Ensure Access to Chronic Absence Data
Ensure your district can make available, on a regular basis, how many and which students are chronically absent (missing 10 percent or more of school for any reason including excused, unexcused or suspensions) for the entire district, by grade, sub-population and school. Keep in mind that in the first month of school, just missing two days of school is chronic absence and should be a trigger for receiving extra support. Such data should be available district-wide in order to detect patterns across schools and populations as well as for each school.
This information is critical to determining how to target the launch of your elementary success mentor program, as well as eventually providing participating schools with the lists of students who need to be matched with a success mentor. Ideally, schools should receive reports identifying which students are chronically absent on a weekly or at least biweekly basis. Or, ensure that principals and key staff have access to and can use a real-time data dashboards which include chronic absence data.
The Oakland Unified School District developed a publicly available, interactive data dashboard with reports to share with schools, parents and the community can access a variety of chronic absence reports.
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