A large-scale study released by the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research at Wayne State University found no single “silver bullet” intervention for improving student attendance, but identified promising practices that may help if schools implement them coherently. Researchers emphasized deep family engagement, including regular home visits and frequent personalized attendance messages. The study drew on administrator surveys from 1,100 Michigan schools and attendance and achievement data from the 2021-22 through 2024-25 academic years, using a value-added approach to isolate school effects while controlling for student and school-level factors. The researchers reported meaningful differences between schools that used different strategies. They also framed the results against chronic absenteeism persistence: even as 34 of 41 states with data reported declines in 2024-25, none returned to pre-pandemic levels, according to the Return to Learn tracker maintained by the American Enterprise Institute. Researchers estimated that a student moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile across effective practice differences could attend about seven more school days.