District leaders know that reducing chronic absenteeism is critical—but too often the data they need is fragmented across schools, inconsistent, or difficult to interpret and see trends. The new District Attendance Dashboard in Attendance Improvement Plus addresses this challenge by providing a clear, consolidated view of attendance across all participating schools.
With visual insights into average daily attendance, chronic absenteeism rates, and absences by type, leaders can quickly track trends over time, spot patterns, and compare data across schools. The dashboard also highlights the top reasons for absences, helping leaders align support resources and interventions more effectively.
By bringing all this information together in one place, the dashboard allows leaders to spend less time chasing data and more time taking action—focusing on schools and families that need the most support. It also makes it easier to recognize what’s working, share best practices, and support targeted interventions where they’re needed most, helping districts support school leaders in acting early to prevent attendance challenges from escalating.
The District Attendance Dashboard is included in the Attendance Improvement Plus package.
When will the District Attendance Dashboard be available?
The District Attendance Dashboard will be added to the Attendance Improvement Plus package in mid-December 2025.
Who will have access to the District Attendance Dashboard?
The District Attendance Dashboard will be available in the TalkingPoints for Districts web application for districts who have purchased the TalkingPoints Attendance Improvement Plus package. District users with permission to view the Attendance module will have access to this page.
Where can partners access the District Attendance Dashboard?
The Attendance Dashboard page is accessed by clicking “Attendance” on the left sidebar. On the Attendance page, users will see two cards and five charts highlighting data and trends related to their attendance data, all of which are impacted by a school filter. Users can look at data for all schools using the TalkingPoints Attendance package, or a subset of those schools. Users can also use the timeframe picker to update the data that appears in the five charts.
Note: the two cards at the top will always show year-to-date (YTD) data.
Year-to-date overview:
Card #1 - Average daily attendance (ADA)
Purpose: Make it easy for districts to report on ADA across schools or for a specific school.
What it shows: The current rate of ADA across schools, or using the school filter to view a specific school or set of schools. Clicking on the card takes users to a secondary page where they can see a detailed breakdown of schools.
Secondary page:
By default, this page shows all schools, their YTD ADA (sorted highest to lowest), and snapshots of the ADA for any months that have already concluded, with the most recent month appearing on the left.
Card #2 - Chronic absenteeism rate
Purpose: The chronic absenteeism rate is one of several attendance indicators that districts must report to their states. The chronic absenteeism rate is calculated as the number of students who have missed ≥10% of school days divided by the total number of enrolled students multiplied by 100.
What it shows: The current chronic absenteeism rate across schools. Alternatively, the user can use the school filter to view the rate for a specific school or set of schools. Clicking on the card takes users to a secondary page where they can see a detailed breakdown by school.
Secondary page:
By default, this page shows all schools, their YTD chronic absenteeism rate (sorted highest to lowest), and snapshots of the chronic absenteeism rate for any months that have already concluded, with the most recent month appearing on the left.
Notes on calculations:
Only currently enrolled students are included in the counts (if a student leaves the district, they will no longer be included)
Each month shows the percent of current students who were absent 10% of that month. (Ex. If you were absent all of August but there all of September, you would not count as chronically absent in September.)
District attendance trends:
Chart #1 - Percentage of absences by absence type:
Purpose: Help track and compare the proportion of absences by main absence categories and see how that ratio changes over time.
What it shows:
Excused absences
Unexcused with a reason
Unexcused without a reason (as defined by school/district-provided values)
Chart #2 - Breakdown of reasons for absence
Purpose: Show the most common reasons students are reported absent across the district, in a specific school, or in a set of schools. Using this chart, you can also compare the most common absence reasons over time to spot trends or changes.
What it shows:
Top absence categories (up to ten) for a given time period. The categories are derived from the district’s student information system (SIS), with some advanced categorization provided by TalkingPoints. Absence reason categorization is done across all schools to create unified and consistent district categories. This may cause category names to differ slightly between the District and School views.
“No Reason Given” category captures all absences with empty reason values or school/district-provided values indicating no reason was provided (e.g., system-generated values) for comparison purposes.
“Uncategorized” and “Other” categories may be included when absence reasons could not be categorized or when there are more than 10 categories to display.
Chart #3 - Students absences over time
Purpose: Provide quick insights into overall trends and track how absences change throughout the school year—including both the number of chronically absent students (those missing 10% or more of school days) and the number of absent students.
