Do letters and texts to families reduce chronic absence?

1Bottom line

What works, how big the effect is, and how sure we are.

Yes, a little, and cheaply. When schools tell parents plainly how many days their child has missed, absences fall by 2% to 8%. That is between a fifth of a day and one full day per student per year.

The effect is small. It is also one of the best-tested and least expensive attendance practices a district can run, and one of the two foundational trials took place in ten California school districts.² Treat family messaging as the floor under your attendance work. It won't fix the hardest cases.

1. A personal absence count works. Mailed reports showing a child's total days missed cut chronic absence from 36.0% to about 32% in Philadelphia, and cut absences 7.7% in ten California districts.^1,2
2. Texts work in elementary school. In a federal trial of 23,133 K-5 students, weekly reminders plus same-day absence texts lowered chronic absence by 2.4 to 3.6 percentage points, from 20.5%.⁹
3. The effect shrinks when districts run it themselves. Two recent multi-district trials, run by district staff with their own systems, found 1.7% to 1.9% fewer absences.^7,8
4. Plain wording beats legal wording. A shorter truancy letter that stressed how absences add up did better than the standard legal notice. California rewrote its required first notice along similar lines on July 1, 2025.^4,30
5. Messages are a floor, not a fix. High school results are mixed, test scores rarely moved, and the gains fade within weeks of each message.^1,9,15

How sure are we?

How this compares with other attendance work

A 2026 review of 57 randomized trials pooled the results by type. Parent engagement programs added 0.43 days of attendance, with moderate certainty. Mentoring added 0.63 days on average, but its range runs from a loss to a large gain, so the reviewers rated that evidence low certainty.²⁶

Other syntheses land in the same place. England's Education Endowment Foundation pooled seven parent-communication studies in 2022 and found a very small positive effect.²⁷ A 2026 analysis of 82 randomized trials of parent messaging worldwide, corrected for unpublished null results, put the attendance effect at roughly one fewer day absent.²⁸ An older and widely cited meta-analysis by Eklund and colleagues found no clear effect for family-school partnerships, but it covered studies through 2018 and its reference list does not include the two large mailer trials.²⁵

Intensive programs can do more for the students they reach. In Chicago, two years of Check & Connect mentoring cut absences by 4.2 days for students who started in grades 5 to 7, with no effect in grades 1 to 4.²⁹ That costs far more per student than a letter. The two belong at different rungs of the same ladder.

2Mailed messages

Correcting what parents believe about how much school their child has missed.

The mailer research starts from one finding: parents don't know the count. In a Philadelphia pilot survey, parents of high-absence students guessed their child had missed 9.6 days. The real average was 17.8.¹

The Philadelphia trial

Todd Rogers and Avi Feller randomized 28,080 households of high-absence students in the School District of Philadelphia in 2014-15. Families got up to five mailings over the year, in English, Spanish or Mandarin. There were three versions.^1,38

• The count did most of the work. A reminder that attendance matters cut 0.6 days. Adding the child's total absences cut 1.1 days, from a comparison average of 17.0.
• Comparing to classmates added nothing. The third version performed the same as the second.
• Both excused and unexcused absences fell. The federal review shows excused absences down from 5.57 to 5.13 days and unexcused from 11.47 to 10.85 in the total-absences version.³⁸
• Siblings benefited. Brothers and sisters in the same household who were not named in the letter missed about one day less.
• The effect faded between mailings. Attendance improved most in the week after each letter and slid back over the next two.

The California trial

Carly Robinson and colleagues ran the early-grades version in 2015-16 across ten districts in one California county, covering urban, suburban and rural schools. They randomized 10,967 households of K-5 students and sent six mailings in English or Spanish. Each one tied attendance to grade-level learning and stated the child's absences so far, counting excused and unexcused days together.²

• Students whose families got the mailings missed 0.53 fewer days, a 7.7% drop from 6.9 days.
• The share chronically absent fell from 5.45% to 4.64%. The paper reports this as a 15% reduction, but it narrowly missed statistical significance (p = .056). The federal review counts only the version-level results as significant.³⁸
• Effects looked larger for English learners (0.83 fewer days versus 0.39) and for socioeconomically disadvantaged students (1.02 versus 0.42). The authors label these comparisons exploratory.
• Cost: about $5.68 per student per year, or $10.69 per added day of attendance.

