Attendance

We’ve developed a predictive model that has helped school leaders determine with 86% accuracy who is at risk of becoming chronically absent.

This valuable information enables parents, teachers, and school staff to better handle absenteeism and weed out the factors that foster it before it becomes chronic.

Regular attendance is essential for the success of both students and schools. Missing two or more days a month due to absence for any reason—excused, unexcused absences, and suspensions can translate into third-graders unable to master reading, sixth-graders failing subjects, and ninth-graders dropping out of high school. In turn, a good attendance rate improves academic prospects and chances for graduating.

While the regional Average Daily Attendance (ADA) rate has remained relatively steady throughout the years, being slightly smaller than that of the state, this statistic fails to account for the prevalence of students with serious attendance problems. For this reason, numerous schools and districts now calculate the chronic absenteeism rate separately, having it represent the share of students missing at least 10% of school days (approximately 18 school days a year, or 2 days per month).