Monitor, Analyze and Disseminate Chronic Absence Data Inspiring Examples
This Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution created an interactive map that allows anyone to examine school, district and state levels of chronic absence using currently available national data.
The California Department of Education’s Data Quest online data portal breaks down data by kindergarten, 1st to -3rd grade, and 4th to 6th grade. The department recognized the importance of allowing kindergarten to be viewed separately since it is typically the grade with the highest levels.
The Connecticut Department of Education’s interactive data portal, Edsight provides chronic absence data for every school and district broken down by grade and key student populations. It easily allows examination of data over a five year period.
Oakland Unified School District annually releases publicly available data on chronic absence that can be disaggregated by school, grade, and sub-group. The district also creates access for staff to data on individual students through a weekly tracker.
Paterson Public Schools in New Jersey provides chronic absence data from pre-K through 12th grade to each school each month. Some schools disaggregate the statistics by grade and use the data to discuss how to target and improve outreach to families. A team of stakeholders organized by the District support schools experiencing high chronic absence levels with monthly meetings to problem solve the challenges that keep the students from being in school every day.
San Francisco Unified’s Early Childhood Education Department has created on-line chronic absence reports for its early childhood programs. They allow administrators and staff to see how many and which children are chronically absent. Users can then “click” on a particular student and see which days they were absent.
The management information system providers - Child Plus, COPA and MyHeadStart.com provide preschool chronic absence reports for Head Start and other preschools that can help identify families in need of support as they transition to elementary school. These reports build off reports initially developed in Excel by Attendance Works. For further information about how to use and interpret chronic absence data, please see this guidance.
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