Consistent attendance for students is connected to higher academic achievement, positive social-emotional outcomes, and decreased risk for dropping out. Simply put, schools can only educate and support students to their fullest potential when students are present each day. With Student Success, you can view attendance data based on the number of days attended.
As with other data in the early warning system, there are Attendance data cut points to assist with quicker identification of a student's risk level.
Attendance on a Student Profile
Details about an individual student’s attendance history are available on the student’s profile page. In addition to the total percentage of year-to-date days present, you may be able to view how many times a student has missed a specific course, full or half day absences in a calendar view, depending on how your school enters the data in the district’s student information system. Not all systems send tardy data.
When you hover over the calendar squares, you may see additional context about what happened on that day, such as "Unexcused Absence" or "Field Trip" or "Doctor's Note."
Attendance at the School and District Level
Chronic absenteeism is most commonly defined as missing more than 10% of school days in a year. Student Success flags students as at some risk when their attendance is between 90-95% so that students at risk are identified long before they reach the level of being chronically absent. Attendance reporting in Student Success allows educators to dig deeper to view each student’s absences on a day-by-day or course-by-course basis. Filters for attendance trending can be used to help find students with emerging attendance needs.
While schools may record attendance in different ways—for instance, taking attendance during first period or at multiple points throughout the day (e.g., once per class period)—Student Success aggregates this information to calculate daily attendance for each student. Accurate attendance coding and setup in the student information system is critical. Technical assistance is now available for districts, including a recommended set of attendance codes and other settings.
School Attendance Report
This overview shows the year-long trend of absences, with a dotted line superimposed to show the smoothed trend over time. By default, the top part of the report summarizes data based on full day absences only. Check the half day option and the report will also include half day absences.
Controls on this display allow users to view by preset time spans, or specify a custom date range. Hovering the cursor over the graph reveals the absences for that day. The slider controls on either side of the blue bar can be dragged to widen or shorten the date range. The summary data shown here may not match similar summaries calculated within the district SIS or elsewhere due to different data calculation rules, etc. This does not mean that one system or the other is in error.
Below the School Attendance Report graphs is a view of students absent the day before, including the names, grade, reason, streak of days absent, total year-to-date absences with a trending flag, as well as a summary of reasons for absences and absences by grade level. Clicking on the student name will take you to the student’s individual page.