Seeing Attendance Patterns While There Is Still Time to Act
Missing school is often the first sign that a student is struggling. But for many schools, attendance data often arrive too late or in formats that make patterns difficult to recognize.
In Indiana, educators previously relied on backward-looking summaries that made year-over-year comparisons difficult and early warning signs easy to miss. By the time patterns became visible, students were often already chronically absent, meaning they missed 10% or more school days in a year.
Today, educators can see attendance patterns as they form. Weekly updates through an Attendance Insights dashboard help schools identify early signs of risk and respond sooner, before absences become entrenched.
Bringing Attendance Data Together Across Schools and Years
To support this shift, the Indiana Department of Education created Attendance Insights, giving educators a clearer weekly view of attendance patterns. By implementing the Ed-Fi Data Standard, the state set a consistent definition of daily attendance across districts, so patterns remain clear even when students move between schools.
Educators can review attendance by day, week, or month, compare current patterns to prior years, and see which days of the week or specific populations of students need attention. Built-in checks surface data quality issues early, so teams know the data is reliable and can make decisions with confidence.
Turning Attendance Data Into Earlier Support for Students
With clearer and more timely data, attendance is no longer just a record-keeping task. Schools can now see shifts as they happen, track attendance across years, and respond before absences become chronic. Since launch, chronic absenteeism has declined for two consecutive years, as schools use consistent, real-time data to act earlier.
Indiana is also expanding this work by combining attendance with behavior and course outcomes for students in grades 6 through 12. The goal is to identify students who may be at risk of not graduating on time, especially during key transitions like the move from eighth to ninth grade, when students are most likely to fall off track.
When everyone sees the same story in the data, it gets easier to coordinate supports and act faster. When you can see patterns over time, you can actually change what happens next.
John Keller
Chief Information Officer, Indiana Department of Education
By connecting attendance data in a consistent way, Indiana created a foundation that lets educators see risk sooner and act earlier to keep students on track.
