Attendance Starts Early: Building Success from Day One

Attendance is often viewed as a concern for older students, but the habits that support lifelong success begin much earlier. In this episode of THRIVEcast, education leaders explore the connection between early childhood attendance, school readiness, and long-term academic outcomes. From brain development and family engagement to community supports and post-pandemic challenges, this conversation highlights why every day counts for our youngest learners.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Why does it matter? Well, we know that being in school every day on time puts students of all ages on the road to success. And that begins as early as early childhood education. And it really does help set a strong foundation. How we begin is how we continue.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome to Thrivecast, a production of the Flint Center for Educational Excellence. My name is Dawn Hibbard, and I will be your host. Our topic today is centered around why attendance matters in early childhood education. I have with me Dr. Anne-Marie Ferria, CEO and founder of Harmony Research LLC. Thank you, Dr. Ferria, for joining me today. Hi, Dawn. Thanks for having me. The subject of school absenteeism is a hot topic nationwide right now. We all know the benefits of good school attendance for K-12 education, but when we think of preschool or early childhood education, I'm not sure that as a general rule, people understand why it is important for children in early childhood educational settings to have good attendance. Can you help us understand why it is so important?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Sure. So, you know, I think it's very easy for people to understand how missing school in elementary school or middle or high school matters, right? Students are going to miss lessons, they'll miss content and start to feel behind. But it is just as important for us to work with families to have our babies, our toddlers, and our preschool students attend preschool consistently. So why does it matter? Well, we know that being in school every day on time puts students of all ages on the road to success. And that begins as early as early childhood education. And it really does help set a strong foundation. How we begin is how we continue, right? So it sets a very strong foundation for the future. And then there's also a really big body of research that's begun to look at the ways in which absenteeism or chronic absence, which is missing at least 10% of the school year or one or two days a month, is related to different kinds of outcomes. So when we look at it in early childhood education, we know that those early attendance habits affect both later attendance and school success. So let's talk a little bit about what it means for school success, right? So if a child is absent and they're missing one or two days a month, we know that that child is going to have lower kindergarten and readiness scores. I'll say that again. Lower kindergarten readiness scores, um, as well as poor reading and math skills in grade three and attendance in early childhood can even affect the likelihood of graduating high school on time. And so children who establish good attendance habits early on are much more likely to have higher test scores throughout elementary school and are better positioned to reduce any socioeconomic achievement gaps that might exist. So there's a lot of research that's been conducted that documents this link between coming to school consistently, even when you're really young, and your learning outcomes. But that's only part of the story because we also know that being absent can also affect kind of your school habits throughout your career. So if you have a high absentee rate in early childhood, you are also likely to have a higher absentee rate in later grades, which, as I mentioned a little earlier, it makes it really hard to get in the habit of showing up. And we know that showing up is really crucial to success in school, but also in the workplace, right? Um, and so these are the habits that we want to help grow and build with our youngest learners in early childhood education.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

