Sabrina Carter wants students to look forward each morning to getting on her school bus – and look forward to getting to class.

So she learns the name of every child on her New Orleans bus route, greeting them one by one as they climb on board. She also gives them points for good behavior that they can cash in for treats.

As Carter sees it, every person who works with students can do something to improve attendance.

“It starts with everyone who encounters these kids,” she said.

Carter’s strategies – offering incentives and building relationships – are the same ones schools across Louisiana are betting on to help improve student attendance, which tanked during the pandemic and has not yet fully recovered.

For educators, it’s a major concern.

Students who miss a lot of school are at risk of a number of negative outcomes, including lower test scores, poor grades, and diminished social and emotional health. Chronic absenteeism can also prevent children from reaching crucial milestones, such as being able to read proficiently by third grade.

Chronically absent students also are more likely to drop out of school, worsening their job prospects and future health and increasing their risk of getting caught up in the criminal justice system.

“You name the thing we’re trying to avoid, and missing school increases the likelihood of it,” said Todd Rogers, a behavioral scientist and professor of public policy at Harvard University who has studied the role attendance plays in student success.

Chronic absenteeism, or the share of students who miss at least 10% or more of a school year, surged nationwide after the pandemic. But as some parts of the country began to see a decline, Louisiana’s rate grew to 23% by 2022-23, an increase over the previous school year and nearly double the pre-pandemic rate. (Rates for the 2023-24 school year have not been released.)

There are many reasons why kids miss school, ranging from illness to a lack of reliable transportation to housing instability to bullying and more. Districts are trying to combat the problem by identifying kids at risk for becoming chronically absent and intervening early.

“There is no silver bullet when it comes to solving absenteeism,” Rogers said, adding that it should be approached like a chronic illness: “You don’t cure it, you continue to treat it.”

Motivate kids

One of the best ways to improve attendance, experts say, is also the simplest: Make students want to show up.

During the first week of school this year, each student at Southside Junior High School in Denham Springs plucked the name of one of six “houses” out of a Harry Potter-themed bucket while their classmates looked on with anticipation. The students in each house will work together for the duration of their middle school careers, competing as a team to earn points and rewards.

District officials say the house system encourages students to forge strong bonds, fostering a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose.

It’s a tactic the school, which saw more than half of its students qualify as truant during the 2022-23 academic year, is trying to improve its culture and create an environment where kids are excited to show up.

“We want our students to want to come to school,” said Principal Wes Partin. “We’re always trying to find ways to positively motivate our students.”

Other districts are offering students prizes and other incentives for good attendance.

Desoto Parish teachers give out small perks to kids with good attendance, like extra recess or “free dress days” where they don’t have to come to school in uniform.

In Lafourche Parish, where chronic absenteeism jumped by eight percentage points between 2019 and 2023, students who come to school multiple days in a row can enter a raffle to win prizes such as Xbox game time.

Under state law, district officials must report students who rack up more than five unexcused absences to their parish’s family or juvenile court. But some districts have created programs to work with families before notifying the state.

For Lafourche’s program, school officials meet with families to discuss the reasons behind a child’s absences. Together they develop a plan to improve the student’s attendance, which the district’s attendance team closely monitors.

“We’re almost always able to remedy the issue,” superintendent Jarod Martin said.

Analyze the data

Experts say that catching absenteeism early is crucial — and that the best way to do that is by closely tracking attendance data.

Desoto’s Parish’s school district keeps a dashboard themed like a baseball scoreboard on social media to track every school’s attendance rate. Officials say the dashboard provides transparency and creates healthy competition among schools to improve their rates.

Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit that aims to improve student attendance, encourages districts to review attendance data frequently to identify kids who are on their way to becoming chronically absent. Then school staffers can find the reasons why each child is missing class and address the root causes before it snowballs, she said.

Jennie Ponder, director of the Truancy Assessment and Service Center in Baton Rouge, which helps schools identify and support truant students, explained that most districts employ at least one attendance clerk to oversee attendance data. Once a teacher submits their attendance sheet, the clerk notes which children have been marked absent and periodically sends that information to the state.

“It’s a very big responsibility when you are in charge of that data,” Ponder said.

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In Rapides Parish, a truancy task force of around seven people keeps tabs on attendance data to spot students with frequent absences. This summer, district officials visited the homes of students who were identified as chronically absent last school year to talk to families, see why their children have been missing class and connect them with any needed resources.

“We’re not just going to sit back and wait for them to be chronically absent again,” said Mary Helen Downey, the district’s community engagement coordinator.

Build strong school communities

Perhaps the best way to get students to school is to create an environment where they feel safe and welcomed.

The GRAD Partnership, a collective of districts and community organizations across the country, developed a program in 2022 in which 49 middle and high schools tried to foster relationships between teachers, students and families to reduce absenteeism. The group suggests giving students opportunities to work together in class and having staff members host student clubs as ways to cultivate connections. In a 2024 report, the collective said that chronic absenteeism rates dropped by nearly 12% and course failure rates dropped by 5% in the participating schools.

“It’s hard to imagine anything more important than kids feeling loved and known at school,” said Rogers, the Harvard researcher. “The more adults who have caring relationships with kids, the better.”

In Louisiana, Iberville Parish Schools recently introduced its “Presence Matters” initiative, where kids with a high number of absences are assigned a district staff member as a mentor. The mentors, who can include bus drivers, food service workers and gym teachers, check in with their mentees and families frequently.

“If there are challenges or barriers that are hindering” kids from coming to school, “we want to be a support for the family,” said Rebecca Werner-Johnson, the district’s executive director of academics.

This year, the program expanded to include local churches and community members.

Brian Beabout, an associate professor in educational leadership at the University of New Orleans and a former high school teacher, said some schools require their students to join a club or a sport to foster meaningful relationships.

Even if a club doesn’t meet every day, it can be another place where “people notice if you’re not there,” Beabout said. “It creates this social belongingness.”

Once a month, Rapides Parish School District holds its “Together Tuesdays” program, where school staff, community leaders and students gather for lunch and conversation. Sometimes the district has special guests welcome the students when they arrive for the meals.

“If it’s football season, some of the football players will greet the kids and get them out of the car,” said Terrence Williams, the district’s director of child welfare and attendance. “It’s a way for children to interact with people who they otherwise would not come in contact with.”

Williams recalled an instance when a community member discovered a pair of siblings, ages 12 and 8, whose parents had not enrolled them in school. The community member had participated in Together Tuesdays, so they contacted the program organizers.

School officials notified the court system, but they also approached the family to see if they could get some answers, Williams said. They discovered the family was struggling to afford school uniforms, which the district provided.

Now, Williams said, the siblings are in school and thriving academically.

“Those relationships we’re building with the community helped facilitate the whole thing,” he said. “They’ve not missed one day of school since we found them.”