What it shows:
The red line shows students who are chronically absent.
The blue line shows all absent students
Chart #4 - Attendance tiers
Purpose: Make it easy to see attendance rates collectively and for individual students.
What it shows: See the proportion of students who fall into the following attendance tiers: satisfactory, at-risk, moderately chronically absent, and severely chronically absent. These tiers align to Attendance Works’ framework for absence interventions.
Users can look at this across all schools, or use the school filter to view rates at a specific school or set of schools. Clicking on “See attendance tier details” takes users to a secondary page where they can see a detailed breakdown of students in each of the tiers.
Secondary page:
By default, the “At risk” segment of the pie chart is selected, and the list below shows students at all schools whose absence rate is at risk (5-9%).
Users can click on a different attendance tier to show students in that tier in the list below.
Secondary page showing students across attendance tiers
Chart #5 - Schools by attendance rates
Purpose: Give district users an easy way to compare attendance rates across their schools. This can help facilitate knowledge sharing across the district, allowing districts to pinpoint schools that are having success, learn their methods, and share them with schools that need more support.
What it shows: See the schools with the top six attendance rates. Clicking on “See attendance rates for all schools” takes users to a secondary page where they can see a detailed breakdown of all schools.
Secondary page:
By default, all schools are sorted by their Average Daily Attendance rate (ADA) as of today (sorted highest to lowest).
The “Attendance rate” column can be clicked to reverse the sort (lowest to highest)
The “Compared to last interval” column shows how the attendance rate has changed between the current time frame selected & the same length of time before it. (Ex. If you select “7 D” this column will show you the attendance rate change from last week.) If data is unavailable for the preceding time frame, “N/A” appears.
Is there a way to see the detailed data behind these charts?
Yes, clicking on any of the following will open a secondary page with more detailed information:
Card #1 - Average daily attendance (ADA)
Card #2 - Chronic absenteeism rate
Chart #4 - Attendance tiers
Chart #5 - Schools by attendance rates
The following charts do not yet have secondary pages with more detailed data:
Chart #1 - Percentage of absences by absence type
Chart #2 - Breakdown of reasons for absence
Chart #3 - Students absences over time
What data is used to populate the Attendance Trends section of the district dashboard?
Attendance data used in the attendance trends charts is pulled directly from the student information system (SIS) using the TalkingPoints Connector for data integration. TalkingPoints enhances the district’s SIS data with advanced categorization (including the use of AI), transforming raw information into meaningful insights that make charts and trends easier to interpret and act on.
Within Attendance trends, users can adjust the chart timeframes using the preset options or they can customize their own dates, for example, to look at a semester.
Can users download or export these charts?
Yes. Users can export the charts as PNG or JPEG files by selecting the ellipse in the right-corner and selecting download.
How often is the data on the District Attendance Dashboard updated?
Typically daily, but this can vary depending on the student information system (SIS) sync setup with the partner.
What does the “Uncategorized” category represent in Chart #2 (“Breakdown of Reasons by Absence”)?
TalkingPoints is unique in that we are helping partners categorize the absence reason data - something not typically seen in other platforms (as noted by Attendance Works). Understanding absence reasons is a critical first step to initiating interventions. This categorization is done through a combination of AI and custom logic that groups absence reason data. It’s also not a static set of categories, it’s tailored to the district's data. If one or more schools have inconsistent ways of inputting absence reasons, the district may find an 'Uncategorized' section appears. That category will show any reasons that did not seem to fit existing patterns.
How do we calculate average daily attendance (ADA)?
Only current students are included in the counts (if a student moves/drops out, they will no longer be included)
The YTD column shows the cumulative ADA for the year so far. Each month’s column shows the ADA of that month (not cumulative). This allows for districts to see trends in monthly behavior.
If users utilize the custom time picker to look back at a previous year, they will see data for students who were enrolled on the last day of that year (informed by the calendar data they share with us).
How do we calculate Chronic Absenteeism?
Chronic absenteeism rate = (Number of students who have missed ≥10% of school days / Total number of enrolled students) * 100
Only currently enrolled students are included in the counts (if a student leaves the district, they will no longer be included)
Each month shows the percent of current students who were absent 10% of that month. (Ex. If you were absent all of August but there all of September, you would not count as chronically absent in September.)