Headline Intelligence

East Cleveland Pays the Bus Fare

The district's own data show why it matters.

East Cleveland City Schools, a district of about 1,140 students, reported a chronic absenteeism rate of 54.2% for 2025–26, after a 10-point drop from 2023–24 to 2024–25. Its achievement data make the stakes concrete. Among students attending more than 90% of the time, 82.4% were proficient in English language arts, compared with 51.5% of chronically absent students. In math, the figures were 63.9% and 29.8%.

The district's response starts with the ride. Students receive Greater Cleveland RTA passes, worth a $12.50 weekly fare, and earn tickets for each day they attend. Home visits, care closets stocked with clothing and essentials, paid student ambassador jobs, and a parent check-in office complete the strategy. "We want to partner with parents," said Superintendent Henry Pettiegrew II.

Source: Signal Cleveland, as reported by Hoodline, October 10, 2026.

Why It Matters

East Cleveland treats the trip to school as part of the school's job. Most of the country has no state mandate to transport students, and older students in urban districts often ride public transit on their own. A district that pays the fare and rewards the day removes one condition before it becomes a pattern.

New Research This Week

Mentoring chronically absent ninth graders: belonging moved first. In a new Clemson University dissertation, Dr. Alexis Black studied the On Track Together Mentoring Program at a South Carolina public high school. Ninth graders identified as chronically absent met weekly with trained school staff mentors for ten weeks, focused on relationship-building, goal setting, and positive adult connection. Using improvement-science Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles and mixed methods, the study found a statistically significant increase in students' sense of belonging. Many participants also improved their attendance, though that change stayed short of statistical significance within ten weeks. Read the dissertation.

Who gets to belong? Dialogue circles as a Tier 2 support. A second Clemson dissertation, by Dr. Kevin L. Smith, tested dialogue circles in a small, rural, Title I middle school. The study met its goal of at least 80% of surveyed students reporting at least one adult who helps them feel they belong. Students named caring adults, respectful communication, being listened to, fair treatment, and emotional support as what made the difference. Grades, attendance, and discipline held steady during the study period. Read the dissertation.

When skipping class is a form of emotional regulation. Ramon Cladellas and Antoni Castelló of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona surveyed 900 university students for a study in Ansiedad y Estrés. Much non-attendance reflected a judgment that class added little to understanding the material, a perception linked to boredom, frustration, and anxiety. Staying away worked as a form of emotional regulation. The authors conclude that compulsory attendance and tighter checks leave the underlying problem in place: "It is not disinterest; it is a way of regulating in response to an experience perceived as having little value" (translated).

National progress slows, and pledge states pull ahead. A 45-state analysis presented in an October 1 Attendance Works webinar puts the combined chronic absenteeism rate at 22.6% in 2025, down from 23.5% in 2024 and 28.3% in 2022, against 15.4% in 2019. The latest one-year decline was 0.9 points, compared with 4.8 points from 2022 to 2024. The 18 states that pledged to cut chronic absence in half reduced their rates by an average of 5.7% from baseline, compared with 3.2% in other states. Iowa fell from 21.6% to 15.8%, and Rhode Island is within half a point of its pre-pandemic rate. Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green credits real-time daily attendance data, which she said "has made all the difference for us" (K-12 Dive).

The attendance crisis in 150 years of context. In a September 2026 EdWorkingPaper, Dr. Jeremy Singer of the University of Michigan-Flint traces public school average daily attendance from 1869–70 to 2023–24. It rose from 64.1% in 1889–90 to about 93% in the 2000s, fell to 91.60% in 2021–22, and recovered to 92.32% in 2023–24, compared with 93.04% in 2018–19. That is roughly two more days missed per student than before the pandemic. Singer argues that the 10% chronic absence threshold turns small shifts in the average into large changes in the rate, and calls for proportionate universal responses plus sustained, targeted investment where severe absence predates the pandemic. Read EdWorkingPaper 26-1574.

Worth revisiting: a common measure for the field. An international team led by Dr. Christopher Kearney of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, published a blueprint in Review of Education for a brief, common, next-generation measure of school attendance and absenteeism. The authors propose candidate domains: definition, achievement and engagement, functional impairment, cross-source interoperability, and ease of measurement. Co-authors include Benoit, González, Heyne, Melvin, O'Toole, Keppens, and Attendance USA™ founder Dr. Carolyn Gentle-Genitty. Read the article.

Why It Matters

Read together, the two Clemson studies show the same sequence: belonging rose measurably within a single grading period, while attendance moved more slowly. That matches what the Perception of School Social Bonding (PSSB) research has long suggested: a student's bond to school is a leading indicator, and attendance a lagging one. Measure belonging directly, and give relational interventions more than ten weeks before judging them on attendance alone. Singer's history and the common-measure blueprint add a caution: how we count shapes what we see. And the Barcelona study reminds us that students weigh whether showing up is worth it. Have we created a place worth showing up for?

