EveryDay Labs vs. Edia

In the wake of the chronic absenteeism crisis, school districts are searching for solutions that save them time and move the needle on attendance. Sophisticated, automated outreach platforms are becoming more and more of an essential. Originally debuting as a math solution, Edia has expanded to offer one of the newest attendance solutions, automating family outreach through AI technology. In this blog post, we dive into the similarities and differences between Edia and EveryDay Labs, two solutions leveraging the power of automated outreach and dedicated to bringing more students back to class. 

Similarities: Early, Data-Driven, Attendance Outreach, Mindful of Root Causes

Early Text Outreach 

Both Edia and EveryDay Labs provide an attendance intervention that works on the district’s behalf, saving educators time by automatically sending text messages to families of students who are at-risk of chronic absenteeism, in their home language. Edia sends texts immediately after an absence has been recorded, and EveryDay Labs sends text messages every other week with a summary of days missed during that time. Through these text messages, districts get another touchpoint to connect families with the support they need, whether it’s the Edia AI or the EveryDay Labs Family Support Bot. 

Both solutions understand that the negative impacts of missing school can begin well before students hit that chronic absenteeism threshold. By equipping families with information about their students’ attendance and opening up a channel to provide support, both solutions help build stronger family-school partnerships and prevent attendance challenges from worsening. While Edia’s outreach is text based, EveryDay Labs’ has a mail (and email) component, which we’ll explore later.   

Data-Driven Solutions

Both platforms automatically receive attendance data directly from your Student Information System, meaning that families and staff have access to the latest information. This is a refreshing departure from pulling spreadsheets with potentially outdated attendance information, undermining effective outreach and adding hours of administrative work. 

Both solutions leverage SIS data for their chronic absenteeism intervention as well as provide attendance insights on a dedicated platform, including attendance trends at the district and school level. Edia provides attendance data analytics, including patterns and trends surfaced from text conversations. On the EveryDay Platform, EveryDay Labs surfaces attendance patterns and trends based on SIS data, and offers a highly filterable student list to help educators stay organized and provide support to diverse student populations when they need it. 

Intervention Management Tools 

In addition to data analytics, both the Edia platform and the EveryDay Platform provide educators with tools to coordinate effective interventions, supporting an MTSS framework. The Edia platform recommends interventions based on student attendance, and the EveryDay Platform makes it easy to coordinate and track interventions. 

Understanding Barriers to Attendance 

Both solutions have tools that support educators in getting to the root cause of absenteeism. Edia surfaces attendance barriers reported during text conversations with the AI and families, and the EveryDay Labs platform reports on the resources that families have requested from the Family Support Bot. Both of these tools provide deeper visibility into the common barriers that families are experiencing and help inform the district’s strategy in effectively mitigating them. 

Differences: EveryDay Labs is an evidence-based solution, providing multi-channel impact with a human touch 

Evidence-backed, multi-channel solution 

Edia reports that many of its district partners have seen reductions in chronic absenteeism. However, EveryDay Labs is the only attendance solution with the Strong Evidence rating under Evidence for ESSA, thanks to the numerous randomized controlled trials that have proven the solution makes a sizable impact, over and above any district initiative. 

Part of what makes the EveryDay Labs intervention so effective is its mail component. While text messages promote behavioral change in the short term, a physical letter, written clearly and comparing a student’s attendance to their peers, can promote long term behavioral change. Many families report that they even put the nudge up on the fridge, creating a “social artifact” serving as a constant, visual reminder for the entire family. It creates a stickiness that a text message, while convenient, simply cannot replicate.

360 outreach: going beyond chronic absenteeism 

EveryDay Labs works to get ahead of chronic absenteeism not only through mail and text nudges, but with a myriad of communication templates. This includes the ability to automate positive messages that celebrate strong attendance streaks or improvements, plus campaigns that target dip days or missing specific days of the week. 

EveryDay Labs also offers a restorative truancy management system, leveraging rigorously tested truancy notices that are proven to be 40% more effective than standard notices. The system automatically surfaces the students who are eligible for a truancy notice, and with just one click, educators sign off on who needs a notice and EveryDay Labs prints and mails on the district’s behalf. These evidence-backed truancy notices are also available as a template for educators to email or print in-house.

Human Support for Human Families

Educators are eternally strapped for time, and EveryDay Labs and Edia both understand the power of strategic automation to liberate teams from administrative work, freeing up more time to focus on building relationships. But chronic absenteeism is a complex issue, and the power of a human touch still goes a long way and is often in short supply. 

While Edia leverages AI to automate two-way logistics, like collecting doctor’s notes and categorizing excuses, EveryDay Labs recognizes that chronic absenteeism often requires a more personal touch. 

That’s why in addition to the Family Support Bot that automatically connects families to district and community resources, EveryDay Labs also provides districts with a multilingual Family Support Team that works on their behalf. When families have a question about a nudge or are just looking for help in navigating the road to better attendance, they can connect with real humans in their home language. This additional human touchpoint plugs into the district’s ongoing work to build strong family-district partnerships and a culture of attendance. Families receive genuine empathy and personalized guidance rather than just an algorithmic response, transforming attendance outreach from a notification into a supportive partnership.

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