Complicating the Role of Relationships in Reducing Student Absenteeism

Abstract

A strong connection between schools and families is vital for student success and well-being. Previous studies on school–family relationships found that open communication between parties may aid in supporting students’ needs and ability to attend school. In this paper, authors analyze how leveraging relationships to gain an increased understanding of a family’s attendance barriers is more beneficial than relationships built on accountability. From interviews with 38 caregivers, 29 students, and 40 staff members in an urban school district with high rates of chronic absenteeism, authors found that efforts to build relationships with families focused on accountability and caregiver education about their children’s attendance and the importance of attending school. Families sometimes perceived these efforts as superficial and ineffective. Authors discuss how school districts and key school personnel, such as social workers, can intentionally use the power of relationships to identify student and family needs and connect them with resources.

Chronic absenteeism (missing 10 percent or more school days) is influenced by multiple factors such as chronic illness, inadequate transportation, and housing insecurity (Balkis et al., 2016; Teasley, 2004). Since the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015, 36 U.S. states have incorporated chronic absenteeism into their school accountability and improvement systems as a “nonacademic indicator” of school performance (Jordan & Miller, 2017). With this new accountability metric, many districts and schools sought new approaches to reducing absenteeism, some of which emphasized the role of school–family relationships in improving school culture and improving conditions for attendance (Sheldon, 2007).

Traditionally, scholars have noted the parallel roles positive and negative family relationships may have on student engagement and attendance (Balkis et al., 2016). Researchers and practitioners have theorized that relationships with school staff are directly related to one’s intrinsic motivation—or the internal drive to do something without external incentives—to attend school (e.g., Adıgüzel & Karadaş, 2013; Balkis et al., 2016). Positive interpersonal relationships between home and school may contribute to protective factors for absenteeism such as social–emotional support (Hamlin, 2020; Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Although previous studies have found that strong school–family bonds can be associated with school-level chronic absenteeism (Lenhoff & Pogodzinski, 2018), there is little empirical evidence to support causal claims that relationships increase or decrease absenteeism (Hamlin, 2020). Instead, relationships may moderate a school’s ability to remove barriers to attendance. For instance, as students attend school more, their relationships with teachers and peers may deepen, creating opportunities for increased support for families (McConnell & Kubina, 2014).

This study builds on prior literature exploring the importance of school–family relationships to better understand how and in what direction relationships are related to absenteeism. We ask, “What role do school–family relationships have in the logic of improving attendance?” This qualitative study aims to advance the research on chronic absenteeism by analyzing and contrasting family and staff perceptions of school relationships and attendance, describing the mechanisms through which relationships might matter for attendance in a school district with high levels of chronic absenteeism.

School–Family Relationships

Research and practice surrounding school–family interactions are grounded in the logic that strong or weak relationships are directly linked to students’ attendance rates, as they influence family motivation to attend school (McConnell & Kubina, 2014). Research to support this notion is seen in studies that suggest educators’ connections with families play a key role in reducing student absenteeism (e.g., van Egmond et al., 2017). The common thread in this literature is the assumption that more frequent and substantive communication with families will increase attendance rates. Furthermore, by improving interpersonal relationships, families will theoretically better understand the importance of attending school and have increased motivation (Epstein & Sheldon, 2002).

More recent studies have shifted from separately analyzing attendance risk by individual, school, and family factors to noting the integrated relationship between these levels (e.g., Childs & Lofton, 2021; Gottfried & Gee, 2017). In the context of relationships, interactions between caregivers and staff are seen as a tool to increase involvement and address attendance problems. For example, if a teacher or social worker is assigned to build a relationship with a family, the caregivers may feel more involved in the student’s school experiences. However, Sheldon (2007) notes that in addition to a caretaker’s belief about the school, other barriers such as socioeconomic status and childhood experiences should be considered in relationship building. Overall, the literature on school relationships overemphasizes the effect on beliefs and motivation and underemphasizes the effect of using relationships to understand and address a family’s needs. Newer empirical studies have found that the relationship between family, staff, and attendance is more complex (Hamlin, 2020). The following review focuses on the potential mechanisms through which school–family relationships might matter for attendance. Researchers used the terms “family” and “caregivers” to describe relationships between the school and students’ home support systems. While some of the data come directly from students’ “parents,” we use inclusive terms that speak to adults in students’ broader ecosystems that may include both primary (e.g., parents) and secondary (e.g., aunts, uncles, godparents, grandparents, siblings) relationships. Based on the demographics of this study, it was common that various adults in students’ home lives, beyond their parents, served as forms of support or provided resources to be able to attend school.

Student Motivation

Even if students face adversity in a home setting, a common motivation narrative is that, if students have a positive relationship with an adult at school (e.g., teacher, social worker, administrator, aide), they will have a “reason” to attend (van Egmond et al., 2017). Examples of this theory in the extant literature are seen in psychological frameworks such as the self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), which posits that personal motivation will lead to goal-oriented behavior change. Support of this principle can be found in psychological analyses on the role of intrinsic motivation to reach a goal. Researchers conceptualize intrinsic motivation as something that “drives a person to do something because it is enjoyable or interesting” (van Egmond et al., 2017, p. 823). Van Egmond et al. (2017) found that regardless of personal hardship, intrinsic motivation was a predictor of school attendance. These findings support the belief that if a student has an inviting school environment or a singular staff member to connect with, they may find a way to attend school, despite adversity.

Family Involvement and Motivation

Other researchers in educational psychology look at motivational research through a socioecological lens instead of an individual lens, focusing on the effect family and school factors have on an individual’s attitude and academic motivation (Whitaker et al., 2012). These frameworks suggest that caregiver involvement, which can be cultivated through school–family relationships, will increase student motivation to attend school. Suizzo et al. (2016) argue that these relationships can influence parental academic socialization, which will lead them to transfer favorable messages to their children, increasing their motivation to attend school.

Racialized Relationships

In the focus district, about 80 percent of the students are Black. Since most of the families interviewed in this study self-identify as Black/African American, it is important to note the unique experiences that Black caregivers face in navigating school attendance requirements. Across levels of socioeconomic status, Black caregivers often volunteer in schools and support initiatives financially. Despite their efforts, perceptions of Black caregivers are often deficit-framed, focusing on the absence of their involvement rather than their presence (Allen & White-Smith, 2018; Cooper, 2009). Assumptions about Black caregivers neglect to account for the impact that consequences of “time poverty” (Allen & White-Smith, 2018), such as inflexible work schedules and childcare costs, have on caregivers’ ability to be present in the school setting. Negative assumptions about Black caregivers are displayed in school personnel’s exclusionary practices, which in turn leave caregivers feeling undervalued and unwelcome as partners in their children’s school experiences. Critical scholarship also notes the ways Black families must advocate for their children in traditional school systems. In addition to traditional forms of involvement, Black caregivers are called to “empower themselves and their children in educational systems that have historically oppressed them” (Cooper, 2009, p. 382). If a family’s cultural needs conflict with district initiatives, school advancement often supersedes cultural comfort. Districts racialize the school environment through policies and procedures that do not take students’ cultural norms into consideration.

Removing Barriers

Scholars agree that involving families is a fundamental component of targeting absenteeism, and most districts recognize the integral role caregivers play in attendance. Direct contact with caregivers has a significant impact on student attendance (McConnell & Kubina, 2014), but it is not clear what mechanism is driving improved attendance. For instance, family contact or relationship building could be a way to connect families with resources or create policies that remove barriers to attendance. Since school staff interact with students on a daily basis, they play a key role in recognizing the students who are struggling with attendance. The stronger a relationship is, the more likely caregivers of chronically absent students may feel comfortable sharing barriers they are facing in attending school. Although staff play an important role in connecting with families, they often receive minimal formal training on proactive ways to develop these connections (Sheldon, 2007). Therefore, staff are left to use “trial and error” strategies without unified support from the school community (Sheldon, 2007). The more schools use systemic organizational approaches to connect with families, the stronger connections could be to buffer barriers to attendance. The purpose of this article is to further extend the research on school–family relationships and attendance to better understand why these relationships matter, particularly in high-poverty contexts with structural barriers to attendance and high chronic absenteeism rates.

Study Context

Detroit has uniquely challenging conditions for student attendance. In the years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, around half of all students in Detroit were chronically absent, which is the highest rate of absenteeism of any major U.S. city (Singer et al., 2021). Detroit’s uniquely high level of absenteeism is associated with the structural inequality that families face, including the highest levels of poverty, unemployment, blight, violent crime, and asthma among major cities; having one of the coldest average monthly temperatures; and having the highest levels of racial segregation (Singer et al., 2021). High levels of school mobility and residential mobility are also associated with absenteeism in the city (Singer et al., 2021; Welsh, 2018). In addition, Detroit also has a challenging context for transportation, including low rates of car ownership; a school-based transportation system that excludes many students; and a public bus system that is often perceived as unreliable (Lenhoff et al., 2022).

