While the adjusted cohort graduation rate of students in the United States has reached 80 percent during the 2011-12 school year (Stetser & Stillwell, 2014), in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) only 57% of its students graduate from high school in four years, which is typical of large urban school districts (Swanson, 2009). Moreover, less than 20% of SDP students graduate high school, enroll in college, and persist to the second year (The School District of Philadelphia Action Plan, 2013). School attendance correlates with academic achievement and is also among the strongest predictors of high school graduation (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2012; Byrnes & Reyna, 2012). Educators care greatly about the amount of time students spend in the classroom because absenteeism results in substantial loss of classroom learning time. Teachers and administrators estimate that some students may lose not just days, but weeks of learning time, due to tardiness and absences. One of SDP's priorities is to improve student attendance as part of its Action Plan. The district created a task force dedicated to re-think the existing report card structure that is sent to guardians. Currently, student performance data (e.g., course grades and attendance) is presented to guardians in report cards in a way that is often convoluted and confusing. The task force intends to develop new formatting and, potentially, new content for the report cards. By making absenteeism information more meaningful, relevant, and contextualized, guardians might be enabled to take on a more active role in improving their student's attendance and academic performance. The Student Social Support R&D Lab at Harvard (S3) and the Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) at the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) collaborated on the "SDP Attendance Project," a research project in the form of a randomized control trial (RCT) to study strategies to improve student attendance in SDP. The project developed a low-cost, easy-to-implement innovation that could be widely used to reduce student absences.