Attendance Works Risk Indicators

Purpose:

We all know every absence is a lost learning opportunity and the more absences the more significant impact on a student’s success in school and life.  Chronically absent students are more likely to fall behind in reading and math and less likely to graduate from high school. The first step in addressing chronic absenteeism is being able to see the data in order to educate parents and students and help those students develop good attendance habits.  

We believe everyone who works with students can help impact student attendance, therefore we believe it is important to give everyone a view of the data to keep awareness high.  That is why we've developed an Attendance Works Risk Indicator to be utilized in conjunction with our School Attendance Tracking Tool - Student Data Grids.

Attendance Works has partnered with Applied Survey Research to develop self-calculating spreadsheets (District and School Attendance Tracking Tools) to help school districts explore their data at the building, grade and individual student levels.  These spreadsheets contain thresholds of risk for students: 

• Satisfactory attendance:  Missing less than 5% of total school days
• At-risk attendance:  Missing 5-9.99% of total school days
• Moderate chronic absence:  Missing 10 -19.99% of total school days
• Severe chronic absence:  Missing 20% or more of total school days

We have used these thresholds in the Attendance Works Risk Indicator.

To add this risk indicator for your district follow these directions.

Directions:

Log into the SchoolData.net dashboard at https://{your district}.schooldata.net/v2 and choose Risk Indicators.  If you don't see the Risk Indicators icon, or if you don't have permissions to the application contact your District SchoolData.net (Homeroom) administrator or email support@schooldata.net.

Create New Risk Indicator:

Click Create New Risk Indicator.  

This will take you to the Details tab:

Fill in the following information:

• Name:  Attendance Works Risk
• Description:  Attendance Works / Applied Survey Research Risk thresholds for chronic absence
• Schedule:  click the 'Set Schedule' button.  Click in the 'Schedule Type' box and then select 'Daily'. Leave the time set to 8 am.  This sets a procedure that will update the Risk Indicator every day at 8 am.  It is important that this indicator, since it is for Attendance, be updated daily.
• Is Secure:  leave this box checked.  This will ensure that users will only see student data for those students they have permissions to see.
• Is District Level:  check this box.  This will enable all users to see the risk indicator under District Risk Indicators in the Risk Indicator Application as well as allowing them to see this as an option in the Homeroom Risk Viewer.
• Include as Student Download Option in Homeroom:  check this box if you would like end users to have the option to see and download the risk level of students in the Homeroom download options.
• Display on Student Profile in Homeroom:  check this box if you would like end users to see this risk level of student on their profile in Homeroom.
• For the following students:  click the Configure button.  click the Shared Groups button.  Choose 'All students (2016/17)'.  click 'Add Student Groups' button on the top right

click the 'Save and Continue' option of the Save button.

Data Points tab:

Data points of School, Grade Level and most importantly the Sum of Effective Daily Absence will be added.

School:

• click the Add Data Point button
• look for the Student header and click 'Current Predominant School'
  
• this will have added a row titled 'Enrollments - Current School'.  Find this row and click the gear icon to the right 
  
• uncheck the box next to 'School'
• check the box next to 'School Abbreviation' and in the Styles box type 'Current School'
  
• click the 'Save' button

Grade Level:

• click the Add Data Point button
• look for the Student header and click 'Current Grade Level'
  
  
• this will have added a row titled 'Enrollments - Current Grade Level'.
  

Sum of Effective Daily Absence:

• click the Add Data Point button
• look for the Behaviors header and click the gear to the right of 'Daily Attendance'
  
• this will allow the configuration of the Daily Attendance
• under 'Set Time Span' click the box to 'Limit to current year'
• change the 1 to 180 and leave the selection for School Days
  
• this setting, limiting to the current school year and selecting 180 school days will allow this risk indicator to continue to function year after year.
• under Risk Columns to Include:
• click the box next to 'Sum of Effective Daily Absence'
  
• click 'Save'
• click 'Save'

Click and drag 'Student - Name' to the first position, 'Enrollments - Current School' to the second position and 'Enrollments - Current Grade Level' to the third position.  Putting the data points in this order, will put the columns of data in this order in the report view as well as in the spreadsheet that can be downloaded.

Now find 'Risk - Risk Value' and updated the Sort order to -1.  This will order the data in the report and spreadsheet by the Risk Value 'descending' which means the students with the most risk will be at the top of the detailed list.

The Risk Indicator should now look like this:

Click Save and Continue

Default Risk Levels tab:

Set up the levels of risk utilizing the Attendance Works risk levels below.

They should look like this:

click 'Save and Continue'

Conditional Risk Levels tab:

This tab can be skipped, click 'Next '

Report tab:

click 'Reload Risk Indicator' button

this will calculate the risk for the group of students chosen on the details tab.  Depending on the size of the student group, this make take some time.  The 'Current Status' will update on a regular basis until done, or you can click the 'refresh' button to see the most current status.  Do not click the 'Reload Risk Indicator' button a second time as this will restart the process.

Once the Current Status = Completed click the 'Next' button

Students tab:

click 'Load Preview' button to see the Indicator Details for Risk Columns Only.

As noted above the columns are in order with Name, School and Grade Level coming first, and ordered by Risk Value with the students with the highest risk at the top of the list.

Choose 'View Indicatory Summary' and click 'Load Preview' button

to see this view of the data: