This lesson provides details on attendance calculations within your eduCLIMBER system.
Full-Day Attendance Rate
Full-Day Attendance Rate is the percentage of time a student is present for the entire day (no absences or tardies reported). Any absence or tardiness results in a student receiving zero credit for the entire day, unless an "Excused" code is marked to not count against the full day rate. Furthermore, the rate is not calculated by compiling periods; it looks for the days where they didn't miss a period (tardy or absent), divided by the potential number of attendance days.
Example: A student has one day at 100% and the next day at 50%; their rate is 50%, as the student received zero credit for the second day.
Possible Attendance Days
The potential number of attendance days used to calculate attendance rates is calculated by eduCLIMBER using the start and end date specifying when a student was in the district for a given year, which is either explicitly provided by the SIS, or calculated by keeping track of the earliest start date and latest end date of a student's enrollment in a course. Weekdays are then counted between those dates, removing the days that have been manually entered into eduCLIMBER as School Days Off, to come up with a total number of days where it is assumed the student should have attended.
Attendance Rates from your Student Information System
The attendance data eduCLIMBER receives from your Student Information System is imported via an Attendance file, which is displayed as "SIS Reported Rate" throughout the eduCLIMBER application. Typically, absence values in the SIS data export file are contained in a column titled "Absent Days Equivalent," or similar. This value is only available if an SIS tracks this value on their platform, and includes the value in their Attendance Data export to eduCLIMBER. Sometimes, this value does not appear in the SIS Attendance export file, but can be added by making a request to your SIS.
The Absent Days Equivalent value reflects the percent of time a student was absent during the school day. While many SISs send values of 0.5 and 1.0, others may send additional values, including 0.25 and 0.75. Only records with values greater than 0 should be sent to eduCLIMBER. Students considered present do not need to be included in the attendance file.
Using the Absent Days Equivalent value sent from the SIS, the Days Equivalent Percent is calculated, which describes what percent of Possible Attendance Days a student attended class. This is calculated by taking the Possible Attendance Days, described in the section above, and subtracting the Absent Days Equivalent, which gives the number of days the student was present. This number is then divided by the Possible Attendance Days to attain the Days Equivalent Percent.
Districts should reach out to their SIS directly regarding further details about how they calculate attendance rate.
If your attendance is imported from your SIS into eduCLIMBER using the Absent Day Equivalent value, you can change how the rates display visually within the eC system by utilizing eduCLIMBER's Rate Adjustment.
| Absent Days Equivalent | Translation |
| 0.25 | Student was absent 25% of the day. |
| 0.50 | Student was absent 50% of the day. |
| 0.75 | Student was absent 75% of the day. |
| 1.0 | Student was absent 100% of the day. |
Period Attendance Rate
Period Attendance Rate reports the rate of periods missed, unless an "Excused" code is marked to not count against the full day rate. This calculation is hard-coded. At this time, districts cannot set a custom calculation for a period attendance rate.
Example: If a school had 10 periods, and a student misses 2 of those periods, then the period attendance rate would display as 80%.
Information Icon
Use the “i” icon located in the upper left corner of any attendance chart for a detailed description of the breakdowns.
Next Steps
To learn more, visit the Attendance manual.