Feature: The Ride Before the Bell

Transportation as an attendance access system, and the gap Attendance Science™ can fill.

When a student is chronically absent, the first questions are usually about the student: motivation, health, family engagement. A growing body of law and research points to an earlier question. Can this child physically get to school, on time, every day, and get home again? In much of the country, the answer depends less on the family than on a statute, a district policy, and a map.

What the law requires

Dr. Samuel Speroni's 2026 UCLA dissertation, The Journey to School, built the first systematic inventory of student transportation policy across the 50 states. In his inventory, 27 states require districts to transport at least some regular-education students and 23 have no general state mandate, including Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Texas, and California. Even in mandate states, eligibility is limited by distance, grade, and exceptions. The inventory is coded principally to 2017, with one substantial change found through 2024, in California.

State statutes show how often the obligation changes as a child grows up:

• Ohio (Ohio Rev. Code §3327.01): districts shall transport students in grades K–8 who live more than two miles from school; for grades 9–12, the board may provide transportation.
• New York (N.Y. Educ. Law §3635): grades K–8 beyond two miles and grades 9–12 beyond three miles, up to 15 miles. City school districts are exempt, and any service they offer must be offered equally.
• Massachusetts (M.G.L. c. 71, §68): for grades K–6, where a child lives more than two miles from school and the nearest bus stop is more than a mile away, a parent may appeal to the state, which may require the town to provide transportation.
• Maine (20-A M.R.S. §5401): a municipal school unit must transport elementary and public preschool students and may transport secondary students; a school administrative district must also transport secondary students.
• Indiana (IC 20-27-5-2; 20-27-13; 20-27-11-1, via the Indiana Code): the governing body may provide transportation, with no fee for rides to and from school. A district running a general program must give one year's notice before ending it, and may use a minimum walking distance only if children inside it can walk safely unattended. Nonpublic and charter students along a regular route must be carried.

A recent edition of this brief reported that more than 42% of Portland, Maine high school students were chronically absent. Portland's high schoolers ride the regional METRO system on transit passes, an arrangement the Maine statute permits. The law is being followed. Whether the ride works for every student, every morning, is a separate question, and it is an attendance question. East Cleveland's fare program is one district's answer.

The federal floor

Three federal obligations apply whether or not a district runs a general bus program:

• Students with disabilities. Under 34 C.F.R. §300.34(c)(16), transportation is a related service covering travel to, from, and between schools, travel in and around buildings, and specialized equipment, when the IEP team determines a child needs it.
• Students experiencing homelessness (McKinney-Vento). Under 42 U.S.C. §11432(g)(1)(J)(iii), transportation to and from the school of origin must be provided at the request of a parent, guardian, or, for an unaccompanied youth, the liaison. When a child moves into another district, the two districts agree on how to share the cost or split it equally.
• Children in foster care. Under ESEA §1112(c)(5)(B), as amended by ESSA, a district receiving Title I funds must ensure transportation to the school of origin for children in foster care who need it (U.S. Department of Education Q&A).

What the research shows

• Riding the bus tracks with attendance. Dr. Michael Gottfried's national study of the 2010–11 kindergarten cohort found that bus riders had fewer absences and were less likely to be chronically absent (Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2017).
• Eligibility itself changes attendance. Dr. Danielle Sanderson Edwards used a regression discontinuity design around Michigan eligibility thresholds. For economically disadvantaged students, eligibility raised attendance 0.5 to 1 percentage point and lowered the probability of chronic absence by 2 to 4 points (Education Finance and Policy, 2024; ERIC ED621826).
• The ride shapes which schools are available. In Detroit, students with access to school-based transportation were 4 to 5 percentage points more likely to enroll in a school offering it (Singer and Lenhoff, EEPA, 2026). In California, a child in a household with at least one vehicle had more than double the predicted probability of attending a public choice school (Speroni, Blumenberg, Barajas and Bills, Transportation, 2026).
• The ride can change a life course. Tufts economist Dr. Elizabeth Setren's study of Boston's METCO program, which buses city students to suburban schools, found higher attendance, fewer suspensions, and a college graduation rate that rose from 26% to 38%, with higher adult earnings (Chalkbeat, October 6, 2026).
• Service and eligibility are different things. A UCLA study found that 70% of California districts provide school bus service, yet only 31% of students are eligible to use it (Speroni et al., 2025).

