Contents

Definition and Key Concepts

Research shows that student attendance is an important factor in student achievement. Excessive or chronic student absences negatively impact student achievement because of the lost opportunities to learn. High quality and timely attendance data is needed to:

Support research on the near term and long term impacts of chronic absenteeism.
Analyze student attendance data to correlate with student demographic groups, academic performance, grade levels, retention patterns, school completion, and graduation.
Provide early warning to identify specific students who are chronically absent or at risk of being chronically absent.
Track student’s absences due to disciplinary detention, suspension, or expulsion.
Inform student and family supports and interventions to improve a student’s attendance.

In addition, student attendance may be used to determine state school funding or program grant funding, making attendance data high-stakes.

Attendance is defined as when a student is identified, or marked, as being Absent, Present, or Tardy, in whole or in part. Attendance may be collected at different levels of granularity:

School attendance, indicating whether the student has attended the school for the entire school day, a portion of the school day, or has been absent for the entire school day. School attendance is marked for each instructional day in the school year.
Section attendance – used in secondary education settings which organizes the instruction into sections – indicating full or partial attendance or absence for each period the section meets. Section attendance is marked for each class period the section meets.
Program attendance, tracking a student’s participation in a program and/or a student receiving services as part of a program. Program attendance is marked for each scheduled time the student is to participate in the program or receive program services.
Intervention attendance, marking the student as present or absent for scheduled intervention activities. Intervention attendance is marked for each scheduled time the student is receiving intervention instruction or services.

The Ed-Fi attendance domain supports all of these options.

There are generally two popular practices for taking attendance:

Negative attendance: the practice of taking student attendance when a teacher marks a student is absent. Marking negative attendance most often involves a manual process whereby a teacher or other staff marks a student absent into an automated system, most likely the student information system (SIS).
Positive attendance: the practice of taking student attendance when students identify themselves as being present. Positive attendance is often supported by hardware or other mechanisms that allow the student to “check in” without regular manual teacher actions.

Partial attendance – where a student arrives late (tardy) or leaves early – may be marked as part of either positive or negative attendance practices.

Attendance in Ed-Fi is event-based. An attendance event represents the recording in the Ed-Fi API/ODS whether a student is Present or Absent (or Tardy) for the school day, for a scheduled section, program, or intervention activity. This is typically written by the SIS.

Note that the negative or positive attendance practices in the school and classroom are independent of whether only Absent attendance events, only Present attendance events, or both are written into the Ed-Fi API/ODS. For example, the process may only mark absences, but the SIS may write both absent and present, assuming any student that is not absent is present. The same may be true for positive attendance.

An attendance event has the following attributes and associations:

Reference to the Student
Reference to the appropriate School, Section, Program or Intervention
Date of the attendance event
The category of the attendance event, indicating whether the event is recording “present,” “absent” or “partial attendance” (arrives late (tardy) or leaves early). It may also include other key categorizations such as
- If present, the modality of learning (e.g., classroom, remote, blended)
- If absent, whether the absence is excused or not excused.
- If absent or tardy, the associated category for the reason

Optionally, an attendance event may also include:

The detailed reason for the absent, present, or partial attendance, as applicable
The education environment (setting) where the (present) student receives instruction or services
The arrival and departure times of the student
The duration of the attendance event

It is important to remember that statutes and practices differ from state to state and across localities concerning recognized reasons for student absences.

Attendance Use Cases

The attendance domain addresses all use cases related to school, section, program, and intervention attendance, as shown in the following table. Each type of attendance event has its own specific attendance event entity.