What happened when districts ran it themselves

Harvard's Proving Ground network had six urban and suburban districts design and send their own absence messages to more than 78,000 students in 2018-19 and 2019-20. Absences fell 1.9%. One district tested five delivery methods side by side, and mail was the only one that was statistically significant on its own, though the study could not rule out that all methods work equally.⁷

Single mailings do little. One postcard in Philadelphia cut absences 2.4% over the next 43 school days.³ One superintendent letter in Seattle showed no effect on full-year attendance.⁶

3Texting

Automated alerts versus two-way conversations.

The federal elementary trial

The strongest texting evidence comes from a U.S. Department of Education study of 108 elementary schools in four large urban districts in 2017-18. Families were randomly assigned to texting or to no study messages. All texting families got the same basic package in the fall: a weekly reminder and a same-day text whenever their child was absent, showing the running total of days missed. Messages went out in nine languages.⁹

In January, families whose child had missed 8% or more of fall days were moved to one of two stronger approaches. One was staff outreach, where a school staff member texted back and forth with the parent. The other was automated goal texts, which asked parents to commit to perfect attendance each week.

• Framing didn't matter. Messages about the benefits of attending and messages about the consequences of missing school worked equally well.
• For students already missing a lot, a person beat a program. Staff outreach lowered spring chronic absence 4.8 points more than automated goal texts for students with a history of high absence. For all students the gap was not significant.
• More texts meant more opt-outs. Ten percent of families on basic messaging unsubscribed, 14% with staff outreach, and 20% with goal texts, which arrived about twice as often.
• Reach was incomplete. About 15% of students had no parent with a working mobile number at the start of the year, and texts reached at least one parent 74% of the time.
• Test scores didn't move. Reading and math in grades 3 to 5 were unchanged.
• Cost: $6.90 to $8.53 per student per year, not counting development.

Where texting fell short

• New York City high schools. Same-day absence texts to parents of 3,957 students, added on top of the robocalls schools already made, changed nothing. Attendance was about 86% in both groups.¹⁵
• Metro Atlanta. Monthly emails or texts through the districts' existing platforms cut absences 2% to 3% overall, but not for high school students and not for Hispanic students or English learners, even with translation. Only about 55% of K-8 students had a valid parent email or text number on file, and students with more than 15 absences had valid contact information at nearly half the rate of students with five.¹⁰
• 47 rural districts, 2022 to 2024. The first large trial since the pandemic found 1.7% fewer absences, about 0.2 days, at $4.07 per student. In one district with poor contact data, absences rose for Black students in the first year. The authors advise starting small.⁸
• A Midwest middle and high school trial. Biweekly texts about grades, assignments and attendance did not change attendance. The comparison group was already getting absence robocalls.¹⁷

Two-way texting: promising, thinly tested

The study most often cited for two-way texting, Connect-Text, was a pilot in one Pittsburgh school with 45 kindergartners. A bilingual AmeriCorps member answered parents' texts and connected families to help such as before- and after-school care. Chronic absence was 13.3%, against 24.4% in a statistically constructed comparison school. The difference was only marginally significant, and the study was not randomized.¹² It shows the idea can work. On its own it can't carry a purchasing decision.

The federal trial is the only randomized head-to-head test, and it found the human advantage only among students with a history of high absence.⁹ We found no published randomized trial of an AI chatbot for attendance.

