TIERED SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT FOR IMPROVING ATTENDANCE

OVERVIEW

This information is intended to help your team think about alignment between its strategies and level of student need. The list of strategies is not exhaustive but suggestive and intended to inspire your own ideas about what could be in place to improve student attendance in your school.

STRATEGIES

The columns represent three tiers of strategies. Tier I Strategies are Universal Strategies that should be available to every student in a school building. Tier II Strategies are aimed at early intervention and designed to help students who need slightly more support to avoid chronic absence. Tier III Strategies are intensive supports offered to the students facing the greatest challenges to getting to school. Our assumption is that all levels of strategies involve some level of these core ingredients: A. Monitor data, B. Engage students and families, C. Recognize good and improved attendance, D. Provide personalized outreach, and E. Remove barriers.

LEVELS OF STUDENT NEEDS

This chart assumes that students can be divided into tiers reflecting the level of anticipated need for supports:

Tier 1 = students whose good attendance could be maintained and cultivated as long as the universal, prevention oriented supports are in place.

Tier 2 = students who have a past history of moderate chronic absence (missing 10% or more of school) or face a risk factor (e.g. a chronic illness like asthma) which makes attendance more tenuous and need a higher level of more individualized support in addition to benefiting from the universal supports.

Tier 3 = students with several levels of chronic absence (missing 20% or more of school in the past year or during the first month of school) and/or face a risk factor (like involvement in the child welfare or juvenile justice system, homelessness or having a parent who has been incarcerated).