“I get why these interventions are sexy — because they are relatively cheap,” says Kevin Gee, an assistant professor of education at the University of California, Davis, where he studies the effectiveness of educational policies. But text-based programs, such as school letters that inform parents that their children are overweight, he said, often rely on a hypothesis that more information naturally results in better outcomes for students. Professor Gee added, “Is information enough to move the needle on this problem?” Ms. Altman said that Kinvolved’s staff members coached school administrators to help them use attendance data to shape the programs they put in place. “We believe that technology alone is not going to solve any problem,” she said. At Wadleigh, administrators tend to view Kinvolved as a detection system for habitual absenteeism — not as a means to address underlying problems, like family illnesses, job loss or homelessness, which may cause students to miss school. “Kinvolved is a tool that gives us the attendance number, but it doesn’t give us the qualitative information that will allow us to address the issue,” said Mr. Bangura, Wadleigh’s community school director. “There are legitimate and structural reasons that some students are late to school” — like the responsibility to drop off younger siblings at a babysitter — “and we are trying to put some solutions in place by communicating with the family.” The school has used data logged by Kinvolved to direct additional attention to those families whose children miss school most often. The students meet regularly with advisers and mentors to set monthly attendance improvement goals. The school rewards students who meet their monthly goals, giving them a free movie ticket. Teachers at Wadleigh have also taken it upon themselves to share Kinvolved data with their students. “I like them to see how many minutes late they are,” said Jillian Fisher, a social studies teacher. “It takes the guesswork and the excuses out of it.”
One schools in Harlem have started using technology to attempt to reduce absences and late arrivals among the student body. The schools are using an app, called Kinvolved, which allows teachers to take attendance with the “swipe of a finger,” and immediately sends alerts to children’s parents when they are either absent from or late to a class. Five teacher who has begun using the app told The New York Times that she has already seen an improvement in student attendance, and even noticed participation from students who she had previously never even seen in class before.