Staying home means missing out

Little by little, a little becomes a lot. The saying, a Tanzanian proverb that reminds us how small things add up, describes nearly everything about learning in an early childhood classroom. It can also describe what missing out on that learning can mean. Missed days add up and can have far-reaching consequences. 

Children who miss just two days of school each month miss 10% of a typical school year, nearly a month’s worth of school days. These children, along with those who are out even more often, are considered “chronically absent” and approximately a quarter of children fell into this category during the 2023-2024 school year. That shocking percentage was an improvement, though a small one, over the numbers in the years just prior, following the return to in-person schooling after the Covid-19 pandemic, when chronic absentee rates doubled from pre-pandemic years.  

Missing out starts early

Although high school students are the ones most likely to be chronically absent, it is kindergarteners who come in with the next highest chronic absentee rates in national K-12 attendance data. According to the nonprofit Attendance Works, over 30% of kindergarteners were chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year and only a bit less (27%) during 2023-2024. In Washington DC, where chronic absence rates were the highest nationally across all grade levels, over 35% of kindergartens missed at least 10% of the last school year.  

Children who show up every day have opportunities to build routines, background knowledge, and trusting relationships with teachers and peers. Children who aren’t there risk feeling disconnected, missing out on foundational learning and falling behind in ways that are evident even years later. 

Preschool attendance predicts elementary reading scores

One large study out of Chicago showed that reading scores of second graders who were chronically absent in preschool trended significantly lower than those who came to school regularly. For each year following preschool that children’s chronic absence persisted, negative effects increased. By second grade, students who had been chronically absent every year since preschool were not reading on grade level and were likely to need substantial reading interventions. 

What is driving the absences?

Attendance Works identifies lots of reasons why children don’t come to school. As you might expect, many have to do with barriers families face in getting children to school each day—things like accessing transportation, competing parental responsibilities, or illness. Families also have differing ideas about the impact that absences will have, especially for younger kids. 

What really grabbed our attention, though, is that nearly half of the identified reasons are directly to children’s experiences at school—like how engaged they are in their classrooms, how welcome they feel in their school communities, and the quality of the relationships they have with supportive adults at school.

At Tools, we see this as an incredible opportunity. 

Tools brings children to school

Research has shown that the kind of learning children experience in Tools classrooms makes for a more joyful school experience for them (and their teachers!). By increasing child engagement and connection to the classroom community, we play a crucial role in the value our youngest learners place on coming to school every day. 

“It's such deep learning that they don't want to miss any part of it, and I think that's had a huge impact on them.”
-Tools kindergarten teacher, explaining why attendance went up when she started Tools

Learning, especially for our youngest learners, is an interactive, social experience. Peers learn from peers and are accountable to each other. Tools children know that their study buddies count on them, their peers expect them to grow into increasingly reliable partners and collaborators in Tools activities and make-believe play scenarios, and they are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to keep up, keep learning, be in-the-know about what happened yesterday, and able to predict what will come next. 

Attendance matters, Tools can help

Children who come to school regularly learn more than those who don’t. Children whose classmates come to school regularly also learn more. Learning is a social experience. Tools activities are designed to lean into that. Tools teachers and children feel that. Attendance is high in Tools classrooms despite the barriers that Tools families, like all families, face. 

Attendance Works has challenged states to cut their levels of chronic absence in half over the next five years. Tools gives children and families so many reasons to come to school every day, supporting teachers and schools in helping states reach that ambitious goal. Let’s set more children up for success.