Make Attendance a Keystone Habit:
8 Practical Next Steps

In October 1987, Paul O'Neill gave his first speech as the new CEO of Alcoa, a massive aluminum manufacturing company.  A room full of anxious Wall Street investors waited to hear how he would cut costs and increase profits.

But O'Neill didn’t talk about profit margins.  He didn't talk about revenue projections.

Instead, he said, "I want to talk to you about worker safety."

The room went silent.  O'Neill continued, "I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America.  I intend to go for zero injuries."

The investors were baffled.  One actually ran out of the room to call his clients and scream, "Sell!  The board put a crazy hippie in charge, and he’s going to kill the company!"

They were wrong.  Under O’Neill’s tenure, Alcoa’s income rose 500%.

How?  O'Neill understood that safety was a "Keystone Habit" - a small improvement in one habit that leads to improvements in other habits.  He knew that you can't just order people to be "better", but if you focus on one single, non-negotiable metric - like safety - you force the entire organization to improve.  To fix safety, Alcoa had to fix its communication, its equipment, its hierarchy, and its data tracking.  By focusing on that one metric, safety, everything else improved with it.

In education, attendance is our worker safety. It is our Keystone Habit.  

Here are 8 strategies with associated practical next steps to develop attendance as our Keystone Habit, so students want to show up every day, and in the process improve their academic achievement, mental health, social well-being, physical engagement, and other essential developments that we want for all of our students.

1. 1. Adopt a 3-tiered support system for attendance
      Tiered systems let you keep prevention universal while deploying mentoring, casework, or home visits for chronically absent students. Appoint one staff member with primary responsibility for overseeing each tier, and create clear protocols for consistent implementation.  Many successful schools report large drops in chronic absence after implementing MTSS for attendance. (Attendance Works)  (OSPI)

      1. 1. • Next step: Systematize your attendance programs.  Place your existing supports into Tier 1 (schoolwide), Tier 2 (targeted), and Tier 3 (intensive) supports, then identify gaps where new supports are needed.
              
              

   2. Use real-time attendance data & early warning indicators
      Define what qualifies as “good” attendance.  Track “at-risk” indicators such as 3+ missed days in 2 weeks, 5+ tardies in 1 week, not attending school events, sudden increase in missing assignments) - then intervene early.  Schools that monitor attendance and involvement in near real-time can identify at-risk students before absenteeism sets root.

      1. 1. • Next step: Explore customizable dashboard solutions for your school’s existing data systems.  Humbly, we suggest starting with the dashboards in our Student Involvement, Tardies, and Attendance Intervention applications.

1. 3. Create a positive schoolwide culture of belonging
      Students attend when school feels safe, relevant, and welcoming.  Invest in relationships, student voice, and extracurricular engagement (California Department of Education).  

      1. 1. • Next step: Invite a core group of teacher leaders to strategize about coordinated involvement strategies for the first few weeks of school.  Matching newly enrolled students with current student leaders, and holding a club rush as early as possible with specific outreach to the newest class (6th or 9th graders), mean that every new student has a clear pathway to getting involved.

1. 4. Prioritize family engagement and two-way communication
      Proactive, respectful outreach that treats families as partners, not just as recipients of sanctions, is highly effective.  Two-way dialogue and timely communication improves re-engagement more than punitive approaches.  Generic boilerplate messages are far less effective than personalized messages with details about each student’s attendance trends and academic progress.   

      1. 1. • Next step: Ask your district leadership about communication services already available through your Student Information System.  If your SIS cannot send triggerable and personalizable emails or text messages to parents when students reach customizable metrics, definitely let us know.

1. 5. Offer targeted wraparound supports that address root causes
      Chronic absence is often driven by transportation, health, mental health/anxiety, housing instability, or caregiver work schedules. Use community partnerships, school-based health services, counseling, bus passes, or food/utility referrals to remove barriers. Case studies repeatedly show that addressing basic needs increases attendance. (Learning Policy Institute)

      1. 1. • Next step:  Consider monitoring platforms, such as our Absenteeism application, that systematizes your Multi-Tiered Systems of Support to support early identification when intervention is most likely to be effective.
              
              

   6. Provide positive incentives with clear expectations.  Avoid punitive-only responses.
      We know that combining encouragement and rewards with support systems is more effective than punishment alone. Incentives should be meaningful, equitable, and paired with targeted supports for students facing barriers (The Guardian).  Consistent implementation is also essential for students to take seriously the systems you set in place.

      1. 1. • Next step:  Explore programs that systematize early student support and notify staff members as soon as students reach pre-defined attendance tiers for consistent implementation.  Many programs are out there - our Absenteeism and Student Involvement programs complement each other well for providing both support for attendance expectations and recognition for students getting involved on campus.

1. 7. Leverage mentors, tutors, and re-engagement programs for chronically absent students
      Targeted mentoring, credit recovery, and personalized schedules can re-engage older students who are disengaging from school or at risk of dropping out.  Schools that pair mentoring with attendance monitoring have reported significant improvements. (Edutopia)

      1. 1. • Next step:  Identify human capacity that already exists on your campus.  Student leaders, such as sports captains, club presidents, and applicable volunteer-based clubs, can provide fruitful early momentum for peer mentorship programs.  For adult staff mentors, investigate automation tools to free staff time from administrative tasks, time that they can then redeploy toward meeting with students individually or in support groups.
              
              
              

   8. Measure, iterate, and publish progress
      Use clear metrics (daily attendance rate, % chronically absent, re-engagement rate after outreach) and review monthly. Share wins with staff and families and adjust strategies based on what the data show. Continuous improvement helps scale what works and retire ineffective tactics.

      1. 1. • Next step:  Create a “Top 5” list of attendance interventions that you *think* are most effective at improving attendance rates.  Then start tracking the effectiveness of those interventions across a semester to obtain data as to which interventions *actually* are most effective.  Debrief with your leadership team on any differences in perception versus reality, lean into what works, and deprecate what does not.  Plenty of tools are out there to help track and iterate for intervention effectiveness - here is one of ours.