Primary Use Cases	Ed-Fi Domain & Entity that needs to be Utilized for the Use Case
Student arrives at school on time and is present for the entire school day. Student arrives late to school but is present for the rest of the day, Student arrives at school on time but leaves early. Student is absent for the entire school day. Student arrives late to school after being marked absent. Student receives instruction remotely by digital means. Student is absent and not receiving instruction because of a discipline action. Student is receiving instruction in a nontraditional school setting. Student is out of school but involved in an instructional program or school-approved extracurricular or cocurricular activity.	Attendance domain StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent
Student is on time for a section period and is present for the entire section. Student arrives late to a section period. Student leaves early from the section period. Student leaves early from a section period. Student is absent for the entire section period. Student arrives late to the section after being marked absent. Student receives instruction remotely by digital means for the section period. Student is absent for the section period and not receiving instruction because of a discipline action. Student is receiving instruction for the section in a nontraditional school setting. Student is absent from the section but involved in an instructional program or school-approved extracurricular or cocurricular activity. Section attendance is not taken. Section attendance is taken but reported at a later date. Section attendance is not taken by the responsible teacher, for example, by a substitute.	Attendance domain StudentSectionAttendanceEvent SectionAttendanceTakenEvent
Student is on time for a program activity or service and is present for the entire scheduled duration. Student arrives late to a program activity or service. Student leaves early from a program activity or service. Student leaves early from a program activity or service. Student is absent for the entire program activity or service. Student arrives late for the program service after being marked absent. Student receives program services remotely by digital means. Student is absent for the program activity or service because of a discipline action. Student is participating in a program activity or service nontraditional school setting. Student is absent from the program activity or service but involved in an instructional program or school-approved extracurricular or cocurricular activity.	Attendance domain StudentProgramAttendanceEvent
Student is on time for intervention instruction or services and is present for the entire scheduled duration . Student arrives late for intervention instruction or services. Student leaves early from tintervention instruction or services period. Student leaves early from intervention instruction or services. Student is absent for the scheduled for intervention instruction or services. Student arrives late to the intervention after being marked absent. Student receives instruction remotely by digital means for the intervention instruction or services. Student is absent from the intervention instruction or services because of a discipline action. Student is receiving intervention instruction or services in a nontraditional school setting. Student is absent from the scheduled intervention instruction or services but involved in an instructional program or school-approved extracurricular or cocurricular activity.	Attendance domain StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent

These best practices focus on the Attendance domain, consisting of the following entities and associations:

StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent represents the recording of whether a student is in attendance for a school day.
StudentSectionAttendanceEvent represents the recording of whether a student is in attendance for a section.
SectionAttendanceTakenEvent captures whether attendance was taken event for given section.
StudentProgramAttendanceEvent represents the recording of whether a student is in attendance to receive or participate in program services.
StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent represents the recording of whether a student is in attendance for an intervention service.

Note that staff attendance, known as staff leave, is captured by the StaffLeave entity in the Staff domain.

Ed-Fi Prerequisites for Writing Attendance Domain Entities

The attendance domain has dependencies on other data that should be entered into eth Ed-Fi API/ODS prior to writing attendance events, as follows:

Yearly API/ODS setup. The best practice convention has a separate API/ODS for each school year. This means that attendance events must be written into the appropriate API/ODS for the appropriate school year.
EducationOrganizations, minimally Schools and LocalEducationAgency(s), need to be created for the scope of the ODS.
Calendar(s) for the various Schools and GradeLevel(s), indicating the designated school (instructional) days by CalendarDate, the Sessions, and GradingPeriods.
As being part of the key for the various types of attendance events, a Student entity needs to be written before any attendance event is entered.
A StudentSchoolAssociation (or StudentEducationOrganizationResponsibilityAssociation) needs to be written for the student before a StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent is entered for the corresponding school.
For school and grade levels with a bell schedule for sections, The BellSchedule and ClassPeriods need to be defined.
A Section entity and a StudentSectionAssociation needs to be written before a StudentSectionAttendanceEvent is entered for the corresponding student and section.
A Program entity and a StudentProgramAssocation or any StudentXXXProgamAssociation needs to be written before a StudentProgramAttendanceEvent is entered for the corresponding program.
An Intervention entity and a StudentInterventionAssocation needs to be written before a StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent is entered for the corresponding program.
Descriptor values need to be loaded. The Attendance domain has dependency on two sets of descriptors that are part of the AttendanceEvent common that is the used by the StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent, the StudentSectionAttendanceEvent, the StudentProgramAttendanceEvent, and the StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent.
- AttendanceEventCategory is a required descriptor which typically has custom values associated associated with the attendance codes collected in the Student Information System. The descriptor values typically include:
  - For absent events, whether the absence is excused or unexcused.
  - For absent events, a categorization of the reason for the absence, as per policy
  - For partial attendance, whether tardy or left early.
  - For present events, modality of learning (e.g., classroom, remote, blended)
- EducationalEnvironment is an optional descriptor indicating the setting in which a child receives education and related services. As an attribute of the StudentSectionAttendanceEvent, the attribute is typically only used if it differs from the EducationalEnvironment of the associated Section.

