Stephen Wakefield 
BALTIMORE, Md. — August 31, 2026 — Michigan’s Ecorse Public Schools (EPS) is again extending its partnership with Concentric Educational Solutions to reengage chronically absent students in learning. Building on their multiyear agreement, the Concentric and EPS teams will collaborate throughout the 2026-2027 school year to identify and resolve the root causes of student absenteeism—ranging from academic struggles and health issues to home safety and transportation gaps.
EPS is a five-site district serving roughly 1,300 pre-K through 12th grade students in the Metro Detroit area. Concentric’s partnership with the district began after Ecorse Community High School alone posted a chronic absence rate of 72.1% in 2019, one of the highest in Michigan at the time, and it has since grown into a districtwide effort.
Concentric Educational Solutions partners with school systems, municipalities, and community partners to combat chronic absenteeism and reconnect youth to opportunity. Concentric’s approach draws on Howard University-certified members of the community to gather real-time insights from students and families, helping school systems and other stakeholders respond to student absences earlier, align resources, and address the factors driving disengagement. Among the services Concentric makes available to Ecorse Public Schools are:
- Home visits by trained, community-based teams to enrolled students identified as chronically absent or not attending school
- Engagement with families through collaborative discussions to identify barriers to attendance
- Custom ethnographic research from noted scholar and Howard University Professor Dr. Ivory Toldson interpreting the data collected during family engagements and outlining how and why chronically absent students have disengaged from learning
- Collaboration with school administrators that turns research into intervention strategies for the students and families engaged during home visits
Chronic absenteeism is generally defined as missing 10% or more of school days. Nationally, the rate climbed from 15% before COVID to a peak of 28% in 2022, and has come down since to 22.6% for the 2024-25 school year, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Return to Learn Tracker, which uses data from 45 states. In Ecorse, districtwide chronic absenteeism fell from 72% in the 2021-22 school year to 67.1% the following year, then ticked back up slightly to 68.7% in 2023-24.
“Chronic absenteeism remains a challenge, not just here in Ecorse but across Michigan,” said Ecorse Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Josha Talison. “The same thing researchers are finding nationally, we’re living here too: the fast progress right after the pandemic has slowed down. That’s not a reason to back off. It’s the reason we can’t. What’s different for us now is the infrastructure we’ve built to meet it. We have home visit teams who know these families by name, and a real system for turning what they hear on the ground into actionable plans. That kind of work rebuilds the relationships it takes to get students back in the classroom and connected to opportunity, and we look forward to keeping this work going with Concentric.”
“It is rare to see a district with this level of clarity. The team in Ecorse knows exactly what works for their families, and they have the courage to stick with it,” said Concentric Educational Solutions CEO Molly Hebert Loyd. “Our partnership is not about trial and error. It is about scaling what we know works. We are proud to deepen our commitment to the Ecorse community, because this is where real, generational change happens.”
To learn more about Concentric Educational Solutions’ approach to combating chronic absenteeism, visit the company’s website at www.concentriced.org, follow the organization on X, or connect on LinkedIn.
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