Texts about schoolwork also move attendance

In 22 West Virginia middle and high schools, weekly automated texts about missed assignments, grades and class absences cut course failures 27% and raised the number of class periods attended by 12%.¹¹ Two cautions: that figure counts class periods, not school days, and parents had to opt in, which about 10% did. In a single Los Angeles Unified school in 2010-11, hand-sent messages about missing assignments cut class periods missed by 28% among high school students, with no significant change in full-day attendance.¹⁶ In a high school summer credit-recovery program, one-sentence weekly messages from teachers cut class absences from 12% to 9.5% and the share of students failing to earn credit from 15.8% to 9.3%.¹⁴

Preschool

In nine subsidized preschool centers in Chicago, three to four automated texts a week over 18 weeks added 2.5 days of attendance and lowered the share of children missing 10% or more of days by 7.7 points.¹³ That is relevant to transitional kindergarten, where no trial exists.

Outside the United States

In Chile, weekly attendance texts to parents in seven low-income schools raised attendance 1.1 percentage points over 18 months, and the effect faded by the end of each week.²⁰ In England, a 2023-24 trial texting parents their child's days missed across 105 secondary schools found 0.21 fewer days absent; the funder judged the approach unlikely to be highly promising in that form.²³ An earlier English trial texted parents about tests and homework, never about attendance, and absences still fell by about half a day.²² In Brazil, among 19,300 ninth graders, reminders with no child-specific data did about as well as personalized ones, which suggests part of the effect is simply getting a parent's attention.²¹ In France, a series of parent meetings in disadvantaged middle schools reduced truancy but not test scores.²⁴

4Formal truancy letters

Wording that warns of penalties versus wording that offers support.

One large trial has tested the wording of a legally required truancy notice. In 2015-16, a large urban district randomized 131,312 households to receive either its standard notice or one of six rewrites. The standard notice ran 382 words at a 10th-grade reading level and led with legal obligations and possible prosecution. Every rewrite cut the main message to under 150 words at a 5th-grade level and moved the required legal language to smaller print.⁴

The paper does not name the district. Its truancy definition matches California's, the authors thank the California Attorney General's office, and co-author Todd Rogers has described it publicly as a district in California.⁴⁶

• Simplifying alone was not enough. The version that only shortened and simplified the letter did not clearly beat the standard notice.
• "Absences add up" was the wording that worked. The three versions that showed how each missed day compounds cut absences about 0.07 days in the following month, roughly 2%.
• The signer didn't matter. A superintendent's signature did no better than a principal's.
• The effect was brief. About 70% of it came in the first ten school days.

California has since rewritten the first notice

SB 691 (Portantino, Chapter 863 of 2024) changed what Education Code 48260.5 requires in the first notification of truancy, effective July 1, 2025.³⁰ The statute now also says districts may send it by "the most cost-effective method possible, which may include email or a telephone call."

Two related changes. AB 461 (Ahrens, Chapter 154 of 2025) repealed Penal Code 270.1, the misdemeanor for parents of chronically truant K-8 students that carried a fine of up to $2,000 or up to a year in jail.³¹ The infraction in Education Code 48293 remains, and nothing in SB 691 stops later letters from describing consequences.

Check your templates. Letters written before July 2025, including the sample in the 2018 State SARB handbook, lack the three newly required statements.⁴¹ The new law fixes the content of the first notice. It doesn't make the letter short or readable. That part is still up to the district, and it is the part the trial tested.

5What makes a difference

Grade level, how often you send, language, and who the sender is.

6What the research can't tell us yet

Where a careful administrator should stay skeptical.

