Presentation Resources
Forum Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data
Download Guide PDF (4.3 MB)
The Forum Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data is designed to help state and local education agency staff improve their attendance data practices – the collection, reporting, and use of attendance data to improve student and school outcomes. The guide offers best practice suggestions and features real-life examples of how attendance data have been used by education agencies. The guide includes a set of voluntary attendance codes that can be used to compare attendance data across schools, districts, and states. The guide also features tip sheets for a wide range of education agency staff who work with attendance data. This guide updates information originally published in the 2009 Every School Day Counts: The Forum Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data. In 2021, the Forum Guide to Attendance, Participation, and Engagement Data in Virtual and Hybrid Learning Models was published as a companion to this guide.