Family engagement plays a pivotal role in combatting chronic absenteeism.
The number of students who are chronically absent – missing 10% or more of the school year – has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Eyal Bergman, senior vice president at Learning Heroes, studied this issue and was surprised to discover how schools with robust family engagement had significantly lower rates of chronic absenteeism. “It shows that the strength of a school's family engagement is actually more predictive of a school's chronic absenteeism than their rates of poverty,” he says.
But fostering strong home-school partnerships has been a challenge for many school districts. “What we find is that schools often, despite really good intentions, have not really been designed to promote really strong partnerships with families,” he says. “This is why families are often treated as spectators to the work of schools. This is why their cultural wisdom and their expertise about their children aren't necessarily woven into the fabric of schooling. It's why we see that schools often apply assimilationist practices.”
Bergman emphasizes the need for trust-building between educators and families, personalized approaches to student learning, and systemic infrastructural support to enhance family engagement. In future work, Bergman will dig deeper into the data and try to gather more information about what certain school districts with strong family engagement did to keep chronic absenteeism down and a possible tool down the line to help schools with family engagement.
In this episode, he explains the soaring numbers of chronic absenteeism while underscoring the transformative potential of prioritizing family engagement in ensuring student well-being and academic success.
I Wish My Teacher Knew
Why You Should Dance in the Rain
Global Teacher of the Year
The Case For Homework
Online Reading In Schools
What Is Equity in Education?
What Happens After Yes
Higher Education in China
Portrait of an Educator
The World Course
Leading Disruptive Change in Education
Debugging the Gender Gap
Winning Marriage Equality
Understanding Educational Ethics
The Role of Family In A Child's Success
How To Give Good Feedback
Helping Children Succeed
Facebook Education
Books, Movies, and Civic Engagement
How To Become a School Principal
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The HBR Channel
Women and Public Policy Program Seminar Series
PolicyCast
Shorenstein Center Media and Politics Podcast
Harvard Center for International Development