Official Site of The State of New Jersey
Families
The New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) released guidance on student attendance for district and school leaders that defines chronic absenteeism and suggests strategies to reduce K–12 absenteeism. However, the issues leading to absenteeism and strategies to reduce it are likely to be different for children in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten than for older students.
This toolkit is a companion resource to the state’s existing K–12 guidance. NJDOE and the U.S. Department of Education’s Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Mid-Atlantic have partnered to create this toolkit with specific resources and handouts to support school districts, schools, and early childhood education providers in improving school attendance in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.
The goals of these materials are to:
- Help educators and families understand the importance of attendance in the early grades.
- Encourage schools to gather and include data on preschool students when reporting chronic absenteeism rates on school report cards.
- Help schools collect information from families to help identify reasons for absenteeism in the early grades.
- Provide guidance on selecting and implementing research-based strategies to improve attendance in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, based on the identified challenges.
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