Program | Practice | Policy
Check & Connect mentoring pairs students with consistent adult advocates who monitor attendance, build relationships, and coordinate timely supports when patterns emerge. This approach is particularly effective for students with persistent or recurring attendance challenges, as ongoing mentoring combined with systematic monitoring improves attendance and reduces dropout risk. When integrated with attendance review teams, mentoring provides continuity and prevents students from falling through gaps between systems.
The Check & Connect model, developed by the University of Minnesota, combines two essential components: systematic monitoring (“check”) of attendance, academic performance, and engagement indicators, and relationship-based intervention (“connect”) providing personalized support, problem-solving, and skill-building. Mentors serve as consistent advocates who know students well, track their progress across multiple indicators, intervene quickly when concerns emerge, and coordinate supports across school and community systems. This combination of data-informed monitoring and trusting relationships makes Check & Connect particularly effective for students at highest risk of disengagement.
What distinguishes Check & Connect from other mentoring approaches is its emphasis on persistence and long-term relationship. Mentors stay with students across multiple years when possible, maintaining connections even when students experience setbacks, transfer schools, or disengage temporarily. This persistence communicates to students that adults believe in their success and will not give up on them—a powerful message for young people who may have experienced adults as inconsistent or unreliable. Research shows that the durability of mentor-student relationships matters as much as the specific interventions mentors provide.
Check & Connect operates on a tiered framework, with intensity adjusted based on student need. Students showing early warning signs might receive light-touch monitoring with monthly check-ins and periodic problem-solving. Students with persistent challenges receive intensive support with weekly meetings, home visits, family engagement, and coordinated service delivery. This differentiation ensures resources are directed where need is greatest while avoiding over-intervention for students requiring lighter support.
For Kentucky communities, Check & Connect aligns naturally with existing advisory structures, FRYSC coordination, and community partnerships. Schools can implement Check & Connect through trained staff mentors (teachers, counselors, FRYSC coordinators), community-based mentors (through partnerships with nonprofits or faith organizations), or hybrid approaches combining school and community mentors. What makes implementation successful is fidelity to core components: systematic monitoring, relationship-building, individualized intervention, persistence across time, and coordination with broader support systems.
Successful Check & Connect implementation requires mentor training, appropriate caseloads, data access, coordination infrastructure, and integration with tiered attendance systems.
Mentor Selection and Training: Mentors can be school staff (teachers, counselors, administrators, FRYSC coordinators) or community partners (through youth-serving organizations, faith communities, retired educators). Critical qualities include ability to build trusting relationships, persistence through challenges, cultural responsiveness, and capacity to coordinate across systems. Mentors need comprehensive training (typically 2-3 days) covering the Check & Connect model, relationship-building, problem-solving protocols, monitoring data systems, family engagement, and coordination with supports. Ongoing coaching and peer learning help mentors refine practices.
Student Identification and Matching: Schools use early warning data to identify students who would benefit from Check & Connect—typically students with persistent attendance challenges, multiple risk factors, or histories of disengagement. Students should be matched thoughtfully with mentors considering cultural background, language, interests, and relationship potential. Some programs allow students voice in selecting mentors; others prioritize strategic matching based on mentor strengths and student needs.
Caseload Management: Research demonstrates that manageable caseloads are essential—typically 20-30 students per mentor for targeted support, or 10-15 for intensive intervention with students facing complex challenges. Caseloads too large prevent mentors from building deep relationships and responding quickly to concerns. Schools must allocate sufficient mentor capacity to achieve appropriate ratios.
Systematic Monitoring (Check): Mentors use data dashboards or regular reports to monitor attendance, academic performance, behavior, and engagement for all mentees. Monitoring occurs at least weekly, with mentors reviewing patterns, identifying concerning trends, and flagging students needing immediate outreach. Data systems should enable mentors to see real-time information and track whether interventions are working.
Relationship-Based Intervention (Connect): Mentors meet regularly with students—weekly for intensive support, biweekly or monthly for targeted support. Meetings focus on building relationships, discussing progress toward goals, problem-solving emerging challenges, teaching skills for managing competing demands, connecting students to supports, and maintaining hope and engagement. Mentors also maintain regular contact with families, teachers, and other adults supporting students.