The gap Attendance Science™ can fill

Attendance data records that a child was absent. It almost never records why the ride failed. That is the opening for Attendance Science™: treat transportation as an upstream condition of attendance, and classify transportation-related absence before responding to it. Four barriers call for four different responses:

• Policy barrier: the child falls outside the state or district eligibility rule, even though everyone is following the law.
• Implementation failure: the child is eligible, but the route, stop, driver, timing, or transit connection fails.
• Family-stability barrier: a move, a lost vehicle, a new work shift, homelessness, or a foster placement breaks an arrangement that used to work.
• Protected-right gap: the child qualifies under IDEA, McKinney-Vento, or foster-care provisions, and the obligation has yet to be activated.

A school can be fully compliant with transportation law while a child misses school for lack of a ride. Naming that difference is the first step to closing it.

An attendance access audit: eight questions every district can ask

1. What does our state law require us to transport, and for which grades and distances?
2. What does our board policy add beyond state law, and has it changed in the last three years?
3. Are high school students treated differently from elementary students?
4. What happens for students attending choice, magnet, charter, alternative, or nonpublic schools?
5. How quickly do we activate transportation for students in foster care, students experiencing homelessness, and students whose IEPs include it?
6. When a family moves or loses a vehicle mid-year, who notices, and how fast?
7. Do our absence codes capture transportation as a reason, and do we review those codes alongside route data?
8. What does the system actually deliver each morning, compared with what the policy promises?

When the question shifts from "Why isn't this student coming?" to "Can this student get here?", the answers become conditions a system can design for. State transportation laws and district policies change, so confirm the current statute and board policy before advising a specific district.

Policy Watch

Philadelphia: 720 students back on the rolls. The School District of Philadelphia re-added 720 students on September 30 after finding that about 2,000 had been improperly dropped. As of September 17, about 4,000 fewer students had attended at least one day than at the same point last year. Pennsylvania code requires parental consent and documentation to withdraw a student, without specifying what documentation counts. Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. said "this isn't about padding enrollment," and staff are canvassing neighborhoods to find students who never arrived (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Why it matters: A student who never shows up, then quietly leaves the rolls, disappears from both the attendance rate and the denominator. Withdrawal rules are attendance policy by another name. States that specify what documentation proves enrollment elsewhere protect the count and, more importantly, the child.

Ohio: steady improvement on a long road back. Ohio's 2025–26 report cards put statewide chronic absenteeism at 23.9%, down from 25.1% in 2024–25 and 30.2% in 2021–22. "At its current rate of improvement, Ohio will return to pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates sometime during the 2030s," said Aaron Churchill of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (Ohio Capital Journal).

Arizona: a two-day message moves a district 12 points. Tolleson Elementary School District cut chronic absenteeism by 12 percentage points from 2024–25 to 2025–26 with a "2 Days Is Too Much" campaign that teaches families how two missed days a month affect learning, through social media reels, shirts, flyers, and home visits. Statewide, 24% of Arizona students in grades 1–8 were chronically absent in 2025, down from 32% in 2022. "Our progress tells us that what we are doing is working," said Superintendent Gisselle Herrera (KJZZ).

California: the youngest learners miss the most. About 24% of California's transitional kindergarten and kindergarten students were chronically absent in 2024–25, compared with about 19% overall. Kara Stern of SchoolStatus notes that outreach after three to five absences works better than waiting for the chronic threshold. The state's 2025–26 data are expected this month (EdSource).

No new state attendance legislation was signed in the monitoring window. The state transportation statutes in this week's feature were checked against their official codified text.

Since School Reopened

• National improvement continues but has slowed to under a point a year; states with a stated goal and daily data are improving faster.
• State releases this fall (Ohio, Mississippi, Arizona) show steady declines, with no state yet back to its pre-pandemic rate.
• Enrollment accuracy has surfaced as an attendance issue: Philadelphia's re-enrollment of 720 students shows how withdrawal rules shape the count.
• Indiana's 2025–26 chronic absenteeism figures were still unpublished as of October 10; the 2024–25 rate was 16.7%.

Federal Watch

No new federal attendance regulation, guidance, or grant competition was announced in the window. The federal transportation obligations for students with disabilities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care, set out in this week's feature, apply in every state. Attendance researchers preparing for the December IES funding round can revisit last week's guidance on the IES FY2027 topics.

Attendance + Technology

From alerts to conversations: AI tools that ask why. Attendance platforms are moving from one-way absence alerts to two-way, AI-assisted conversations that collect and code the reason for an absence. Apptegy's Attendance Pro, generally available since February, texts families in their preferred language right after an absence and organizes replies into coded reasons and early-warning insights. Edia, selected by Salt Lake City School District in June, reaches families within minutes in more than 100 languages and flags barriers including transportation, anxiety, bullying, and family emergencies for staff follow-up. Salt Lake City aims to reduce chronic absence from 28% to 10% by 2029.

