Did you know that missing just 10 percent of the school year in the early grades can leave many students struggling throughout elementary school? Or that by sixth grade, missing only that much school is strongly linked to course failure and even eventually dropping out of high school?  That’s just 18 days of the school year— or two to three days per month. Every school day counts, and everyone can make a difference: educators, afterschool programs, mayors, businesses, parents… really, everyone! Join us this September for the launch of the first-ever Attendance Awareness Month. Rally your community around the importance of attendance and its role in academic achievement.

School attendance is essential to academic success, but too often students, parents and schools don’t realize how quickly absences, excused or unexcused, can add up to academic trouble. Chronic absence— missing just 18 days per school year— can lead to third graders unable to master reading, sixth graders failing courses and ninth graders dropping out of high school. The impact is the greatest on low-income students who lack the resources to make up for the lost time in the classroom.

You can participate in Attendance Awareness Month in a variety of ways, including:

• Organizing parent summits, letters and outreach to families
• Arranging contests, celebrity visits and other incentives for students
• Calling for proclamations from  mayors or superintendents
• Developing public service announcements for national or local media
• Advocating for improved  data tracking to identify students with at-risk attendance
• Organizing community-wide attendance campaigns

The Attendance Awareness Campaign is organized by five partners: America’s Promise Alliance, Attendance Works, The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, Civic Enterprises and Points of Light Institute, and is supported by a growing list of organizations.

Click here to learn more about getting involved in Attendance Awareness Month and to register for a webinar on April 9 from 1-2:15pm EDT that will explore how YOU can catalyze change by getting involved in this important effort.