Recommended Patterns for the Attendance Domain

Understand positive and negative attendance practices

It is important to understand the kind of attendance practices in the classroom and distinguish how they are reported by the SIS into the Ed-Fi API/ODS.

Negative attendance assumes that all students are present unless marked as being absent by the teacher. This process requires classroom time and the teacher’s attention. The negative attendance process is disrupted by late-arriving students who now must be marked tardy instead of absent. SIS features are often able to write both absent and present attendance events even though the process only captures absences.
Positive attendance starts with a clean slate, recording students as present only when they check in to the classroom. There are several hardware options and other mechanisms supported by a SIS to implement this check-in process that minimizes the time required by the teacher. With these systems, students that do not check-in are marked as absent.

Consistent attendance marking practices

It is important that attendance marking (the process of taking attendance) and attendance reporting to the API/ODS be consistent, as follows:

The choice of the attendance taking process – negative or positive – should be defined in policy and consistently applied.
School, section, program, and intervention attendance practices should be applied uniformly.
Attendance practices should be included in staff training and compliance with those practices should be monitored. The SectionAttendanceTakenEvent is used for this purpose.
Attendance should be taken daily and reported to the API/ODS the same day.
Changes to a student’s attendance events, for example, changing from an unexcused absence to an excused absence when a parent’s response is received, should be promptly reported.

Write both absent and present attendance events

Best practices indicate that both absent and present attendance events be written to the API/ODS independent of whether a negative or positive attendance process is used.

Writing both absent and present improves the quality of attendance data since the lack of an attendance event for a school day, section class period, or program or intervention time period indicates a missing attendance event.
For absent attendance events, the AttendanceEventCategory descriptor value records the reason for the absence and whether the absence is excused or unexcused.
For present attendance events, the AttendanceEventCategory may indicate the modality of learning (e.g., classroom, remote, blended), reflecting for example that a student who normally attends class in person was present but joining remotely. The EducationalEnvironment attribute may reflect the setting where the student received instruction or services.
For tardy attendance events, the AttendanceEventCategory descriptor value records the reason for the tardy.

It should be noted that attendance events are typically the largest number of records written to an Ed-Fi API/ODS. Writing only absent and tardy attendance event will substantially reduce the number of attendance evet records but should only be done if there is no additional information captured as part of a positive attendance process.

Map attendance codes to the AttendanceEventCategory descriptor

The categorization of attendance events using codes defined in the Student Information System (SIS) is a common practice. In some cases, the operation of the schools may define a set of attendance codes that are more granular than is desired to be reported to the API/ODS. In these cases, an explicit, published mapping of SIS attendance codes to the AttendanceEventCategory descriptor values should be defined. Most SIS with an Ed-Fi API/ODS interface supports mapping SIS codes into Ed-Fi descriptors.

Deriving school day attendance from section-based attendance

School-only attendance practices are common in primary grades and grades when the school day is not organized into section periods. When section attendance is taken for each class period in a day, policy will define how school-level attendance is derived; there are many options, including:

Designation of a homeroom section when daily attendance is taken
Designation of a homeroom class period during the school day when daily attendance is taken
Specification of a minimum duration of time (or alternatively begin and end times), across all class periods in a school day that a student must be in attendance in order to be counted as present for an entire day. Similar business rules may be defined for portions of the school day.
Similar computation rules are needed to compute school tardy events from section tardy or absent events.

Care must be taken in cases of block scheduling, when different sections meet on different days of the week.

According to policy, the derivation of school-level attendance from section attendance should be computed and reported by the SIS as a StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent, rather than leaving the computation to a downstream report. This ensures consistency across all data sources.