There are about 50 school districts operating traditional public and charter schools in Detroit. This study focuses on the traditional public school district’s practices to reduce high rates of absenteeism between 2018 and 2020, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the Every Student Succeeds Act, Michigan adopted chronic absence as a nonacademic accountability measure for school ratings, creating new pressure for districts to address it (Michigan Department of Education, 2019). In addition, there was increasing attention on school attendance among community organizations in Detroit (Simmons & Bell, 2019), led by a community coalition, which set an ambitious goal to decrease chronic absenteeism drastically by 2027. In its focus on absenteeism, the district made organizational changes and new investments, including hiring personnel who were focused on addressing absenteeism and implementing district attendance policies (Einhorn & Higgins, 2019). School staff worked in attendance teams that included social workers, counselors, and administrators. Social workers and other mental health professionals played a vital role on attendance teams because of their ecological perspective on the role of students’ home environments in their school attendance patterns. The teams sought to gain a holistic understanding of students’ needs and address barriers to attending school.

Method

We conducted semistructured interviews with 38 caregivers of K–12 students in seven schools and 29 high school students from five schools in Detroit. Using a stratified random sampling process, we spoke with families and caregivers who had children who were not chronically absent, moderately chronically absent (10 percent–20 percent days missed), and severely chronically absent (more than 20 percent days missed). We also interviewed 40 school staff in seven schools who were responsible for improving attendance in the schools where the students were enrolled. All interviews were transcribed and analyzed using Dedoose software. Initial open coding (Saldaña, 2012) of transcripts was conducted, then we reviewed the excerpts and identified barriers (inadequate school relationships), resources (school–family relationships), and practices (family relationships and student relationships/mentorship) for attendance. Next, we did a round of in vivo coding to highlight families’ experiences with school staff around attendance. In the final coding round, we created subcodes to classify themes that emerged.

Results

Our findings illustrate that relationships matter in direct and indirect interactions between school staff and families. For instance, families we spoke to discussed how trusting relationships increased the likelihood that they would ask the school for help with resources to go to school (e.g., uniforms, food, gas money). In secondary schools, students shared examples of how school staff made them feel valued, such as teachers attending community events, inquiring about their mental health, and helping with academics. Overall, families of chronically absent students largely pointed to other barriers to attendance (e.g., lack of transportation, health issues) and not poor school relationships as the primary drivers of absenteeism. While school staff conceptualized frequent phone calls and home visits as “building relationships,” many caregivers shared how these practices could feel like harassment from school officials about attendance.

These findings suggest that while schools’ implicit and explicit ways of building relationships with families could play a role in improving students’ attendance, the current practices related to relationship building are inadequate and may at times be misguided, resulting in strained relationships. Although stronger relationships may not improve student attendance directly, they may improve schools’ understanding of the needs of families who are struggling with attendance. So, to the extent that schools effectively act on what they learn from relationships with caregivers and students, and to the extent that they maintain strong and trusting relationships to stay abreast of students’ personal and familial circumstances, relationships may be an important lever for improving attendance. This study provides increased insight to inform districts on how to use relationships to buffer against barriers to attendance for families.

Minimal Role of Relationships in Chronic Absenteeism

Across our interviews with caregivers and students, the strength and nature of their relationships varied. Families ranged from having frequent conversations with school staff regarding attendance to only hearing from the school when their child reached the chronically absent level. The range in relationships was also apparent in students’ descriptions of how they felt supported or devalued by teachers and administrators. Within this context, connection with staff also varied by staff members. For instance, some families had a strong relationship with their child’s teacher or school social worker while simultaneously feeling judged by other attendance team members. These relational levels revealed that relationships might influence a student’s attitude about school, but, in most cases, they were not a major factor in attendance patterns. When asked about relationships at school and if students ever missed school because of these relationships, one student stated that they still went to school but felt frustrated when they did not feel teachers were helping them: “I raised my hand and yelled, ‘Come help me.’ Or whatever, and if I’m not understanding something, it’s like [teachers] catch an attitude: ‘OK, well, you figure it out on your own.’ Walk away or something like that.”

