We’ve just finished our third year co-sponsoring Attendance Awareness Month and are overwhelmed by the engagement and commitment we’ve seen across the country. Local schools and superintendents are stepping up to improve attendance. State leaders are calculating data and speaking out the connection between absenteeism and achievement.
They taped PSAs, sponsored contents, issued proclamations, released balloons and, of course, calculated their chronic absenteeism data. Here are a few of the metrics we’ve gathered:
Engagement
- 402 schools and communities posted on the Attendance Action Map, up from 324 last year. Pins came from Oahu to Maine, from Alaska to Miami.
- 4,300+ people are now on our Attendance Awareness Month listserv, up from about 2,300 last year.
- 1,471 people joined our webinar series from April to September. That’s up about 40 percent from last year.
- 212 superintendents have signed on to the Call to Action sponsored by the Attendance Awareness Month partners. The list was featured in Education Week.
News Coverage
- 1,353 stories, broadcasts and blog posts featured school attendance or chronic absence from mid August through September 30.
- 241 mention of those stories mentioned Attendance Awareness Month specifically.
- 191 stories mentioned the Mapping the Early Attendance Gap brief released September 1 or Attendance Works. Some stories, including pieces in The Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, focused on the entire report, while others — such as pieces in St. Louis, Providence and Wichita looked closely at state data or local practice.
Social Media
- 12,237 tweets used the #schooleveryday hashtag between April 15 and September 30. That involved 5,260 contributors reaching a total audience of 5,716,540 users.
- 8,865 tweets appeared in September alone from 4,196 contributors, reaching 3,908,542 users and generating 15,775,839 impressions.
- 182,000+ page views on the Attendance Works website in September, an 80 percent increase from last year.
Partners
- 57 national organizations are partners in Attendance Awareness Month,up from 45 last year. Many of the new partners are connected to school health, reflecting the increased emphasis on connecting health and attendance.
- 4 partners participated in Twitter chats, including America’s Promise Alliance, Attendance Works MENTOR and Healthy Schools Campaign
- 9 partners wrote commentary pieces or blogs including America’s Promise, Attendance Works, Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, Coalition for Community Schools, Get Schooled, Healthy Schools Campaign, MENTOR, National Collaborative for Workforce and Disability for Youth, and United Way Worldwide.
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