This page provides details about a student attendance initiative in the Hickman Mills School District — an urban school district in Kansas City, Mo. area. To learn more about this collaborative project read the blog from AttendanceWorks, which provides training and technical support to the initiative.

Methodology and Findings

Methodology

The analysis took student attendance data from the Hickman Mills School District student information system (Infinite Campus) for school years 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Students who were identified as “moderately chronic absent” in Year 1 (SY 18-19) were then tracked to see if their attendance improved or declined in Year 2 (SY 19-20). “Moderately chronic absent” are students who miss between 10-19% of schools days.

The student data match was done using MOSIS ID (Missouri Student Information System) – the unique student identifier given to each Missouri school student. 

Only “moderately chronic absent” students were included in the analysis because these students were the focus of the intervention by the school attendance teams.

Only “moderately chronic absent” students attending both Year 1 and Year 2 were included in the analysis. There were 603 students who were “moderately chronic absent” in Year 1. Of those Year 1 students, 592 were in attendance in Hickman Mills during Year 2 following the data match.

Note the Year 2 in-person school year was abruptly curtailed because of COVID-19.Recognizing the importance of comparing attendance for similar time periods, our analysis only included data from the first 120 days of in-person attendance for Year 1 and Year 2 to avoid skewing the analysis.

Findings

These findings relate specifically to “moderately chronic absent” students identified in Year 1 and how their attendance changed (improved/declined) in Year 2.

Finding 1: There was a demonstrable improvement in student attendance. There were 451 students (76.1%) whose attendance improved and 141 students (23.8%) whose attendance declined.

Improved Attendance: The students had an average of 6.6 days of improved attendance or 2,967 additional days.

Declined Attendance: The students had an average of 14.5 days additional days missed or 2,039 days.

Finding 2: The overall improvement in student attendance moved 365 students (61.6%) from “moderately chronic absent” (Tier 2) to “good” (Tier 1)

Finding 3: Improvement of student attendance was generally greater among elementary schools, though the middle school also showed improvement.

Supporting Data

The following charts and tables show detailed data at the building level grouped by school type (elementary, middle, high school and alternative)

Limitations of the Findings

Limitation 1: The finding about attendance in upper grades may need to be qualified. Calculations on student attendance for upper grades is tracked by class period, complicating the analysis. Also the attendance for Burke Alternative skews results.

Limitation 2: During the two-year period, the Hickman Mills School District closed some schools and reconfigured grade levels (see graphic, right). These changes were not taken specifically into account in the analysis, though they should have little bearing on whether attendance improved overall within the district.

Summary

It appears the increased focus on “moderately chronic absent” students resulted in positive outcomes in student attendance, particularly among elementary students.