Structural Barriers to Attending School

In contrast, families consistently identified a set of significant barriers to attendance. Transportation was the most frequent and pervasive issue for families. This was echoed by attendance team members in the district, almost all of whom identified transportation as one of the top three barriers to attendance in a districtwide survey. Importantly, issues with getting to school were more complex than immediate access to transportation. These issues emerged from a combination of factors: unreliable or inconsistent availability of personal transportation; difficulty affording vehicle repairs, gas, or other transportation services; work schedules that conflicted with school start and end times; weak social networks that offered unreliable support for primary or back-up transportation; unsafe conditions in neighborhoods for walking or waiting for the bus; and major service gaps in school-based and public transportation. In addition, health issues were a significant concern. Beyond the occasional cold or the flu, several students had chronic health issues that led to multiple absences per month (e.g., asthma, allergies, diabetes). Students also missed school at times for mental health reasons and if their caregivers had health issues that disrupted these students’ normal ways of getting to school. All these health issues were exacerbated by unreliable access to healthcare.

Different Views of the Relationships

The ambiguity around what creates an authentic relationship between home and school is seen in the incompatible views that district employees, students, and families held. School staff viewed relationships as an essential factor for attendance, yet often approached families from a deficit perspective. Relationships were seen as a way to inspire and hold families accountable for coming to school. From this motivation-based lens, some staff believed that, as trust in the school setting increases, so will a student’s attendance. Therefore, staff were socialized to view their ability to connect with students in a positive way as an interpersonal intervention for absenteeism. However, the practices that staff members used to build relationships were largely transactional. According to interviews with attendance team members, they were encouraged to connect with families through frequent phone calls and home visits, primarily for tracking purposes rather than building relationships over time that promoted a partnership to improve attendance.

For caregivers, staff efforts to build relationships often felt more like harassment than help. In some cases, repercussions for absenteeism instead of resources were the only thing shared with caregivers. Some caregivers felt a sense of shame and lacked support from staff to address barriers. Caregivers felt assumptions were made about why their child was absent and would have appreciated if school staff asked what was going on at home. One caregiver shared their frustration with the lack of support in addressing barriers that kept their children from school and how the staff’s response was accusatory instead of asking what the family needed.

The only thing they would do is come to the house and act like, “Why your kid hasn’t been there?” But not try to resolve the issue to why or ask you what’s going on. I didn’t have the money to buy uniforms. They didn’t ask, “[Do you] need help?” or [say], “We have services,” and it was like they were coming at me hard. And I’m like, “I’m trying my best.”

In this case and many others, communication with families was not used to solidify relationships that could be leveraged to help families with their children’s attendance.

Shifting the Emotional Climate of the School Setting

In addition to not assisting with resources, families shared an unsafe school culture as another barrier to attendance. Some caregivers expressed concerns about how their children were emotionally mistreated by school staff. Both caregivers and students described feeling overlooked by some school officials when students struggled academically. However, even in these cases where there was a negative relationship between a family and staff members, the students only cited missing a few school days. Overall, systemic barriers such as transportation, housing instability, and financial strain were the primary drivers of chronic absenteeism.

Alternatively, when relationships were positive, trust was gained when families saw that staff would respond to their needs and support them inside and outside the school setting. The most useful school–family relationships noted a direct connection to resources gained that assisted the family with attendance. For example, school mental health professionals, such as social workers, connected families with resources and created a safe space to listen to families’ stressors. Subsequently, resource sharing resulted in a power sharing dynamic between the school and family and, therefore, more meaningful relationships. The students we spoke with noted how they felt appreciated by staff members who went beyond their job duties to support them. A few students shared that their coaches made them feel wanted at school because they built a strong relationship over the years and genuinely cared about their life experiences outside of school. The importance of relationships with noninstructional staff, such as school social workers and coaches, is often underemphasized in research documenting the importance of school–family relationships.

Useful Forms of Support from School Staff

Multiple students noted how they felt appreciated by staff members who showed up at their activities outside of school and how these efforts added to a positive relationship created in school. For instance, one student shared that they appreciated school staff caring about the outside activities that meant a lot to them:

I like the teachers. I like all the athletic coaching and stuff. They’re involved with the school outside of just sports, certain clubs with the teachers or how you can be around other teachers and students outside of the school and stuff. That’s cool. . . . That’s my basketball coach. We talk a lot outside of school, a lot of things outside of sports related.

Having an increased understanding of students’ personal lives led to staff members having more knowledge about students’ needs. For instance, if teachers knew students were struggling financially, they would have the school provide food. Other teachers even went out of their way to ensure students’ basic needs were taken care of such as providing home-cooked meals for their students. Another example of using an authentic relationship to understand a family’s challenges was noted by a student who struggled with mental health. Her teacher would call home to check on her state of mind when she was not in school.

