Chronic absenteeism rose sharply during the pandemic and remains high nationwide, with negative consequences for student achievement, socialization, and long-term outcomes. While prior survey research has examined how parents and students think about attendance, less is known about how the educators and administrators view their responsibility in promoting attendance. We surveyed 400 teachers and administrators in the United States about their concerns around student attendance, their sense of control over improving it, and their views on the role of school climate and belonging.
Respondents rated their schools' current attendance strategies as reasonably effective, yet only about one in five felt that improving attendance was very much within their control, with open-ended responses most often locating responsibility with parents. At the same time, respondents strongly endorsed belonging as central to attendance, though they were less consistently confident that they personally shape school climate—a gap that was widest among non-classroom staff.
These findings suggest that educators recognize the problem of absenteeism and believe in climate-based solutions in principle but do not uniformly see themselves as empowered to act, pointing to a clear target of intervention for attendance solutions.
