Present Today, Prepared for Tomorrow
Attendance is the foundation on which every other outcome in a student's education is built. A student cannot benefit from great teaching, strong relationships, or targeted support systems on a day they are not present. This section explains why attendance matters in Montana and how this page connects to the state's broader improvement work.
Why Attendance Matters in Montana
Relationship Between Attendance, Achievement, Graduation, and Workforce Readiness
Regular attendance is one of the strongest predictors of academic achievement, on-time graduation, and long-term success. Students who miss significant instructional time—even when absences are excused—are more likely to fall behind academically, become disengaged, and face greater challenges graduating on time.
Consistent attendance also builds essential workforce readiness skills, including reliability, responsibility, time management, and follow-through. By improving attendance, Montana schools help prepare students not only for graduation but also for success in college, careers, and life.
Connection to Montana OPI Strategic Goals
This page supports Montana OPI's strategic priorities around student engagement, whole-child wellbeing, and closing opportunity gaps for rural, tribal, and underserved student populations. Attendance data serves as an early-warning indicator that helps schools intervene before achievement gaps widen.
Alignment with Comprehensive School Improvement
Under the Montana ESSA Plan, attendance is a key accountability indicator and an essential measure of school success. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to include at least one indicator of school quality or student success in their accountability systems, and Montana has selected attendance as this measure.
Attendance improvement should not exist separately from a school's continuous improvement efforts. Schools identified for Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI), Additional Targeted Support and Improvement (ATSI), Targeted Support and Improvement (TSI), or implementing MTSS should use attendance data as a core component of their comprehensive needs assessment, root cause analysis, goal setting, and ongoing progress monitoring. Integrating attendance into school improvement planning helps ensure that barriers to student engagement are addressed alongside academic achievement and other indicators of success.
Guiding Principles
- Prevention before intervention — invest first in the conditions that make school a place students want to be.
- Attendance as engagement — treat absence as a signal to understand, not simply a rule to enforce.
- Whole Child approach — address academic, social-emotional, health, and basic-needs barriers together.
- Shared responsibility — schools, families, and communities all hold a piece of the solution.
- Continuous improvement — use data cycles (PDSA) to refine strategies rather than treating any plan as final.
PEAK Research
Pathways to Elevate Attendance and Knowledge Research Project
The PEAK Research Project is a three-year statewide study focused on improving student attendance in Montana’s CSI (Comprehensive Support & Improvement) schools. Led by the UM’s PJW College of Education and Montana Safe Schools Center in collaboration with the Office of Public Instruction (OPI), PEAK works directly with schools, students and caregivers to uncover local successes, deepen understanding, and implement meaningful, community-chosen strategies to promote stronger student engagement.
How to Text Message Parents to Reduce Chronic Absence
- Schools can use this toolkit to develop an evidence-based text-messaging strategy to improve attendance. It provides guidance for using attendance data to identify students needing support, communication consistency with families, and monitoring results to adjust strategies over time.
Sustaining Efforts to Boost Regular Student Attendance
- This resource highlights federal funding opportunities and technical assistance available to help schools address chronic absenteeism and promote regular attendance. It includes funding options, evidence-based strategies, and national resources to support student engagement, family partnerships, and positive school environments.
Attendance Data Review Protocol
- This protocol gives districts and building attendance teams a consistent, repeatable process for reviewing attendance data and matching students to the right level of support. It is designed to plug directly into existing DLT, SLT, and MTSS meeting structures.
Attendance Student Engagement Graphic
- This is a graphic focused on student attendance and engagement.
Attendance Family Planning Calendar
- The Montana Family Attendance Planning Calendar provides guidance for families to support student attendance, with a goal of 95% attendance, defined as missing nine or fewer days during the school year. The calendar emphasizes that missing even two days per month can lead to chronic absenteeism.
Attendance Intervention Planner
- The Montana K-12 Attendance Intervention Planner provides a research-based, tiered MTSS framework for attendance teams to identify, document, and monitor student support. It is designed as a working document to guide the intervention cycle from initial identification to exiting a student from support.
52 Weels of Social Media Posts
- This document provides 52 weeks of customizable social media posts designed for Montana schools and districts to promote positive attendance habits.
- This 12-month attendance newsletter series provides Montana families with strategies to support regular school attendance through a collaborative, encouraging approach.
- This is a tool for school teams to assess current systems in place to support attendance. The Attendance Works attendance pyramids is a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) framework designed to prevent and reduce chronic student absenteeism through positive, preventive, and personalized interventions rather than punishment.
- Teacher attendance significantly affects student achievement, behavior, attendance, and suspension rates.
- Share this with students, families, and community members. This shows the impact of missed instructional time.
Family Support of Positive Attendance
- This resource provides families with practical strategies to support consistent elementary school attendance. It highlights simple ways families can establish routines, emphasize the importance of attending school every day, celebrate positive attendance, and plan appointments, and plan appointments and absences to minimize missed instructional time.
Middle School and High School Attendance Support
- This resource highlights the important connection between regular school attendance and students' academic and social success during the middle and high school years.
- Families play a key role in ensuring middle and high school students regularly attend their classes. To support their teens, parents can communicate with teachers, monitor attendance, establish daily routines, and address any health or social challenges that might affect engagement.
- Stakeholder engagement builds stronger school connections and improves student outcomes by intentionally involving interested community members. Through active listening, inclusive collaboration, and transparent communication, schools foster a culture where every student is supported and every voice matters.
- This document outlines a tiered framework utilizing MTSS for Attendance Teams, providing a structured, evidence-based protocol for district and school teams to review attendance data and implement targeted supports.
- PEAK is a three-year statewide study focused on improving student attendance in Montana's CSI schools. Led by University of Montana in partnership with OPI, PEAK works with schools, students, and caregivers to identify local strengths and develop community-driven strategies to strengthen student engagement and attendance.
Attendance Data Review Protocol
- This document outlines a tiered framework utilizing MTSS for Attendance Teams, providing a structured, evidence-based protocol for district and school teams to review attendance data and implement targeted supports.
UM Attendance Study (Focus group and Survey Results)
- The PEAK Research Project is a three-year statewide study focused on improving student attendance in Montana’s CSI (Comprehensive Support & Improvement) schools. Led by the UM’s PJW College of Education and Montana Safe Schools Center in collaboration with the Office of Public Instruction (OPI), PEAK works directly with schools, students and caregivers to uncover local successes, deepen understanding, and implement meaningful, community-chosen strategies to promote stronger student engagement.
OPI Staff Are Here to Help
Lindsay Mahoney (406) 444-4438