Caregivers echoed these sentiments of feeling supported when school personnel would make them aware of their child’s attendance status. A few caregivers noted that they were able to build a relationship with a school staff member when a person rather than a robocall updated them on their child’s attendance status. One caregiver shared that trust was built and his daughter’s attendance improved when school staff called to ensure his daughter was attending classes after being dropped off on time:

I’ll get her up on time and she is there. They’re there by letting me know if she don't show up . . . . They’ll call me. I talk to them in person. She wasn’t making her first hour. And that she was behind. They gave her catch-up work.

Another working caregiver who had to start a shift before school hours described how she was able to build a relationship with a school coach who would contact her when her child made it to school safely: “He would call me every morning or I would call him in the mornings, too, to make sure that [my child] was in school.”

Caregivers also described how they felt valued when schools would assist in dismantling barriers to attendance. As schools responded with resources to families’ needs, trust was built. A caregiver who had transportation issues because of a disability shared that the school’s empathy, along with resources, helped her children get to school:

They know that it’s harder for me to find a job [due to her disability], have a bunch of kids, things like that, so they have supported me with some different resources in that way to help get the kids to school.

For another caregiver, using attendance calls to make him aware of his child’s attendance patterns instead of as a scare tactic for truancy consequences helped improve his child’s attendance. He described how the attendance team member listened to the reason for the student’s absence and brainstormed ways to help the family get to school rather than serving them a court notice:

Well last year, when my son was missing a lot of school . . . I had to sit with her, and we had to do all the days that he had missed and a lot of his excuses I had them all on my phone. So, I would go through and list for her the day that he was excused and we took care of that together.

For caregivers and students, using relationships as an avenue to understand what families need could alleviate stress and ease burdens that interfere with attendance.

Discussion

For improving attendance, relationships have traditionally been seen as useful for boosting motivation, engagement, and self-determination within families (McConnell & Kubina, 2014). Yet, in contexts like Detroit, with extremely high levels of chronic absenteeism and structural barriers to attendance, addressing those psychological factors are not enough. Relationships likely matter for a subsection of families, but relationships alone cannot put gas in the car, improve social and environmental conditions related to health, or increase neighborhood or school safety. A focus on relationships in these contexts might be better conceptualized as a tool to identify barriers and connect families and students to the resources and support structures they need to improve attendance.

Also, seeking relationships solely to encourage improved attendance can create unequal power dynamics between school staff and caregivers, making them feel alienated and shamed rather than supported. If effort used in the traditional routes of building relationships through frequent phone calls and unscheduled home visits could instead be used to identify resources that would assist families, the time may be better spent. In addition, the substance of what is being shared is a key indicator for attendance outcomes because the content of conversations reveals what a family’s needs may be. As caregivers expressed during interviews, they need to build relationships with school employees, not to develop friendships, but rather to create genuine partnerships to address barriers. Furthermore, in an area like Detroit with schools that serve mostly Black students, districts would benefit from respecting and considering culture when creating relationships and policies for attendance. As noted in a study in a Midwestern urban district led by Edwards et al. (2023), attendance policies are anti-Black when they perpetuate the belief that, on an individual level, Black caregivers and students are to blame for structural inequities that impact attendance, such as racial segregation, extreme poverty, and insufficient transportation (Singer et al., 2021). The problematic belief that Black families lack motivation and devalue education can create long-lasting psychological distress that impacts students’ and families’ safety at school. (Edwards et al., 2023). By acknowledging the unwavering educational commitment of Black families despite structural inequalities, districts can better support their unique attendance needs and policies could instead create avenues to resources for improved attendance (Allen & White-Smith, 2018).

In Detroit, which has the highest chronic absentee rate of all major urban districts in the country (Singer et al., 2021), relationships certainly matter, but to cite them as a sole or primary solution for attendance is insufficient. Structural barriers such as transportation, economic disadvantage, and healthcare are larger obstacles for families (Lenhoff et al., 2022; Singer et al., 2021). Smythe-Leistico and Page (2018) studied how resources such as targeted communication may be a more productive way to decrease absenteeism. They found that, compared with a similarly structured school, absentee rates dropped significantly when a school used structured text messages to provide concrete information on the school’s schedule, children’s attendance patterns, and supportive messages (Smythe-Leistico & Page, 2018). Importantly, caregivers could respond to the texts, and a staff member was “able to call on partnerships with community-based education, social service, and health service providers to refer families to appropriate supports, as needs arose” (Smythe-Leistico & Page, 2018, p. 144). This short-term intervention was beneficial in a district with a similar structure to the one in the current study, suggesting that information sharing about absence rates and school schedules in conjunction with positive informal check-ins may be more beneficial and empowering for caregivers than accountability checks.

