Each year, more than one in ten students in Arkansas miss 10 percent or more of school days. This is true for 16 percent of kindergarten students and 13 percent of first graders.

The Arkansas Campaign for Grade-Level Reading launched the Make Every Day Count initiative to help schools, districts and communities track chronic absence and develop and implement plans for keeping children in the classroom. The Campaign focuses on helping to raise awareness about the importance of attendance in the early grades and how absences can add up, helping schools gain access to chronic absence data, and identifies evidence based attendance practices to share with the schools.