• Whether it lasts. We found no trial that measured attendance in the school year after messaging ended. Within a year, effects fade between messages, so plan to keep sending.
• High school. Mailed absence reports worked in grades 9 to 12 in Philadelphia. Texting parents mostly did not. Texts about missing schoolwork look more promising for teenagers than texts about absences.^1,11,15
• Achievement. Where test scores were measured, they rarely moved. Fewer than one extra day in class is probably too little to show up on a state test.⁹
• After the pandemic. Nearly all of this evidence predates 2020, when California's chronic absence rate was 12%. The one large trial since then, in rural districts, found smaller effects.⁸ Nobody has tested whether messages work differently when one in five students is chronically absent.
• California since 2016. The two California trials both ran in 2015-16. There is no California trial of attendance texting, none in transitional kindergarten, and none of the new SB 691 notice.
• The standard truancy letter. Because the law requires it, no one has compared sending it with not sending it.
• Attendance Recovery outreach. The program began July 1, 2025. No study has tested how to invite families to it.
• Who paid for the research. The authors of the Philadelphia trial founded a company, now EveryDay Labs, that sells this service, and they disclosed it in the paper. The findings have since been reproduced by independent teams, at smaller sizes.^7,39

7What this means for a California district

Where the state stands, evidence tier ratings, and an outreach plan in order.

Where absence is highest and where the evidence is strongest

The match is good in the early grades and poor in high school.

Grade-span rates are from the 2023-24 state file, the most recent we could verify by span.³⁴ The California School Dashboard's chronic absenteeism indicator covers TK-8 only; high school rates are on DataQuest.⁴⁴

Evidence tier ratings

The Every Student Succeeds Act recognizes four tiers of evidence. Tier 1 (strong) needs at least one well-run randomized trial with a statistically significant positive effect. Tier 2 (moderate) needs a well-run quasi-experiment. Tier 3 (promising) needs a correlational study with controls. Tier 4 needs a research-based rationale and a plan to study results.⁴⁰ Federal guidance adds that strong and moderate evidence should come from more than one site and at least 350 students.

The table separates ratings published by the federal What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) from our own reading of studies it has not reviewed. A tier follows the practice as it was studied. A district's version earns the rating only if it does what the trial did.

Evidence for ESSA, a separate rating site at Johns Hopkins, rates the EveryDay Labs mail program "strong" on the basis of the first two studies in this table.³⁹

An outreach plan, in order

Each step lists what triggers it, what the law requires, and the evidence behind it. Districts set their own letter counts; the State SARB handbook notes that most require three notifications before a SARB referral.^41,45

1. Before school starts

   Fix the contact list

   Confirm a mobile number, email, mailing address and home language for every student at enrollment, and again in January. Record texting consent then. Every digital trial lost reach here, and the families hardest to reach were those of the students missing the most school.

   GroundworkAtlanta: about 55% of students had a valid parent email or text number. Federal trial: 15% had no working mobile number.^9,10

2. All families, four to six times a year

   Send a personal absence report

   State the child's total days missed so far, counting excused and unexcused together, in one plain sentence. Say why it matters at this grade. Skip the comparison to classmates. Send it by mail, or by mail plus the district's messaging platform, in the home language.

   Tier 1 strong0.5 to 1.1 fewer days absent in Philadelphia and California; about 0.2 days when district-run.^1,2,7

3. Every absence, elementary grades

   Text the same day, with the running total

   Pair a short weekly reminder with a same-day text when a child is out. Include the number of days missed this year. Keep the volume low: more texts meant more families unsubscribing. In high school, don't expect absence texts added to existing robocalls to change anything.

   Design fits Tier 1Chronic absence down 2.4 to 3.6 points in K-5.⁹ No effect in NYC high schools.¹⁵

4. After an absence, PreK to grade 2

   Have the teacher say what was missed

   A postcard with the child's absence count and a short handwritten note from the teacher about the lesson missed. It is the costliest step here in staff time, so use it where absence is highest, which in California is TK and kindergarten.

