g by grade level, those with only 1 guardian receiving messages compared to 2, or those with English as an additional language.  

Explanations for the lack of meaningful effects of the study concluded that:  

1. The study may have been too broad as it targeted all students, not specifically those with chronic absences.  

1. The intervention gave parents no further informational support to prompt them to take action on absences.  

1. The intervention may have needed to have taken place at a different time or for a longer period of time.  

1. The continued use of the original voicemail system for the text message group may have been overload for the parents receiving both types of alert.  

The report recommendations are: 

1. Target attendance interventions on students in the first year of high school.  

1. Build relationships with parents so they regard information on absence as being non-punitive.  

1. Engage parents and students together to address barriers to attendance.  

How can we best engage with parents without overloading them?  

How do we engage parents and students together to address barriers to attendance?  

What referrals and services are available to support parents in promoting attendance? How do we inform parents about these?  

Balfanz, Robert, and Vaughan Byrnes. 2014. A Report on the New York City Mayor’s Interagency Task Force on Truancy, Chronic Absenteeism, and School Engagement. Baltimore: Everyone Graduates Center, Johns Hopkins University.