Individualized Problem-Solving: When attendance concerns emerge, mentors work with students and families to understand barriers and co-create solutions. This might include advocating for schedule changes, coordinating transportation assistance, connecting students to counseling, facilitating communication with teachers, or helping families access community resources. Mentors serve as navigators helping students and families access supports without getting lost in bureaucracy.
Coordination and Referrals: Mentors participate in attendance review teams, coordinate with FRYSCs and community partners, facilitate referrals to services, and ensure follow-through. When students need supports beyond mentor capacity—such as intensive mental health services, housing assistance, or academic intervention—mentors coordinate with appropriate providers while maintaining supportive relationship.
Persistence and Long-Term Support: Mentors maintain relationships across school years when possible, following students through transitions and continuing support even when students disengage temporarily. This persistence distinguishes Check & Connect from shorter-term interventions and communicates unconditional support.
Program Evaluation: Schools should regularly assess Check & Connect effectiveness through attendance data, student surveys, family feedback, and mentor reflection. Successful programs track whether students receiving Check & Connect improve attendance, pass courses, and remain engaged compared to similar students without mentoring.
Implementing Check & Connect requires dedicated mentor time, training infrastructure, data systems, coordination capacity, and administrative support.
Mentor Staffing and Time: Schools must allocate sufficient staff capacity for mentoring—either through dedicated mentor positions, reassigned staff roles, or protected time for teachers/counselors serving as mentors. Mentors need time for weekly student meetings, family contact, data monitoring, coordination meetings, home visits when needed, and professional learning. Schools should calculate time requirements based on caseloads and intensity of support—intensive mentoring for 15 students might require 20-30 hours weekly.
Training and Professional Learning: Initial Check & Connect training requires 2-3 days, with costs for external trainers (if used), materials, and substitute coverage if teachers are being trained. Ongoing professional learning—monthly mentor meetings, case consultation, peer learning, or coaching—requires additional time and potentially external support. Some regions have Check & Connect coordinators who provide training and ongoing support across multiple schools.
Data Systems and Monitoring Tools: Mentors need access to real-time attendance, academic, and behavior data through dashboards or regular reports. Data systems should enable mentors to track all mentees, identify concerning patterns, document interventions, and assess whether supports are working. Schools may need to invest in or configure existing systems to provide appropriate mentor access.
Coordination Infrastructure: Check & Connect must integrate with attendance review teams, FRYSC services, counseling, and community partnerships. This requires regular coordination meetings, case management systems enabling information sharing (within privacy bounds), referral protocols, and communication tools. Schools should establish clear processes for mentors to access and coordinate supports.
Family Engagement Resources: Mentors need tools for family communication—phones, texting platforms, interpretation services, mileage reimbursement for home visits. Some programs provide flexible funds enabling mentors to address immediate family needs—such as transportation assistance, school supplies, or connection to community resources.
Space and Materials: Mentors need consistent space for meeting with students privately. Some schools dedicate mentor offices; others schedule conference rooms or repurpose other spaces. Mentors also benefit from materials supporting relationship-building and skill development—such as games, books, journals, college/career resources, or goal-setting tools.
Administrative and Leadership Support: Principals must protect mentor time, facilitate data access, support coordination with teachers and staff, celebrate mentor successes, and address challenges quickly. Leadership should communicate that mentoring is valued, provide resources needed for success, and integrate mentoring into broader school improvement efforts.
Sustainability Planning: Schools should plan for mentor turnover, succession when staff leave, and program continuity across years. This might include cross-training multiple staff, documenting protocols and practices, building mentor pipelines through community partnerships, and advocating for ongoing funding.
Track both early signals and long-term outcomes.
(Early Indicators)
(Lagging Indicators)
Early attendance patterns provide one of the clearest signals that students are encountering barriers to consistent engagement. Monitoring the share of students in kindergarten through third grade who miss 5-9 percent of instructional days—in addition to those who cross the 10 percent chronic threshold—enables earlier and more effective intervention. Longitudinal evidence shows that attendance patterns in the early grades predict later reading proficiency, academic persistence, and graduation outcomes. Tracking early risk allows schools, FRYSCs, early childhood providers, health clinics, and community-based organizations to coordinate outreach, identify transportation or health-related challenges, and connect families to supports before attendance problems become entrenched.
