Student Attendance

This report includes indicators that reflect attendance data for students in Massachusetts public schools since 2018. Because the information collected has changed over time, not all indicators are available across all years.

Attendance indicators are calculated for students enrolled in grades PK-12 with at least 20 days in membership. For more information, please view the <a href="https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/help/data.aspx?section=students#indicators" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Profiles Help - About the Data</a> page.

Massachusetts defines chronically absent as missing at least 10 percent of days enrolled (for instance, 18 days absent if enrolled for a typical school year of 180 days), regardless of the reason for the absence. Being chronically absent can have a significant impact on a student's academic progress and their ability to access the variety of academic and non-academic supports that schools provide.

Chronic absenteeism grew during the COVID-19 pandemic and, as of the 2022-23 school year, had not returned to pre-pandemic rates. For more information about chronic absence, visit the <a href="https://www.doe.mass.edu/sfs/attendance"target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Chronic Absence and Student Attendance</a> page.

Economically Disadvantaged was used 2015-2021. Low Income was used prior to 2015, and a different version of Low Income has been used since 2022. Please see the <a href="https://www.doe.mass.edu/research/researchers.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">DESE Researcher's Guide</a> for more information.

This dataset contains the same data that is also published on our DESE Profiles site:

<a href="https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/statereport/attendance.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Student Attendance Report</a>

Querying over HTTP

Splitgraph serves as an HTTP API that lets you run SQL queries directly on this data to power Web applications. For example:

curl https://data.splitgraph.com/sql/query/ddn \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d@-<<EOF
{"sql": "
    SELECT *
    FROM \"educationtocareer-data-mass-gov/student-attendance-ak6h-9k7x\".\"student_attendance\"
    LIMIT 100 
"}
EOF

See the Splitgraph documentation for more information.