What does the data about the Flint specifically, the Flint Early Childhood Collaborative, tell us about attendance for our kids?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yeah, so, you know, I've had the privilege and honor of partnering with the early childhood education community in Flint since the 2019-2020 school year, uh, which feels like ages ago, right? And so we have attendance data for all of the children and families who attended both Educare Flint and Cummings Great Expectations, our sister school, uh, for all of those years. And so the pattern that we see is uh kind of like a twofold story. So there's the before COVID story and the after COVID story. So before COVID, when we look at our average attendance, it was it was high. It was around 82, 83%. Now that still shows us that, you know, we had some work to do. We want those numbers to be higher for school averages to usually be above 90%, but we were doing okay. And then the global pandemic hits. We have massive school closures across the country. Early childhood education is going virtual, whatever that means for a three-year-old and a four-year-old. And it was a really challenging time for families, for educators. I will say one of the highlights is that Educare Flint really stepped up in the pandemic and served as a hub for our families in so many different ways. But when we look at child attendance post-pandemic, it was much lower. So if we look at the 2021-22 school year, the first year where the classrooms were reopened, our average attendance was much lower. It was in the 60%. Wow. So it dropped from 82% pre-pandemic to 61% in the 21-22 school year. Now the good news is that every year since then, we have steady increases. So in 22-23, we moved up to 66%. In 23-24, we are now at 75%. And in the last school year's data that we have right now, in 24-25, we're at 78%. So we're slowly inching back to pre-pandemic attendance rates. Um, and I think that's a wonderful upward trend. And we're going to be back probably this year to where we were before the pandemic. That pattern is true really nationwide, right? Um, and it and it plays out here in Flint at both Educare and at Cummings grade expectations. Um, the other thing that uh we know is that if we talk about chronic um absenteeism, right, that's missing 10% of instructional time. And that comes down to just one or two days a month, right? And we know that the majority of our students are chronically absent. So 81% of the students who attend Educare Flint were chronically absent in the last school year. And the number is really similar at Cummings as well. And so that means we do have a lot of work to do to think about the ways that we can support our children and their families to get to school every day, which is no easy feat. Um, for anyone who's parented young children, there's a lot of things that happen. Um, but we do have a lot of room for growth in our partnership with families to support attendance.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Oh, yeah. I'm wondering if some of the uh slow return to pre-pandemic levels is some of these kids were babies that we're seeing now at Educare. Some of them were babies during the pandemic. And I have talked with various parents at different times and and people in general, but there's still a bit of caution because of that experience. And I think I've heard that more people are willing to work from home if they don't feel well to avoid possible contamination of other people. And I'm wondering sometimes if some of this absenteeism across the board is because people are being overly cautious about contagious diseases.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah. I mean, I think that the COVID pandemic, one way that we think about it in early childhood education, we have um uh a term that we refer to, which is ACEs. Those are adverse childhood experiences, right? And as the number of adverse childhood experiences adds up for a kid or a family, um, these are things like divorce or a move or a death in the family, right? Um, as the number of adverse childhood experiences increases, things get a lot harder for families and our kids' outcomes don't look as great, right? And the pandemic was an adverse childhood experience for literally everyone in the world. And so we have all experienced this together and it has changed our thinking, um, our decision making, and how we move through the world as people and as families. So I think it 100% is related to how families have really repositioned their needs, their priorities, and thought a little bit more about when I'm going to stay home and when I'm going to be comfortable having my young children out in the world.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Right. Yeah. And I it it's it's that balancing act between the safety for your health, but then the long-term impact of the having the stable school experience.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Yes. And so, you know, we know the research says that high quality early childhood education can really set your child up on a path for success, right? Especially for families who may be living with more risk, right? So for our lower income families, for racially minoritized families, we know that the benefits are truly profound when children have access to high quality early care and education. And in the state of Michigan, there's been a wonderful commitment to this, right? And we have state-funded preschool available for all income eligible four-year-olds, right? And we're trying to expand that to three year olds. But the thing is, the promise of that support only comes to light when your child attends, right? And so it's really important that we think about not just offering programming, right, making high-quality early childhood education available for our families, but also thinking about the supports that we might need to attend. And I say it's important, but I could also tell you that our data at both Educare Flint and Cummings back this up. So in our most recent set of analyses, we were looking at the relationship between attendance and how students were doing on a lot of different outcomes at the end of preschool. Things like school readiness, right? Are our students who are graduating from preschool ready to enter kindergarten? Um, things like language skills and social emotional skills. And we found that across the board, if students attended Educare Flint and Cummings more often, they did better, right? So it makes a difference. And to get a little specific, for every two additional days that a child attended preschool, they scored two and a half points higher on their social skills assessments. They scored five points higher on measures of language, and they scored between two and three points higher on school readiness tests. These are things like early reading and early math skills. So we know in our community, in Educare Flint and Cummings, if you can get your child there, they're going to benefit more from the high-quality early childhood education programming that we have.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Well, that leads me to my next question. What tips and tricks can you recommend that parents do to help improve their child's attendance in preschool?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah, that's excellent, Don. So when we think about child attendance, I kind of think that's a fake term, right? Because no three-year-old or two-year-old is walking themselves into their child care program, right? And so child attendance and early childhood education is really family attendance. And so we need to think about the ways that we support our entire families if we want to improve attendance in our programming. So if we think about some of the systems level things that we can do, two strategies come to mind off the bat. So one is there's been some really interesting research about the effectiveness of text message campaigns to families talking about both the benefits of attendance and reminding them if their child missed or was late to attend school. And those text messages campaigns, um, they can be pretty easy to implement, right? And a district or uh in our case, perhaps like an ISD could decide to try this out and provide both like knowledge, education, things like that to families, but also just the daily reminders about bringing your kid to school and how it really helps them. Um, another strategy that I know can really help families is to offer transportation. So we know this is a costly but very effective solution to helping families get their children through those doors every morning and increasing attendance in early childhood education. Things that, so I just want to say, you know, we shouldn't put all the burden on families, right? We should be building systems that help families get their kids to school rather than saying, oh, it's up to mom and dad to figure this out, good luck, right? Um, but when we do think about things that families could do, um, some of them are are simple, right? Like so keeping a consistent routine uh can really help. Now, keeping a consistent routine with young children can be really hard. Um, I know as the mom of a three and a one-year-old, but if you can make a commitment to at least trying to get your child to go to bed at the same time each night, and for you as a parent to go to bed at the same time each night, it can really help children and families be ready and get out of the house on time and make it to school. Um, other things that I think are really helpful for families is to have a backup plan and just know what it is, right? So life happens and you might get called into work or you might need to be over in another town on a day you didn't expect it. Having a plan for when that happens, like who are you going to call? Who's the person who could come get your kids and help you get them to school, right? Um, or if there's car trouble, what are you gonna do? Right. And so just thinking about that in advance can really help you on those days where it feels impossible to get your little one to school. Um, so maintaining a consistent routine and really naming and thinking about your support system before you need it can be really helpful.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