Why it matters: These tools can capture what attendance data rarely records: the reason. Their value depends on what happens next. A coded "transportation" reply is useful only when someone with authority over routes, passes, or McKinney-Vento services sees it.

Data privacy note: Districts evaluating these platforms should ask how reason codes are defined, who receives each category, and how protected information about health, housing, and family circumstances is handled under FERPA.

New Attendance Players

Transit agencies as attendance partners. East Cleveland's arrangement with Greater Cleveland RTA and Portland's use of METRO passes for high school students make a public transit system part of the daily attendance infrastructure. Where older students depend on public transit, the agency's schedules, fares, and service changes are attendance variables, and a seat for the agency at the attendance table is worth considering.

Practitioner voice: AttendanceK12. AttendanceK12, built by Ohio educator Chris Miller, continues to elevate practitioners such as Casey Martin, M.Ed., of Groveport Madison Middle School Central. Her K-12 regulation space, adapted from Ohio State's SMART Lab, showed that what looked like behavior referrals was often unmet social-emotional need, and that the real result was connection. It fits this week's research: belonging moves first.

Where Attention Should Be Right Now

• Add a transportation code. If your absence codes cannot capture a missed ride, add one this month and review it alongside route data.
• Activate protected rides fast. Check how many days it takes to start transportation for students in foster care, students experiencing homelessness, and students whose IEPs include it.
• Audit withdrawals. Confirm that every student removed from the rolls this fall has documented enrollment elsewhere.
• Measure belonging with attendance. Relational interventions move belonging first; track both, and give programs a full semester.
• Reach out at three to five absences. Especially for TK and kindergarten families, early contact outperforms waiting for 10%.

Resources for School Districts & Organizations

• The Journey to School (Speroni, UCLA, 2026): the 50-state inventory of student transportation policy.
• The Post-Pandemic "Attendance Crisis" in Historical Perspective (Singer, 2026): a useful frame for board conversations about how the chronic absence threshold shapes the numbers.
• Foster Care Education Stability Q&A (U.S. Department of Education): the school-of-origin transportation obligation.
• McKinney-Vento transportation requirement, 42 U.S.C. §11432 and IDEA related services, 34 C.F.R. §300.34.
• The eight-question attendance access audit in this week's feature, designed for a single attendance team meeting.
• A common measure for school attendance (Kearney et al., Review of Education, 2026).

For Parents & Families

If getting to school is the hard part, say so. It is one of the most solvable barriers there is. You can ask your school:

Is my child eligible for district transportation, and how far is the nearest stop?
Does the district offer transit passes for older students?
If we move or lose a car mid-year, who should I call first?
If my child has an IEP, is experiencing homelessness, or is in foster care, what transportation rights apply?

Schools can only fix what they know about. A two-minute conversation can turn a missed bus into a solved problem.

Attendance USA™ in the Field

The Hunt Institute | Beyond Attendance, Thursday, October 15, 2026. Dr. Gentle-Genitty joins this national policy conversation on actionable attendance data, chronic absenteeism, and student persistence. Join us: register at The Hunt Institute.

Corpus Christi, Texas | IATDP 114th Annual Conference, October 18–21, 2026. The International Association for Truancy and Dropout Prevention gathers at the Omni Corpus Christi Hotel under the theme Charting the Course: Connection as the Anchor to Truancy and Dropout Prevention. Dr. Gentle-Genitty is a featured keynote speaker. Visit the Attendance USA™ booth, come talk with us, and join the national network.

• Conference details and agenda at a glance
• Register for the conference
• Join IATDP and connect with Attendance USA™

New Books & Publications

• Improving Attendance in Your School and Classroom: Getting Them There, Keeping Them There by Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey (Corwin, August 2026, 176 pages). The authors shift the question from how to make students attend to how to create a school students want to be part of. The framework covers belonging and climate, engaging instruction, removing access barriers, trauma-sensitive classrooms, and schoolwide systems. Corwin also offers free companion resources.
• Also new: the Kearney et al. common-measure blueprint and Singer's EdWorkingPaper, both summarized under New Research.

Field Notes: The Ride Before the Bell

Before a child can belong, engage, or learn at school, the child has to arrive.

A bus pass in East Cleveland. A transit card in Portland. A mentor in South Carolina who meets a ninth grader every week. Each one is a condition someone chose to change.

The ride is part of the school day, and a missed bus is a condition a system can fix.

Don't just count absence. Understand it.

Have we created a place worth showing up for, and a way to get there?

Read. Question. Apply. Share.