Attendance Is an Engagement Challenge, Not a Punishment Problem: Leading Attendance for APs & Deans

If attendance lands on your desk, you're not alone, and you don't have to rely on consequences. This Attendance Works toolkit, written for principals, lays out a tiered, year-round approach built on relationships and data, with ideas for how APs and deans can lead it.

In many buildings, assistant principals and deans handle the day-to-day work of attendance: the data, the calls home, the meetings with families. The Attendance Works toolkit "For Principals: Leading Attendance Through Engagement" is addressed to principals, but its approach speaks directly to that work. Its premise is that attendance improves when schools, families, students, and communities work together to remove barriers inside and outside school, rather than relying on case management or punitive responses.

What the toolkit says.

• Know the stakes. Chronic absence means missing 10 percent or more of school days for any reason, and it can be an early warning sign as soon as the first month of the year. According to Attendance Works, unaddressed chronic absence can lead to lower reading proficiency by third grade, academic struggles in middle school, and higher dropout rates in high school. It also affects social-emotional well-being, and widespread absence disrupts learning for everyone.
• Use a tiered approach. Build a yearlong, multi-tiered plan with the school team, respond to the root causes of absence, strengthen the positive conditions for learning, and support all students, not only those with the most absences.
• Relationships and climate matter. The toolkit points to a new University of Chicago consortium study comparing attendance before and after the pandemic, which finds that relationships and positive school climate matter more than ever.
• Follow five steps. The series covers creating or strengthening a school attendance team, using data to understand and address the challenge, cultivating a school-wide, yearlong approach to engagement, determining whether you are making a difference, and advocating for resources and better attendance policies.
• Draw on ready-made tools. Linked resources include family handouts, letters, posters, and messaging; data tools and state and local chronic absence reports; self-assessments and planning tools such as the 50% Challenge; and communities of practice for technical assistance.

What this might mean for APs and deans. The toolkit itself speaks to principals and does not assign roles, so the following is an adaptation of its steps. Because APs and deans often sit closest to attendance, you may be well placed to:

• chair or coordinate the attendance team, bringing together counselors, social workers, teachers, and front office staff;
• review attendance data regularly and spot students who need more support, ideally before they reach the 10 percent mark;
• lead family outreach and everyday messaging that starts from "we miss you and want to help" instead of consequences;
• run the tiered support meetings that replace purely punitive responses; and
• track whether the supports are working and bring that evidence to your principal, who may take the lead on the yearlong plan and on policy and resource advocacy.

This connects with the other pieces this month: the trust-building that Brown describes applies to students and families as well as teachers, and Donlan's suggestion to track absences, tardies, and early dismissals through an equity lens is a natural bridge into an attendance team's data work.

A way to use it with your mentoring partner: look together at how attendance is handled in your building right now. Ask which responses are about consequences and which are about connection, and choose one practice, such as a warm welcome-back conversation or a first-month attendance check, that you could shift this semester.

Read the full toolkit: "For Principals: Leading Attendance Through Engagement", Attendance Works (page last updated June 2026).