Attendance mailings to guardians reduce student absences, with all treatment mailings pooled reducing absences by 0.9 days (a 5.3% decrease) versus control¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r2 · q3
Currency · newest study 2016 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? All treatment mailings pooled reduce absences by 0.9 days (a 5.3% decrease) compared to Control (p<.01). → Rogers and Feller 2016

Evidence¶

Rogers and Feller 2016¶

Todd Rogers, Avi Feller. (2016). Parent Beliefs and Student Absences: Large Absence-Reduction Field Experiment. SREE Spring 2016 Conference Abstract. https://www.sree.org/conferences/2016/

q3 · i? · causal · r2

Randomized field experiment in a major metropolitan district (about 30,000 students, grades 1-12, 2014-15), four randomly assigned conditions with 5 mailings; OLS regressions and one-sided Fisher Randomization Tests. The article reports pooled mailings "reduce absences by 0.9 days (or a 5.3% decrease)" versus control, p<.01.

"We see strong evidence that the attendance mail reduced absences. All treatment mailings pooled reduce absences by 0.9 days (or a 5.3% decrease) as compared to the Control condition (p<.01)."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The Encourage component alone reduced absences by 0.6 days (a 3.5% decrease) compared to Control — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Adding Self information (the student's own absence total) to the Encourage mail reduced absences by an additional 0.5 days, a total of 6.2% versus Control — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Attendance mailings corrected guardians' miscalibrated beliefs about their students' absences but did not change beliefs about the importance of attendance — related
• Self and Norms mailings produced spillover reductions in absences for non-focal students in the same household (0.8 days, 4.8%, p<.01) — related
• Teacher-to-parent communication reduces student absenteeism — related
• Adding social-norm comparison information (Norms) produced no additional reduction in absences beyond Encourage + Self — a narrower finding that bears on this claim