   Tier 1 strong8.3% fewer absences; about one day fewer in kindergarten.⁵

5. Third unexcused absence or tardy over 30 minutes

   Send the first notification of truancy, rewritten

   Include the seven statements Education Code 48260.5 now requires. Then do what the law doesn't require: lead with a main message under 150 words at a 5th-grade reading level, show how missed days add up, and offer a named person to call. Put statutory wording below it. If 15% or more of a school's students share a home language other than English, Education Code 48985 requires the notice in that language too.³⁶

   Required by lawTier 3 promisingAbout 2% fewer absences in the next month than the standard notice.^4,30

6. Students still missing 8% to 10% of days by winter

   Switch from automated messages to a person

   Have a staff member the family knows text or call, ask what is getting in the way, and connect the family to help. This is also where the SART meeting belongs. A SART conference satisfies the "conscientious effort" to meet with the parent that Education Code 48262 requires before a student is classified a habitual truant.

   Conference effort requiredOne federal trialStaff texting beat automated texts by 4.8 points for students with a history of high absence.⁹

7. Absences continue after school-level support

   Refer to SARB, and add support that messages can't provide

   Education Code 48263 allows referral of habitual truants and chronic absentees to a School Attendance Review Board, with written notice to the family and documentation of what the school has tried. This review found no trial of SARB letters or hearings. For students at this stage the evidence points to sustained adult contact, such as mentoring, more than to another letter.

   Outside this reviewCheck & Connect mentoring: 4.2 fewer days absent for students starting in grades 5 to 7.²⁹

Attendance Recovery

Since July 1, 2025, districts, county offices and charter schools may offer Attendance Recovery under Education Code 46211: instruction before or after school, on weekends or between terms that makes up for missed days.³² The rules that matter for outreach:

• A student can recover up to 10 days a year, or the number of days missed, whichever is less.
• Participation "shall not be compulsory or punitive."
• A certificated district employee must teach it, at no more than 20 students per teacher (10 in TK and kindergarten).
• Recovered days count toward average daily attendance. They do not remove the absence from the register, change truancy status, or change the chronic absence rate on the 2026 Dashboard.⁴⁴
• The statute has no parent notification requirement.

No study has tested Attendance Recovery outreach, so anything said here is untested and would sit at Tier 4. The findings above suggest a reasonable starting point: give the family the child's own count next to a specific offer ("Maya has missed 6 days. She can make up all 6 at Saturday sessions starting January 10"). Keep it as plain as the absence report and track who enrolls.

What one day is worth

California funds districts on average daily attendance. Dividing the 2026-27 base grant by 180 school days gives a rough value for one day of one student's attendance.³⁵

Against that, mailed reports cost $6 to $11 per added day in the two foundational trials. Three cautions before putting this in a budget memo. The per-day figures are our arithmetic and exclude supplemental and concentration grants. Districts are funded on the greater of current-year, prior-year or three-year-average attendance, so a district with falling enrollment may see no change in funding this year. And district-run programs have produced about a third of the effect the early trials found.

Attendance-based funding is not going away soon. In January 2026 the Legislative Analyst's Office reviewed a move to enrollment-based funding and recommended keeping the current system.⁴³

Three things to stop

• Mailing attendance awards after the fact. In California middle and high schools they increased absences.¹⁹
• Treating the truancy letter as the outreach plan. It reaches only families with unexcused absences, and its measured effect lasts about two weeks.⁴
• Comparing a child to classmates. It adds length and no effect.¹

How we did this review

We searched a large index of published research, and ran a second, independent review on the question. It screened 284 eligible papers and included 100. We then read the published paper, federal report or working paper for each key study, and the What Works Clearinghouse review where one exists. Four separate verification passes checked every figure against a source. California statutes, bill text and state data were read from the Legislature's and the Department of Education's own pages.

Where the published paper and an earlier working paper differ, we use the published figure. Where a number is our own arithmetic, the text says so.

Limits. We could not open the full published text of three papers (Musaddiq et al., Kraft & Dougherty, and Bergman's Los Angeles study) and relied on abstracts, policy briefs and working papers for details. Our search of the What Works Clearinghouse was study by study and may have missed reviews. Several trials are in one district, and almost all predate the pandemic.

Disclosure. Attendly makes attendance and after-school compliance software for California districts and has a commercial interest in this topic.

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