The Skillman Foundation

In November of 2017, the Coalition for the Future of Detroit Schoolchildren published a set of community priorities to advance and transform education outcomes in Detroit. The report urged policymakers, education leaders and funders to get serious about attendance and student enrollment. In order to support the stakeholders addressing these priorities, Wayne State University’s College of Education researchers produced new findings on student attendance, exit and enrollment. While developing their latest report, they worked in partnership with community stakeholders including Every School Day Count, 313Reads!, and the Community Education Commission to learn with and inform the field’s collective interpretation of the data and findings.

An example of this collective learning was seen when a new finding from the report revealed that new students and mobile students are more likely to be absent from school. As a result of this insight, Every School Day Counts can use this information in their support of school initiatives to reduce chronic absence.

When working collectively to address complex issues, it is essential that our community has the information and data needed to encourage learning, continuous improvement and accountability to make effective and impactful changes. Moreover, the information is only as powerful as our collective interpretation and subsequent actions that come from our strategic learning. Detroit students, parents, educators, and advocates are in the best position to assist us in understanding what these findings mean and how to act on them in policy and practice. To help collect more insight, researchers encourage you to provide feedback through a short survey that will inform future research, including additional reports that will go deeper into each of the topics covered in the report.

Take the Survey