Chronic Absenteeism Dashboard Walkthrough

This Starter Kit includes data visualizations for district leaders (like superintendents and central office staff), campus leaders (like principals and campus office staff) and classroom teachers, and it can be used to show your stakeholders how the solution could be valuable to them.

District-Level Analysis

Log in to the dashboard with a Superintendent role. The screenshots below are for David Wilson, Superintendent of Schools at Grand Bend ISD.

User story 1: As a Superintendent or district central office staff member, I want to monitor enrollment, attendance, and chronic absenteeism data across schools in my district, so I can work with campus leaders to address the challenges to impacted students and families. I may also want view chronic absentee rates across different campuses, so I can tailor support strategies and allocate resources as needed. 

As district leader, I am concerned with equitable student support, where the needs of underserved and at-risk populations are addressed and not impacted by chronic absence or loss of instructional time. My absenteeism data can be viewed through various dimensions such as demographics, subpopulations, and grade levels. I can use these views to compare, contrast, and identify patterns or insights in my chronic absenteeism data in order to align resources and support most equitably and effectively. These charts and data tables are all clickable, to highlight a certain portion of the data, to sort columns the way I need them displayed, or other ways to make the data insights leap off the page for my and my staff's use.

School-Level Analysis

Log in to the dashboard with a principal role. The screenshots below are for Alisa Cameron, Principal at Grand Bend High.

User story 2: As a Principal, I want to be able to quickly ascertain my campus levels of chronic absenteeism (or are students in my school trending toward chronic absence), and which of my individual students are at risk for chronic absenteeism, so that I intervene directly and equip my staff members to engage and support these students. 

As I use the data, I quickly see in updated tiles:

• Total student enrollment for my campus
• Percentage of my chronically absent students (and actual number) per my district's attendance policies
• Percentage of students on the verge of chronic absenteeism (5% toward the overall 10% threshold of instructional time missed)
• Overall attendance rate for my campus

I can also rapidly scan to see comparative data across school campuses and grade levels to help me visually identify patterns and outliers. I can filter the data showing in the tiles and graphs on this page to tune it to what is most useful to me.

Now that I understand what's happening overall at my school, I can drill down into the specific students or groups of students who need attention and help from me and my staff. 

I can see a student's profile by right-clicking on their name in the Students table. This will show a menu over which I can hover to "Drill through" to select the Student Profile.

And then I can learn specific aspects of an individual student's attendance and absence data, but also patterns such as the distribution over months of the school year. This could help me understand if it's an ongoing or new problem, or other insights to help me intervene effectively to support the student and their family. 

Classroom/Teacher-Level Analysis

Log in to the dashboard with a teacher user role. The screenshots below are for Trent Newton, teacher at Grand Bend High.

User story 3: As a Teacher, I want to be able to quickly view current attendance and absences data trends for students in my classes, so that I know as early as possible if my students are missing instructional time with me and how much that is occurring so that I can contact them or their parent/caregiver, scheduled a parent-teacher conference, or ask my campus leadership for support with the student and their family.

• In my initial view I can see the number of students enrolled across my classes.
• I see the percentage of those students and the actual number of them who are already chronically absent (missing >10% instructional time in the school year) so I can intervene with them and their family and caregiver to support them. 
• Importantly, I see the percentage and number of students "on the verge" of chronic absence, at 5% missed instructional time, to help me course correct in time to engage those students proactively to keep them from becoming chronically absent. 

As a teacher, I can use this data and the insights provided in the charts and visualizations to assess whether certain trends are occurring with any of the demographic subgroups or grade levels of my students. I also have access to detailed data tables that allow me to drill down to specific students for focused intervention and to better understand trends in their attendance and absence from the instructional time I have with them. 

As I identify a certain student from the Students data table, I can right-click their name, choose Drill Through, and Student Profile. This provides more specific information and trend data for that student to give me a current and historical picture from this school year. Additionally, the Student Profile lists parent/caregiver contact information which, when combined with the student data, allows me to make an informative, productive phone call or email with the student and their caregiver.