Be Present SC: Building a Culture of Showing Up

October 30, 2026
10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
SCASA Building
1 Fernandina Court
Columbia, SC 29212

Registration Deadline:  October 16 at 2:00 p.m.

The EOC will host its Be Present SC Attendance Summit on Oct. 30 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in partnership with the South Carolina Association of School Administrators (SCASA). The summit will equip school administrators and staff with research-based strategies to improve student attendance. Attendees will receive personalized data reports for their schools or districts, including comparisons between student attendance rates and corresponding School Climate Survey data.
 
During the keynote address, Dr. Elaine Allensworth, the Lewis-Sebring Executive Director of the UChicago Consortium on School Research will share insights from the UChicago’s study of school climate and attendance. Allensworth is a research professor at the University of Chicago Consortium and has more than 25 years of experience in education policy research and practice. Her research on the factors that predict high school dropouts has contributed to the development of an early-warning indicator system based on her Freshman On-Track research.
 
During the workshop portion of the summit, participants will review their school’s data and develop practices and strategies that will assist in improving student attendance. Attendees will also learn more about the EOC’s Be Present S.C. initiative and the resources it offers to support schools.

Keynote Speaker:
Elaine Allensworth
Elaine Allensworth is a Research professor at the UChicago Consortium. For more than 25 years at UChicago, she has conducted research on educational policy and practice. She works with policymakers and practitioners to bridge research and practice, providing advice to researchers across the country about conducting research-practice partnerships, and serving on panels, policy commissions, and working groups at the local, state and national level. 

She is recognized as an expert in the areas of students’ educational attainment, school leadership, and school improvement. Her research on the factors that predict whether students will drop out of high school has shifted the conversation from factors that schools cannot control to factors that schools can influence; school districts across the country have adopted early warning indicator systems based on her Freshman OnTrack research.
 
Her 2025 book, Using Data to Improve Schools, distills her decades of research leadership and synthesizes evidence so that educators and policymakers can focus on the metrics that matter most for student achievement. She is also one of the authors of the book, Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, which documents the ways in which organizational structures in schools influence improvements in student achievement. 
Elaine has been the principal investigator on research grants from funders such as the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She has received a number of awards from the American Educational Research Association, including the Palmer O. Johnson award Division H awards outstanding publications. She was once a high school Spanish and science teacher.
 

Registration Fees

SCASA Member:  $35 (lunch included)
Non-Member:  $50 (lunch included)

If paying by credit card, please click on either "member registration" or "non-member registration" on the right side of the screen.

If paying by check, please click here to download the mail-in registration form.  Registration form must be accompanied by check.  SCASA does not accept purchase orders.


Cancellation Policy

Cancellations must be received in writing to april@scasa.org by October 16, 2026, and are subject to a $25 cancellation fee. Cancellations received after October 16, 2026, will not be refunded.