Relationships with caregivers are often conceptualized as an avenue to build trust between home and school. Yet, the caregivers we spoke with clearly stated that, more than a friendly relationship, they would like to be respected as a partner in their child’s education. In districts with high levels of absenteeism and barriers exacerbated by high poverty rates and structural racism, focusing on building relationships with caregivers should be accompanied by informative interventions. The positive impact of information sharing was documented in a personalized information intervention that informed caregivers about their child’s total absences, relative absences compared with their peers, and the importance of consistent attendance during elementary school (Robinson et al., 2018). Results showed that students’ chronic absenteeism rates in the experimental group decreased by 14.9 percent (Robinson et al., 2018). This intervention study, along with others (Sheldon, 2007; Stormshak et al., 2002), highlights how relationships are nurtured through empowering families with intentional forms of attendance communication.

Prior to a shift in attendance policies, a primary tool for discussing absentee rates with caregivers was issuing truancy letters (McNeely et al., 2019). The punitive nature of these letters was often used as a scare tactic to instill fear in caregivers through legal repercussions. Caregivers shared that when they received these letters, they felt attacked, disrespected, and unsupported to improve attendance rates. As noted by Lasky-Fink et al. (2021), truancy letters are more impactful when they state a student’s attendance rates, clearly highlight the risk of absenteeism, and request support from caregivers to increase their efficacy.

In our study, we found contradictions in the logic that district administrators and attendance team members have around relationships. Throughout the training, team members referred to relationships being the key to attendance. Yet, when prompted to reflect on what they learned while working with families on students’ attendance patterns, some staff still cited caregiver motivation as the main barrier to attendance, not accounting for the impact of systemic factors. This logic regarding caregiver motivation highlights a lack of an authentic relationship with families and a disbelief that district staff truly want to be “team players” for getting students to school. Families we interviewed sought support from school staff as advocates for resources that would help them navigate barriers to attendance (e.g., transportation, healthcare).

An overlooked route for advocacy is the role that social workers could play in building relationships with families and providing them with direct and indirect services. Social workers play a key role in attendance intervention by providing families with concrete resources. As noted by Volkmann and Bye (2006), schools have utilized social workers over the past two decades to bridge the gap between schools and students’ homes by “working with families to identify and address barriers that kept students out of school” (p. 146). Currently there are social workers on some of the district’s attendance teams, but social workers could be called on to play a more significant role in being primary sources of contact between the school and families due to their explicit training to identify ways community organizations and districts can create attendance supports for students. As highlighted by Bye et al. (2009), some districts that utilized the services of licensed social workers found an increase in attendance because of their ability to bridge relationships between families and social services. Additionally, social workers have the knowledge to assess families’ mental health needs and decrease stressors that may impact caretakers’ ability to get students to school (Reid, 2006).

Limitations and Conclusion

While our findings reveal a further step in understanding the connection between school–family relationships and chronic absenteeism in Detroit schools, there are limitations to note. These findings only represent information from one district with high rates of chronic absenteeism and therefore may not be generalizable to districts with lower rates of absence or different structural conditions for attendance. Additionally, this study confirms other research that has documented the persistence of common barriers to attendance in Detroit (e.g., transportation, health, housing instability). Therefore, we acknowledge other system barriers families may face. Also, limitations are inherent with qualitative research on a specific group that was studied in depth, and claims should not be generalized to a broader population. Furthermore, the interviews consisted of self-reported data, not observational data, on the nature of relationships between home and school. In future collaborative research, we will continue to explore the role of school–family relationships in attendance in multiple contexts.

In conclusion, continued research is needed on ways to use school–family relationships to inform policy and address systemic attendance barriers for families. Coordination and collaboration with districts, schools, and social service agencies will be essential in strengthening and organizing resources for attendance. Additionally, addressing staff’s perceptions of the purpose of building relationships with families will reveal opportunities for improvement.

This research was supported by the Spencer Foundation under Grant No. 202000154 and Skillman Foundation under Grant No. 2006-2018002567 to Wayne State University. Authors also received funding from Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, Brightmoor Alliance, and Wayne State University. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the funders, partners, or collaborators.

References