Many states mandate districts or schools notify parents when students have missed multiple unexcused days of school. We report a randomized experiment (N = 131,312) evaluating the impact of sending parents truancy notifications modified to target behavioral barriers that can hinder effective parental engagement. Modified truancy notifications that used simplified language, emphasized parental efficacy, and highlighted the negative incremental effects of missing school reduced absences by 0.07 days in the 1 month following compared to the standard, legalistic, and punitively worded notification—an estimated 40% improvement over the standard truancy notification. This work illustrates how behavioral insights and randomized experiments can be used to improve administrative communications in education.

当学生错过了多个无故放学的日子时，许多州的法定学区或学校会通知家长。我们报告了一项随机实验（N = 131,312），评估发送给父母的逃学通知已修改为针对可能阻碍有效的父母参与的行为障碍的影响。修改后的逃学通知使用了简化的语言，强调了父母的效力，并强调了失学的负面影响，与标准，法律和惩罚性的通知相比，失学的学生在1个月内将缺勤减少了0.07天，估计比原定通知书减少了40％标准逃学通知。这项工作说明了行为洞察力和随机实验可如何用于改善教育中的行政沟通。