Now that students’ rates of chronic absenteeism are being used to judge schools in most states, there will be new incentives to manipulate this data. So Chalkbeat asked the 10 state departments of education whose approved ESSA plans use chronic absenteeism how they plan to guard against that. Nine got back to us. Here’s what they said.
Arizona
As with all school attendance data our School Finance and accounting department have certain controls in place to make sure reporting is accurate – since state funding for schools is based in AZ on average daily attendance it is very important.
As for our newly approved ESSA plan, the Department is meeting with various stakeholders to determine ways to improve reporting of attendance and absenteeism. Our goal is of course to try to reach students that are frequently absent and hopefully help get them back in the classroom.
— Dan Godzich, Arizona Department of Education
Connecticut
Connecticut has been collecting and reporting chronic absenteeism data for many years. The data collection system has many in-built edits checks to ensure data quality.
Here are some examples:
- Attendance must be submitted for all students who are enrolled in the district.
- Every student with perfect attendance is flagged for district review.
- Any school that has an increase or decrease of chronic absenteeism rates of more than five percent is flagged for district review and response to [Connecticut State Department of Education].
In addition to edit checks, districts are provided with numerous attendance reports to review their data prior to finalization. Ultimately, the superintendent is required to certify that their data are accurate. Staff also monitor the data during the collection process and reach out to districts when there are anomalies.
Our accountability system is not intended to be a “gotcha.” It’s much more a resource to inform improvement. From the state perspective, we are not looking to name/shame people but partner with them and bring the requisite support to collectively problem-solve with them, which would give districts much less of a reason to cheat or manipulate the data.
— Laura Stefon, Connecticut State Department of Education
Delaware
Delaware school districts and charter schools have been collecting and reporting data regarding attendance as well as absences for many years, so this is not necessarily a new data point in our system. The Department is reviewing current processes around absenteeism and chronic absenteeism, and will work with districts and schools to determine consistent rules for using this information in the accountability system.
— Susan Haberstroh, Delaware Department of Education
Illinois
Historically we have collected school level absence data in summary (e.g. this school had x total absences and x number of students who were chronically truant). Starting this year, 2017-18, we are collecting student-level absence data. As with most of the data we collect from districts, it’s self-reported. We will only know about the absences they report. There are audits and data quality procedures we utilize in order to make sure the data is as accurate possible, for example, a student can’t have more absences recorded than days enrolled in the school (how can you have 30 absences if you’ve only been enrolled for 20 days). In addition, several times a year staff from the Data Analysis division attend conferences and answer questions on a variety of [Illinois State Board of Education] data collection systems … Those dialogues produce suggestions directly from districts that influence changes we make to those systems to improve usability and data accuracy.
— Jackie Rodgers, Illinois State Board of Education
Maine
Maine is planning on using chronic absenteeism and looking at students who have absences of more than 10% of the school year. Student level attendance data must be submitted and “reviewed” quarterly by school districts. The “reviewed” means that they state that they have submitted attendance data to date. At the end of the school year, superintendents will be required to certify that the data is complete and accurate. In addition, one of the duties of the new ESSA Data Coordinator, a new position at the Maine DOE, will be to monitor this data. The exact procedure and policy around this is in process of being written.
— Rachel Paling, Maine Department of Education
Massachusetts
Our system collects attendance data directly from the district student information management systems on a daily basis and also receives any changes made to the student record on a daily basis. So any data manipulation would need to be done systematically and could not be done after the fact without raising flags as to why so many post-dated attendance changes were being made. That being said, it’s something we’ll monitor closely.
— Jacqueline Reis, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
Oregon
Districts submit attendance data for individual students to [the Oregon Department of Education] four times a year. These data are submitted according to rules published in our data collection manuals; rules that conform to State Board adopted administrative rules and to state statute.
Once the data is loaded into ODE’s data system, ODE staff evaluate the data (such as comparing to historical trends) in order to identify unusual aggregated data, unusual shifts in aggregate trend data, and the plausibility of the individual student level data. (This is part of our usual data quality assurance process, which we use to help ensure data is as accurate as possible.) We know that accidental data submission errors do occur, so our process is designed to help find and correct these.
Once we see data with an unusual pattern we notify the affected districts and ask them to review their submitted data. In some cases districts confirm the data as accurate, in other cases they realize they’ve need to correct an (unintentional) data submission error.
We have not yet done any audits of local district data on attendance. However, the accountability office has conducted such audits on other accountability data. I would anticipate that we might do the same with assessment data submissions, should concerns arise regarding the validity of that data.
— Jon Wiens, Oregon Department of Education
New Jersey
New Jersey has collected chronic absenteeism data for many years. In the School Performance Reports, New Jersey has included chronic absenteeism data for elementary and middle schools for years, and beginning this last year, in the 2016 School Performance Reports, chronic absenteeism data was included for high schools. By publicly posting the chronic absenteeism data for each school on the [New Jersey Department of Education] website, the public is able to have conversations with schools about their data.
— David Saenz, New Jersey Department of Education
Tennessee
There are checks in place to ensure that our large-scale data collection processes are as accurate as possible. In addition to our auditing and compliance processes, which ensure districts are following proper procedures, the department also collects data separately through our assessment and evaluation process, and that provides another check. Teachers claim the students who have been present for the vast majority of instructional time for the purposes of their evaluation. If this data does not align with chronic absenteeism rates reported for the school, it would indicate something was off, and we could investigate further. Additionally, teachers and administrators have another incentive to mark attendance data correctly. If a student is marked as present but is really absent, there could be liability issues for the school. For example, if the school said a student was in class all day but got in an accident or committed a crime during that window, the school could be liable. Liability is a concern we hear from districts, so we know this is on the minds of many administrators.
— Sara Gast, Tennessee Department of Education