Using behavioral insights to increase attendance at subsidized preschool programs: The Show Up to Grow Up intervention

•We implemented a field experiment called Show Up to Grow Up designed to increase attendance and diminish chronic absences at subsidized preschool programs in Chicago.•We sent personalized text messages to parents targeting malleable factors that potentially drive absences from preschool.•The intervention increased attended days by 2.5 (0.15 standard deviations) and decreased chronic absenteeism by 9.3 percentage points (20%) over an 18-week period.•The treatment impact is stronger among those in the bottom quantiles of the attendance distribution.•The intervention appears to have made the importance of preschool more salient to parents with less strong beliefs about the importance of attendance.