To that point, I have um actually heard from our community school director at EduCare that she is seeing that community build amongst the parents. And one of the parents had car trouble, but because she had developed relationships with other parents at the school, she was able to reach out to someone who lived very close to her and say, Can you take my child into EduCare today? And we see that as a win-win for us because one, the child, both children made it to Educare that day. Yeah. And we, you know, that's what our community school director's role is, is to help build that community and help parents find that. I'm going to call it an organic support network. Not only are we trying to provide supports, but we're creating that network so that they can do all of those smaller supports that we all need, you know, the whole village concept. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

It's completely necessary. And I do think, you know, I want to highlight the national educare model includes um a couple of different components, right? And one of them is intensive and authentic family engagement. And if we're doing that right and we're partnering with families, those relationships will grow, right? And I think there's nothing better that we can do for a child than support their family, right? So Portia Kennell, the grandmother of Educare, said to me once um, no child exists outside of their family. And so working deeply on building authentic family-school connections and building that community for our families, I think is essential to overall success in serving our community when it comes to our littlest learners. The other thing I'll say is, you know, that that story of families leaning on each other and also Educare being a place of support, it's been consistent. So we did a survey of our families back in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Like, what do you need? How can we help? What's going on? Right. And one of the things we asked them, like, where are you getting support in the community right now? And the number one place that they named was Educare Flint. So their early childhood, uh early childhood education provider was filling the gap during the pandemic. And I think that's who we are, right? And I think that that's our role to figure out what our families need and then figure out a way to meet them there.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

That's amazing. Yeah. Well, one final question. What is the one thing that you wish parents understood about how attendance impacts their child's development during preschool? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

So I think the takeaway message is that attendance matters even for our babies, right? And when we think about brain development, so I'm kind of a brain nerd and a science nerd, and there is a very special time in a baby's life from when they are age zero to three, where their brain is just exploding and growing, and there's so much opportunity for them to learn and grow and build neural connections. And if your baby is in a high quality early care and education setting during that time, it gives them such a head start, right? So if we can attend high quality programming during that sensitive brain development time from zero to three, it can be a wonderful foundation for your child. So I would say attendance matters, and it really matters for our babies.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Well, I want to thank you, Dr. Anne Marie Ferria, for a great conversation about why attendance matters in early childhood education. You have been listening to Thrivecast, the podcast program of the Flint Center for Educational Excellence.