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My research team from the Understanding America Study at the University of Southern California recently asked parents of school-aged children to upload a snapshot of their kids’ school attendance record from last year as part of a broader survey. The study failed — during the pilot phase, only 17% successfully completed the task. We pulled the plug. 

But I couldn’t stop thinking about why it failed. In theory, this wasn’t a hard ask (I’m a mom of school-aged kids; this is familiar territory). And for the 14,000 respondents nationwide who answer an average of 30 online surveys per year for the Understanding America Study, this was an ordinary request. Participants are routinely asked questions about their households, finances, health records, etc. They receive small payments for each survey they complete, which accumulate onto debit cards. 

So why were so few willing or able to upload a simple report of accumulated absences over the year? Our instructions were simple and flexible — Please upload a picture or file that shows a school’s report of [name]’s absences for the 2025-26 school year. It can be report cards that show attendance information, a picture or file download with absence information from the school’s family portal, emails or text messages from the school containing absence information. Send us whatever document or report of total absences you can find. And the compensation was above average for the time it should have taken.

Yet, two-thirds of respondents declined to provide any document, forgoing the compensation. Of those who did upload something, only 50% sent documentation that matched what we were looking for.

I went back to the data and looked at what participants wrote when they refused our request. Some (27%) cited privacy concerns. But over half of the 51 respondents who declined to upload answered with some version of “I don’t have it” or “it’s too hard to find,” many specifically noting the information wasn’t accessible online over the summer. Examples included:

I have no idea how to get to that information right now; I don’t have it on hand I have to get info from school; I don’t have access to that information because school is out for the summer; I couldn’t find the report card from last school year, it is not available anymore on the school’s website; I would, but I cannot see where I can go to last school year within the system to find 2025-26 attendance information; I don’t have it & parent portal does not contain last school year’s information; It would take too long to find access in the portal; I’d have to hunt it down. Not worth the work; I don’t have it easily accessible.

Of those who did upload something, many did not include a summation of absences over the year. Two sent screenshots of text messages about a child’s absence on a given day, while several included accumulated absences for only one marking period, nine-week span or semester. One sent a blank page from a parent portal that looked like a template — but with all information missing. Even as an expert who studies chronic absenteeism, I was unsure of how many days these particular children had been considered absent.

Much has been written about the disconnect between what families think is happening in their child’s lives and what teens themselves say is happening, including the persistent finding that parents underestimate their children’s absences. It should come as no surprise, then, that most parents believe their child does not miss too much school — including one-third of those whose teens are chronically absent.

For schools and parents to partner in efforts to improve attendance, families need clear, simple and easy-to-access information about their child’s accumulating absences. 

Absenteeism continues to be a major focus of school improvement efforts. The percentage of kids missing “too much” school (more than 10% of the school year is the threshold used by researchers) remains stubbornly higher than before the pandemic, when it was already considered too common. There are many reasons why children are absent more now than they used to be — the value of school-going has been diminished post-COVID, kids can get all their work online, school rules for illness are still stricter than they used to be, among others.

There is a broader problem, too. States, education leaders and policymakers don’t even agree on what to count as an absence: missing a whole day, part of a day, one class? States vary in what they count and how they report, which filters down into how these data are recorded and communicated to families. 

There is no question that strong attendance is related to healthy student outcomes. Improving what parents know and can easily track may help families make informed decisions around discretionary absences and cultivate positive norms around in-person attendance. It might be in everyone’s best interest for schools to redesign plain-language reports of cumulative absences that are more easily available.

Sure, highlight the report in a school portal. But based on this failed study, it might be time to reconsider mailing home critical pieces of information like attendance reports. Maybe some things are simply better off analog.

Amie Rapaport is a research scientist and co-director of the Center for Applied Research in Education at USC.

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