What is school attendance?
School attendance tracks how often a student is present or absent from school during an academic year. “Regular attendance” is measured as the percentage of K-12 students who are present for over 90% of instructional days, while “chronic absence” indicates rates of attendance at 90% or fewer of instructional days. Chronic absenteeism tends to be more prevalent among students in earlier grades (kindergarten and 1st grade) and then later in high school. OCID has data on school attendance starting in 2005 among students attending K-12 public schools in Oregon.
For education-related indicators, the year refers to the fall start of the academic year. For example, 2016 refers to the 2016-17 academic year. To learn more about the school attendance indicator, please visit the Technical Dictionary.
Why is school attendance important?
School attendance in early years is a predictor of attendance and academic achievement in later years. Chronic absenteeism occurs in all types of communities, but is particularly high among students with disabilities and those who are economically disadvantaged.
In Oregon, chronic absenteeism has a disproportionate impact on students with disabilities, students of color, students of American Indian and Alaska Native descent, students who have received at least one out-of-school suspension, and students experiencing economic disadvantage. Oregon’s regular attendance rate consistently ranks in the bottom 20% of states.
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Resources
To learn more about school attendance, please visit the Oregon Department of Education (ODE):
Please remember the following
- OCID only includes children born in Oregon since 2001; ideally, the dataset will be expanded over time to represent all of the children in Oregon.
- OCID only includes education data for children attending Oregon public schools.
- To display race and ethnicity categories consistently across multiple data sources, OCID currently combines information from vital statistics, education, Medicaid, and child welfare records. Visit our Race and Ethnicity Data Overview to learn more.
- The Dashboard shows descriptive data, not causal relationships. In depth analyses are needed to understand why disparities or trends occur. OCID’s targeted analyses shed light on policy questions prioritized by the Governance Committee.
For more information about the details and limitations of the data, please visit our Technical Dictionary and Dataset Overview.
Ready to explore the data?
Use the interactive display below to discover how characteristics collected by state programs vary among groups of children with different well-being outcomes.
Data are a starting point for understanding children’s experiences; they do not fully describe an individual’s identity or experience.
Want to dive deeper?
Explore the interactive display below to investigate potential trends or disparities among groups of children with the same well-being outcome.
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Suggested citation: Center for Evidence-based Policy, Oregon Health & Science University. School attendance dashboard. Oregon Child Integrated Dataset (OCID) website. https://www.ocid-cebp.org/outcome/school-attendance/. Published [inserted ‘display updated’ date].
The Center for Evidence-based Policy partners with the Center for Health Systems Effectiveness, also at Oregon Health & Science University, on dashboard analytics.