Teachers have a hard time getting students to show up to class, much less on time, especially in underserved communities. Now there's an app that helps educators keep kids on track by taking a new approach to the old ritual of taking attendance.

The app, Kinvolved, allows teachers to take attendance with a swipe of the finger on a mobile device. The app seeks to help schools create more effective learning environments by getting parents involved, and by training kids to be accountable. According to The New York Times, Kinvolved has been piloted at five schools in Harlem since November 2015, and it's showing results.

Etta Covington, a science teacher at the Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Harlem, says the app had an immediate effect on attendance. "My average that comes in on time is seven students out of 30," she told the Times. "This one, you used to hardly ever see," she added. "Now she is one of the first in class in the morning."

Kinvolved is more than an attendance app, because it engages parents in the process in real time, remotely. When a teacher marks a child absent or tardy, Kinvolved automatically sends a text message to the parents.

Alerts can also be customized by teachers to include the number of minutes of class time students missed by being late. The app can send notices in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole and other languages, and can also be used to send notifications about school events or upcoming tests.

Some parents were reportedly overwhelmed by messages when the school launched Kinvolved; "There was one parent who said, 'Please stop sending me these messages,'" noted Wadleigh's community school director Habib Bangura. As if the attendance messages were "like a telemarketer."

Of course, that points to one caveat with Kinvolved: technology by itself cannot do the heavy lifting when it comes to getting kids to come to school consistently and on time. Engaged parents are key, and so is removing other environmental barriers to good school attendance in underserved communities. "There are legitimate and structural reasons that some students are late to school," noted Bangura, "and we are trying to put some solutions in place by communicating with the family."

But Kinvolved can help schools get a better handle on those problems, and get a broader picture of student and parent engagement in the process.

Data logged over time through the app, for example, can help identify families whose children miss school most often, giving educators a clear idea of where to direct extra attention. "It takes the guesswork and excuses out of it," noted social studies teacher Jillian Fisher to the Times.

Kinvolved is the product of a three-year-old startup of the same name. It was co-founded and headed by Miriam Altman, who previously taught history at a New York City high school and became frustrated with the outdated attendance and parental notification system in place.

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