Too often, parents, students and sometimes teachers don’t realize how quickly absences, excused as well as unexcused, can add up to academic trouble. At the same time principals, district leaders and community members often don’t know if chronic absence is a significant problem in local schools.
Research shows that missing as little as 2-3 days every month is considered chronic absence, and can translate into third graders unable to master reading, sixth graders failing courses and ultimately, teens dropping out of high school.
We’ve found that the best way to identify students with poor attendance is to calculate the data that schools are already collecting. Analyzing local attendance data can help determine chronic absence levels, and show patterns across students and schools. This is a good first step towards designing strategies to help students get to class every day possible.
Analyzing district-level data also can highlight schools that are making good progress. What’s happening in these schools that serve similar populations of students, but are achieving better-than-average results? By looking into what works in these schools, you can identify effective practices that others could replicate.
We’ve partnered with Applied Survey Research and developed some tools to simplify the process. Please share with your districts, schools and communities.
The self-calculating spreadsheets for school districts are called the District Attendance Tracking Tools (DATTs). These free tools are especially effective for smaller districts with more limited data capacity.
The companion tools are the School Attendance Tracking Tools (SATTs), which provide school-level analysis down to the individual student level.
- To download the tools and handbooks, please register here.
- Click here to download our handout about the DATT and SATT.
- Have questions about the tools? email help@attendanceworks.org
If you missed the Using Data to Drive Action webinar on May 17, you can find the webinar recording and presentation slides here. To receive our updates with new free materials, sign up here.