To eliminate chronic student absenteeism in this country, the My Brother’s Keeper Success Mentors Initiative, ten initial participant cities and an Ad Council campaign, will seek to engage parents on this issue to drive student success. Particularly important for higher risk populations, reaching and engaging families must be strategic, collaborative, and culturally responsive.
In this initiative and other efforts to reform schools and utilize transformative data-informed practices to improve overall student academic performance, engaging families must be viewed as a standard, necessary component.
We seem to be coming around to the most comprehensive and broader framework in the design of education programs, practices and policies. Good work, White House! Nice start, too!
DIVERSITY University 
My Brother’s Keeper Success Mentors Initiative is a great initiative that is taking a proactive approach to combat student absenteeism by involving parents and mentors in order to address student absenteeism. Researchers and practitioners alike agree that high student absenteeism is an issue that many public schools are facing across the United States and abroad. To combat student absenteeism, school leaders must face the brutal facts on the impact of poor student attendance, and disrupt the status quo by identifying ways to get students back into the classrooms. Research reveals that schools, families, and communities play a significant role in students’ school attendance Sheldon (2007) noted that student attendance tends to increase when schools execute a school-wide attendance program. The effects are particularly evident when strong partnerships are formed among schools, family, and the community. Sheldon’s study findings also suggest that, when schools reach out to families to address absenteeism, attendance tends to increase. Additionally, mentoring programs are an effective research-based intervention that has been proven to decrease absenteeism. Students with attendance issues who have mentors to connect with at school tend to attend school more regularly, which likely leads to improved academic performance. Students are more likely to attend school when they know that there is someone there waiting to see them each day. After all, when students miss school, they miss out!
Sheldon, S. B. (2007). Improving student attendance with school, family, and community
partnerships. The Journal of Educational Research, 100(5), 267-275,328. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.library.capella.edu/docview/204201413?accountid=27965
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Thank you for the added insight, and framing the mentoring component in supporting and driving student success and attendance, supported by the research.
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Chronic Absenteeism is a killer. It’s great to see it getting attention. I work with a community partnership that collaborates to address this issue using a “community school model” and they are seeing results!
http://www.kentssn.org
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Just wanted to say hat I have checked out this model, and the practices shared are utilizing the types of strategies that bring results, build social capital, and lead to positive outcomes for children and their families. Thank you for the ‘heads up’, and please keep posting with your pulse on the largely unknown/untold truths. I look forward to your ‘Blackmail’, especially ‘special deliveries’.
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Thank you!
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