When school attendance is derived from section attendance, the importance of section attendance is raised. Use of the SectionAttendanceTakenEvent is recommended to validate the quality of the section attendance.

Best Practices in Using the Attendance Domain

AttendanceEvent common

All of the attendance event entities (StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent, StudentSectionAttendanceEvent, StudentProgramAttendanceEvent, and StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent) use the AttendanceEvent common for the details of the attendance event. The following table summarizes the best practice use of the AttendanceEvent common attributes.

Best Practices for the use of the AttendanceEvent Common Attributes

Required

Must Have

Recommended

As Needed

EventDate (key)

AttendanceEventCategory (key)

AttendanceEventReason

EducationalEnvironment

EventDuration

Keys in reading the table:

Required attributes in Ed-Fi are hard constraints, meaning that a record or API payload will be rejected if the attribute is not present. These necessarily include key values.
Must Have attributes are those whose intended use of the entity requires them to be used, even if, upon creation, they may not be present.
Recommended attributes are those whose best practices encourage their use.
As Needed attributes are those that should be used when appropriate, based upon policy.

Best practices in business rules: AttendanceEvent Common

→ When the operational attendance codes are mapped to a smaller set of AttendanceEventCategory descriptor values, use the AttendanceEventReason to capture the more detailed information from the attendance codes.

StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent

The StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent records whether a student is Absent, Present or Tardy for a school day according to attendance policies. Each school in which a student is enrolled (whether singly- or dually-enrolled) is responsible for taking attendance for the day or portion of the day.

Best Practices for the use of the StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent Attributes

Required

Must Have

Recommended

As Needed

EventDate (key from AttendanceEvent common)

AttendanceEventCategory (key from AttendanceEvent common)

Student (key)

School (key)

Session (key)

AttendanceEventReason (from AttendanceEvent common)

SchoolAttendanceDuration

ArrivalTime

DepartureTime

EducationalEnvironment (from AttendanceEvent common)

EventDuration (from AttendanceEvent common)

Best practices in business rules: StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent

→ The student associated with the StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent must have an active StudentSchoolAssociation for the school. Students who have transferred out of the school, dropped out, completed school, or are otherwise not enrolled are not counted as present or absent.

→ The AttendanceEvent.EventDate for the StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent must be a designated “in-session” school day for the Calendar associated with the StudentSchoolAssocation. Attendance events are not recorded when the school is closed to students.

→ The AttendanceEvent.EventDate for the StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent must be part of the designated Session.

→ Use the AttendanceEvent.Duration to reflect StudentSchoolAttendanceEvents (Absent, Present, or Tardy) to reflect portions of a school day.

→ Use the SchoolAttendanceDuration to reflect the instructional minutes received as part of a Present or Tardy attendance event, as required.

StudentSectionAttendanceEvent

The StudentSectionAttendanceEvent records whether a student is Absent, Present or Tardy for a section that meets during a class period during a school day, according to attendance policies.

Best Practices for the use of the StudentSectionAttendanceEvent Attributes

Required

Must Have

Recommended

As Needed

EventDate (key from AttendanceEvent common)

AttendanceEventCategory (key from AttendanceEvent common)

Student (key)

Section (key)

AttendanceEventReason (from AttendanceEvent common)

SectionAttendanceDuration

ArrivalTime

DepartureTime

ClassPeriod

EducationalEnvironment (from
AttendanceEvent common)

EventDuration (from AttendanceEvent common)

Best practices in business rules: StudentSectionAttendanceEvent

→ The student associated with the StudentSectionAttendanceEvent must have an active StudentSectionAssociation for the section.

→ The AttendanceEvent.EventDate for the StudentSectionAttendanceEvent must be a designated school day in the Calendar associated with the StudentSchoolAssocation. Attendance events are not recorded when the school is closed to students.

→ The AttendanceEvent.EventDate for the StudentSectionAttendanceEvent must be for Section with a designated ClassPeriod that meets on a school day as part of the BellSchedule associated with the student. Attendance events are not recorded for days the section does not meet.

→ As discussed above, the StudentSectionAttendanceEvents associated with a student for a school day should be consistent with the reported StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent reported for that school day per the attendance policies.

