STEP 1:  Become aware of your chronic absence rate. 

To understand the extent of the issue in your school or district, it is useful to understand and differentiate between categories of satisfactory attendance to extreme chronic absence.

Student Attendance Bands

As it relates to school level chronic absence, a school is considered to have reached a severe level of chronic absenteeism if 20% to 29% of its student population is chronically absent. When 30% or more students are chronically absent, the school falls into the “extreme” category.

Having actionable data is key to being able to understand the scope of chronic absence in your school or district. To begin the work on prevention and intervention to reduce chronic absence, local, real-time data must be available, tracked, and analyzed consistently. Create processes and systems that allow for regular tracking to be able to notice trends, progress, and setbacks. Agree upon the regular cadence that data will be tracked. Ideally, data should be tracked every 10 days.

Actionable data is accurate.

• Defined processes and procedures ensure that data is accurate and consistently collected for analyzing, problem-solving, and decision-making.
• Data quality and integrity are monitored.
• All legal and policy requirements are followed and maintained daily.

Actionable data is accessible.

• Data is embedded into day-to-day work.
• Data is easily obtained from user-friendly systems.
• Staff are trained effectively on data systems so that they can overcome any learning curves.
• Limitations of various data systems are recognized, and staff use them for what they are designed.
• The number of data systems needed to get the necessary data is minimized.
• If possible, a system with built-in visualization tools is used.

Actionable data is usable.

• Reports are understandable, relevant, and designed for the specific stakeholders that will use them.
• Reports answer relevant questions.
• Reports are generated in a timely fashion on a consistent schedule.

Most Student Information Systems can be set up to calculate chronic absence rates. To calculate your chronic absence rate, you need: 

• To define the time parameters you are interested in calculating (e.g. school year, year-to-date, prior month, past ten days, etc.).
• A full roster of students educated by your school, district, or charter network.
• Days of Membership (the number of days each student was enrolled in your district or school for the identified time to be analyzed). 
• Days in Attendance (the number of days each student was considered “in attendance” for the identified time).

Calculating Your Chronic Absence Rate

1. Calculate the attendance rate for all applicable students in the school, district, or charter network for the timeframe identified.

• To calculate each student’s attendance rate, divide the student’s total days of attendance by their total days of membership for the timeframe.
• If the rate is less than 90%, then that student is considered chronically absent.
• If the rate is 80% or less, then that student is considered severely chronic absent. 

2. Count the sum total of students that are chronically absent for the established time parameter.

3. Count the sum total of students that are enrolled in the school, district, or charter network for the established time parameter.

4. Divide the sum total of chronically absent students by the sum total of students enrolled.

5. Multiply the statistic x 100 and round the number to the nearest 10th. This is your school or district’s chronic absenteeism rate for the time parameter.

STEP 2: Disaggregate data to get a full understanding of the nature of the problem. 

Disaggregate data by school, grade level, and subgroups such as race, ethnicity, gender, income eligibility, English learners, and students with disabilities. Using data visualization tools can be helpful to understand patterns. Data can be mapped by ZIP code or neighborhoods within a district to see if there are challenges in particular communities that may be contributing to high chronic absence.

STEP 3:  Take a team approach to analyze trends and patterns.

Research shows that taking a team approach to analyzing chronic absence data works well. Having multiple perspectives and key individuals with different backgrounds that relate to the issue can help get a clear and full understanding of what’s going on in your school or district. 

Effective teams usually include key individuals responsible for academic instruction, health-related issues, student support staff (attendance officers, parent liaisons, school counselors, etc.), staff responsible for attendance data reporting, school administrators, and relevant community partners (early childhood and youth service agencies, mental health, health, or family service providers associated with schools in the district, etc.).

Sample Guiding Questions to Learn from Data

1. To what extent is chronic and severe chronic absence an issue throughout the district or charter network and where is it concentrated?

2. Is attendance getting worse or better over time?

3. How does satisfactory attendance and chronic and severe chronic absence vary across schools, grades, subgroups, or neighborhoods?

4. What does the concentration and scale of chronic absence suggest about likely causes of chronic absence?

5. What is the relationship between overall attendance patterns and academic performance?

6. What is the relationship between attendance patterns and disciplinary (e.g., suspensions) data?

7. Which schools stand out as needing extra support?

8. Which schools in the district seem to be recording higher attendance rates than other schools with similar student population demographics? Do we know why?

9. Are there schools that have a low level of chronic absence but have a high level of economically-disadvantaged or vulnerable student populations that are doing well? These schools can be examined and lifted up to serve as inspirational and best-practice examples for other schools with similar demographics and challenges.

DID YOU KNOW?

School Accountability and Chronic Absence

Through its AZ School Report Cards, the Arizona Department of Education collects and presents data annually that includes school chronic absenteeism data.  Through Arizona’s A-F School Accountability System, K-8 schools are evaluated on chronic absence. Schools can earn two points for chronic absenteeism reduction if one of the following conditions are met:

• 4% Chronic Absenteeism: The percentage of grade 1-8 students who are chronically absent in fiscal year 2023 is less than or equal to 4%.
• Decreasing or maintaining percentage Chronically Absent: The change in the percentage of grade 1-8 students who are chronically absent in a fiscal year when compared to the previous fiscal year is less than or equal to zero.

AZ Spotlight

Project SAAM 

Supporting Attendance Across Maricopa County (SAAM) is an initiative at Valley of the Sun United Way (VSUW) that is working to improve chronic absence across the educational pipeline within Maricopa County. This initiative includes several effective strategies, including training via a partnership with Attendance Works, participation in Peer Learning Networks, coaching, advocacy, and data-driven decision-making. The project helps districts learn how to take a team approach to develop a year-round attendance plan that will help them achieve at least a 2% decline in chronic absence rates year by year. According to Dawn Gerundo, Community Development and Engagement Director for Education at VSUW, “Some big light bulbs occur in the process of learning how to get actionable with data. Data is only as good as what you tell the systems to pull. District teams are coached through the process to use their systems to get the right data that will allow them to start understanding the problem.”

Through coaching, each district’s team deepens its understanding of the root causes in their communities and learns how to overcome those barriers using evidence-based strategies and tiered interventions. District teams have realized that if they have effective tier 1 and tier 2 strategies, then the need for intensive tier 3 interventions lessens. Gerundo shared, “Our teams learned how to take actionable steps based on the data within the first three weeks. They realized that some things were not as hard a fix such as working with parents to change the times of doctor appointments so students can be present for class. Other teams made tweaks to messaging—realizing that the landscape has shifted and there were different reasons why parents weren’t sending their children to school. The process is about learning from the data and experimenting and seeing what works.”

Teams have had big mindset shifts, from attendance being a “front office problem” to something that everyone can work on, contribute to, and celebrate together. The project helps districts build their capacity to work with local community partners that can provide assistance and help get more resources to help students and families. Gerundo shared, “School leaders realize they can’t do this alone. The biggest results happen when everybody is on the same page. From the superintendent to the social worker, to the person calling parents, to the unexpected person like the bus driver who knows who is late or sleeping in their cars, everyone can contribute.”

REFLECT

What patterns did you notice around your chronic absence data at your school or district?  Which student groups are affected most?

Resources

Attendance Works provides free quantitative tools that schools and districts can use to calculate and track chronic absence

REL West infographic on how data visualization can illuminate attendance data  

Using Chronic Absence Data to Improve Conditions for Learning report

National Forum on Education Statistics Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data and Guide to Attendance, Participation, and Engagement Data in Virtual and Hybrid Learning Models