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From poor reading skills to chaotic classrooms, stubbornly high absenteeism makes it difficult to solve all other problems in education. That’s why improving attendance is a rare issue on which there is cross-party agreement.

A new coalition announced a campaign on Wednesday calling on schools to halve their chronic absenteeism rates from the 2021-22 school year, when the rate peaked across the country, to the 2026-27 school year.

The goal is to reverse what happened during the pandemic, when the proportion of children absent from school a lot almost doubled.

As part of the new campaign, the coalition wants to highlight examples of states and school districts that have successfully tackled the problem of school absenteeism.

Although many schools are working to reduce chronic absenteeism – which is usually defined as children missing 10% or more of their school year, or about 18 days – the problem persists and is widespread. Setting ambitious goals and developing concrete plans to achieve them is the only way to change the problem, the coalition said.

It could also be the key to addressing the learning loss caused by the pandemic.

Children of all ability levels, races, states and communities have experienced higher absenteeism rates in recent years, regardless of whether their schools have been closed for extended periods of time.

“This kind of turnover just makes everything more difficult,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, referring to everything from establishing classroom routines to keeping to class schedules. “To me, that just adds to the urgency of this problem.”

The trio leading the coalition, which held an event in Washington, D.C., where Chang and others launched the campaign, is an unusual one. It consists of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, the Education Trust, a leading civil rights group, and Attendance Works, a nonprofit organization that has long worked to combat school absenteeism.

“That’s the real threat we face now: That chronic absenteeism is not going down, that it’s becoming the new normal,” said Nat Malkus, deputy director for education policy at the American Enterprise Institute. “That’s a big deal, and we’re going to need a concerted effort to address it.”

Denise Forte, head of the Education Trust, said the idea to join forces came after she and Malkus raised similar concerns about student absenteeism before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability in January.

“I thought, ‘This is a unique opportunity with two organizations and two people who don’t always agree on many things, but in this case we could come together,'” Forte said.

Education officials from Virginia and Rhode Island who attended the event said there are strong links between chronic absenteeism and school problems in their states.

Lisa Coons, Virginia’s education secretary, said that when her staff combed through the state’s test scores last year to figure out why they weren’t catching up on large amounts of learning deficits, they noticed a consistent factor. In grades 3 through 8, students who were consistently absent scored 18 percent lower on average in reading and 25 percent lower in math.

“The kids don’t know the work, they don’t want to go to school, they feel like they’re behind, so they fall further behind,” Coons said. “We have to break that cycle.”

Schools across the country have tried implementing new attendance systems, hiring people to knock on families’ doors and offering prizes to re-engage students. And while many states have recently reduced their chronic absenteeism rates, they are generally still higher than they were before the pandemic.

Ongoing efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism will look different across countries, Chang said, especially as COVID relief funds that many school districts had relied on to fund their attendance campaigns dried up at the start of the new school year.

“The challenge of chronic absence is that there are many issues and reasons that lead to children being chronically absent,” she said. “You have to use your local understanding of children, families and your data to really figure out what is going to make the biggest difference in your community.”

The coalition highlighted work in Rhode Island, which reduced the chronic absentee rate by 5 percentage points in the 2022-23 school year. There, state officials put up “We miss you” signs to get students’ attention and put together a public dashboard that tracks daily attendance rates at schools across the state.

Authorities use the system to monitor attendance rates in middle and high schools, among children who have been chronically absent for three years and among children who have been absent frequently since a young age, says Angélica Infante-Green, the state’s education commissioner.

A parent task force supports government initiatives to encourage school attendance, for example by identifying which corner shops and laundromats should post informational flyers or recommending trusted community members who can call on families.

“It is everyone’s responsibility,” she said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site that reports on educational change in public schools.

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For more news on chronic absenteeism, visit eSN’s Educational Leadership Hub.