While there is wide consensus that preschool is beneficial for children, only about half of 3- to 4-year-olds in the United States are enrolled, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But that’s not the only issue. Of those children who are enrolled, nearly half are chronically absent, a researcher with Abt Global found, meaning that they miss a month or more of preschool in a year, or 10% of school days. This means that far too many American children in preschool do not receive its full benefit, resulting in slowed learning and development.
Although missing 10% of school days may not sound like a big deal, it is. By third grade, children who have been chronically absent between preschool and second grade are generally in need of intervention to read at grade level. A need for intervention at this stage disadvantages children relative to their peers early on and jeopardizes their later success.
But despite the importance of regular attendance at preschool, solutions to the problem of chronic absenteeism in the initial years of schooling remain elusive.
So, let’s take a look at what we know about this challenge and what can be done about it.
Common sense tells us that boosting school attendance for young children requires engaging and communicating with parents. Indeed, regulations for Head Start and preschool programs similar to it are clear that programs should promote connections between parents and schools, even if few guidelines exist for how to best go about doing so.
Research shows, however, that the school-parent interaction is where some of the breakdowns occur and where opportunity to address chronic absenteeism lies.
While we need many good ideas on the table, one that policymakers and educators should look very closely at is using technology-based messaging to communicate meaningfully with parents. Our research, published in March 2021 in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, shows that this simple, low-cost approach, just by itself, can make a real dent in the problem.
Unfortunately, it would be a stretch to characterize existing digital messaging from schools to parents as “meaningful.”
While school messaging platforms have proliferated, there is no evidence that they facilitate the kind of communication that improves parents’ engagement with the school or with children’s learning. Rather, they facilitate passive information sharing.
A recent study by education technology nonprofit TalkingPoints analyzed 40 million messages exchanged on a widely used school messaging platform. It found that 44% were passive messages about logistics, and 34% were standard replies of acknowledgement — the kinds of things modern parents are inundated with. On the other hand, only 8% of the messages were actionable items about academics, and only 5% were about homework.
If the goal is to change how parents engage with their children’s education, passive information sharing alone is insufficient. Shifting behavior around things such as preschool attendance requires a different approach.
Consider one approach our research group tested experimentally: a digital messaging program for lower-income parents in Chicago. Over 18 weeks, we sent parents of preschoolers in subsidized pre-K programs four text messages per week. These messages contained meaningful, actionable information.
The messages let parents know how often their child had missed school in the past month and about the substantive learning their preschooler was missing when they weren’t in class. The messages encouraged parents to set goals for high attendance and provided tips for organizing routines and plans to get their children to school on time every day.
This program reduced chronic absenteeism by 20% versus a control group that did not receive the messages. This program required no input from teachers and was easily automated. Those are pretty impressive results for four simple texts per week.
On the other hand, it’s time to reconsider existing approaches to parent engagement. Activities that require parents to attend special programming at school, such as social events, parent education programs, social service programs and volunteer opportunities, don’t seem to work as intended.
Indeed, we discovered — in another experimental study with lower-income parents in Chicago — that such conventional strategies were largely ineffective. Even with cash gifts, we were unable to incentivize parents to attend these events. Parents’ work and other conflicts may put a ceiling on this kind of engagement, and parents may not think attending such events is worth their time. Or maybe these activities don’t mesh with parents’ expectations about preschool, which functions primarily to educate their children. And, perhaps most importantly, the parents least likely to attend in-person events are the ones schools need to engage the most because their children are most likely to be chronically absent and behind in school readiness.
Policymakers and educators have been too slow to catch on. It’s encouraging that boosting parent engagement and reducing chronic absenteeism are stated priorities of the federal government as well as states and school districts throughout the country. But policy attention, such as that outlined in the White House’s 2024 Improving Student Achievement Agenda, is directed only at grades K-12. This is a major oversight because chronic absenteeism in preschool is a precursor to chronic absenteeism later on, it’s a sign that children are not on track for learning, and it’s much greater among lower-income children.
Getting creative about school supports for engaging parents and children from the earliest years of school should be high on the policy agenda.
Fortunately, digital tools offer proven approaches, are inexpensive and require little additional work from overburdened teachers or administrators. This is critical because districts and preschool networks serving lower-income families have fewer resources with which to solve these problems.
Let’s harness the energy of a new school year to bring about some of these policy changes that have proved to meaningfully make a difference for our preschoolers, especially those who need it most.
Ariel Kalil is the Daniel Levin Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Susan Mayer is a professor emeritus at the Harris School. Michelle Michelini is executive director of the University of Chicago’s Behavioral Insights and Parenting Lab. Rohen Shah is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago.
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