Attendance during ninth grade represents a critical inflection point in students’ educational trajectories. Monitoring whether ninth-grade students maintain satisfactory attendance—alongside course completion, credit accumulation, and engagement indicators—provides actionable insight into transition challenges. Research consistently shows that ninth-grade attendance is one of the strongest predictors of on-time graduation. When identified early, these patterns allow schools, mentors, counselors, and community partners to coordinate targeted supports that stabilize attendance and keep students on track for graduation.
Attendance is closely connected to whether students feel known, supported, and connected to their school and community. An engagement and belonging index draws on school climate surveys, participation in extracurricular activities, classroom engagement indicators, and student voice measures. Evidence indicates that positive school climate and strong student-adult relationships are associated with higher attendance rates. Including participation data from community-based activities—such as youth organizations, mentoring programs, faith-based groups, sports leagues, and workforce-aligned experiences—helps communities understand whether students experience belonging across both school and out-of-school contexts.
Chronic absenteeism frequently reflects identifiable barriers rather than disengagement alone. This indicator measures how effectively schools and community partners identify attendance-related barriers—such as transportation challenges, mental or physical health needs, housing instability, caregiving responsibilities, or safety concerns—and how quickly those barriers are addressed. Practice guidance shows that coordinated, timely responses to identified barriers are associated with measurable reductions in chronic absenteeism. Tracking both identification and response rates provides insight into the strength of local coordination across schools, FRYSCs, health providers, social service agencies, and nonprofit partners.
The four-year graduation rate reflects the cumulative effects of attendance patterns across the K-12 continuum. Students who experience chronic absenteeism in the early grades, middle school, or ninth grade are substantially less likely to graduate on time. Longitudinal evidence demonstrates that persistent absenteeism is strongly associated with lower graduation probabilities. Monitoring graduation rates alongside attendance trends allows communities to assess whether early interventions and coordinated supports are translating into sustained academic persistence through high school completion. In Kentucky, graduation rates are reported publicly through the Kentucky School Report Card, enabling districts and communities to examine outcomes by student group, geography, and school context. When graduation gaps align with patterns of chronic absenteeism, they signal the need for earlier, more coordinated responses rather than late-stage remediation.
Chronic absenteeism reduces the likelihood that students successfully transition to postsecondary education or training. Students with persistent attendance challenges are less likely to complete key milestones such as college applications, financial aid forms, and enrollment steps. National data show that high school engagement and attendance are closely linked to postsecondary enrollment outcomes. Kentucky tracks postsecondary enrollment outcomes through partnerships with the National Student Clearinghouse and reports aggregate trends via state and postsecondary data systems. Monitoring college-going rates alongside attendance patterns helps communities understand whether improvements in attendance are supporting stronger transitions into postsecondary education, workforce training, or credentialed programs.
Attendance-related disengagement often extends beyond high school graduation. Students with histories of chronic absenteeism are more likely to struggle with first-year credit accumulation and continuing enrollment. Federal postsecondary data show that early persistence is a key predictor of degree and credential completion, and disruptions in academic habits—such as inconsistent attendance—can undermine this momentum. Tracking first- to second-year persistence, credit accumulation, and early withdrawal rates allows education and workforce systems to assess whether K-12 attendance interventions are contributing to sustained engagement beyond high school. These indicators help surface where additional navigation, advising, or re-engagement supports may be needed.
The long-term implications of chronic absenteeism extend into labor force participation and economic stability. Students who disengage from school due to persistent absenteeism are at increased risk of becoming “opportunity youth”—young people ages 16-24 who are neither enrolled in school nor employed. National analyses show that educational disengagement is strongly associated with later workforce disconnection and reduced earnings. Kentucky workforce and education agencies track employment and enrollment outcomes across early adulthood, providing communities with tools to examine how attendance patterns relate to later participation in work and training. Monitoring opportunity youth rates and early workforce participation helps communities determine whether attendance-focused strategies are contributing to stronger economic attachment and long-term mobility.