→ Use the SectionAttendanceDuration to reflect the instructional minutes received as part of a Present or Tardy section attendance event, as required.

→ The AttendanceEvent.EducationalEnvironment attribute should be used when the setting the child receives education differs from that identified for the Section. This attribute applies to Present and Tardy StudentSectionAttendanceEvents.

→ The ClassPeriod attribute should be used to differentiate when a Section meets on multiple class periods during a day.

SectionAttendanceTakenEvent

The SectionAttendanceEventTaken entity is used to record and monitor whether attendance was taken for a given section for each day the section meets. The entity is written for each time attendance as taken. The lack of a SectionAttendanceTakenEvent for a section on a meeting day means that attendance was not taken.

Best Practices for the use of the SectionAttendanceEventTaken Attributes

Required	Must Have	Recommended	As Needed
Section (key) CalendarDate (Key)		Staff	EventDate

Best practice in business rules: SectionAttendanceEventTaken

→ If a SectionAttendanceTakenEvent is recorded for a section on a school day, there should also be StudentSectionAttendanceEvents recorded, as per the attendance practices.

→ Use the EventDate when the SectionAttendanceTakenEvent is recorded on a day different from the CalendarDate.

→ Recording the Staff responsible for taking section attendance that day is recommended to identify those staff (and substitutes) that are complying with attendance taking policies.

StudentProgramAttendanceEvent

The StudentProgramAttendanceEvent records whether a student is Absent, Present or Tardy for a designated time period to receive services or participate in the program, according to attendance policies.

Best Practices for the use of the StudentProgramAttendanceEvent Attributes

Required

Must Have

Recommended

As Needed

EventDate (key from AttendanceEvent common)

AttendanceEventCategory (key from AttendanceEvent common)

Student (key)

Program (key)

EducationOrganization (key)

AttendanceEventReason (from AttendanceEvent common)

ProgramAttendanceDuration

EducationalEnvironment (from AttendanceEvent common)

EventDuration (from AttendanceEvent common)

Best practices in business rules: StudentProgramAttendanceEvent

→ The student associated with the StudentProgramAttendanceEvent must have an active StudentProgramAssociation or program-specific StudentXXXProgramAssociation for the program.

→ The AttendanceEvent.EventDate for the StudentProgramAttendanceEvent must be part of the school year in the Calendar associated with the StudentSchoolAssocation. Program attendance events may or may not be on designated school days.

→ Use the ProgramAttendanceDuration to reflect the service or participation minutes as part of a Present or Tardy section attendance event, as required.

→ The EducationOrganization of the StudentProgramAttendanceEvent should be consistent with the EducationOrganization of the active StudentProgramAssociation or program-specific StudentXXXProgramAssociation.

→ The AttendanceEvent.EducationalEnvironment attribute should be used when the setting the child receives education or services differs from that identified for the program – for example, the SpecialEducationSetting for the StudentSpecialEducationProgramAssociation. This attribute applies to Present and Tardy StudentProgramAttendanceEvents.

StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent

The StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent records whether a student is Absent, Present or Tardy for a designated time period for intervention services, according to attendance policies.

Best Practices for the use of the StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent Attributes

Required

Must Have

Recommended

As Needed

EventDate (key from AttendanceEvent common)

AttendanceEventCategory (key from AttendanceEvent common)

Student (key)

Intervention (key)

AttendanceEventReason (from AttendanceEvent common)

InterventionDuration

EducationalEnvironment (from AttendanceEvent common)

EventDuration (from AttendanceEvent common)

Best practices in business rules: StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent

→ The student associated with the StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent must have an active StudentInterventionAssociation for the intervention

→ The AttendanceEvent.EventDate for the StudentInterventionAttendanceEvent must be part of the school year in the Calendar associated with the StudentSchoolAssocation. Intervention attendance events may or may not be on designated school days.

→ Use the InterventionDuration to reflect the intervention minutes received as part of a Present or Tardy intervention attendance event, as required.

Ed-Fi Unifying Data Model (UDM) Handbook
Ed-Fi UDM Diagram (Latest version) (Visio format, on GitHub)

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