COLUMBUS, Ohio —Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Director Stephen D. Dackin today announced the launch of Ohio’s new Statewide Attendance Dashboard, a public tool designed to provide fast, transparent, and easy-to-use attendance data to help schools, families, and communities reduce chronic absenteeism and keep more students in the classroom.
The dashboard will be updated weekly and will allow users to track statewide attendance trends and view chronic absenteeism rates by district, school building, and grade level.
“Every child in Ohio deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential, and that starts with being in school,” said Governor DeWine. “This dashboard is a tool for the entire community – for parents, educators, local leaders, and neighbors – to start a conversation and work together to help students show up, stay engaged, and succeed.”
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The dashboard displays a trend line showing the percentage of students who are on track to be chronically absent over the course of the school year. Users can hover over each week to see the chronic absenteeism rate at that point in time. The dashboard is updated weekly using the most recent data available.
In addition to statewide data, users can search for individual districts and school buildings and view attendance data down to the grade level. The tool also allows users to compare school districts and other cohorts to see how their attendance trends compare over time.
Users can also view the percentage of students in each of the following attendance categories:
- Satisfactory (absent less than 5% of hours)
- At-Risk (absent between 5–10% of hours)
- Moderate Chronic Absence (absent between 10–20% of hours)
- Severe Chronic Absence (absent more than 20% of hours)
“This is a major step forward in how we track and respond to attendance issues in Ohio. To our knowledge, Ohio is only the second state in the country to develop an attendance dashboard that provides weekly updates,” said Director Dackin. “For the first time, schools and communities in Ohio will have access to weekly attendance information that can help them spot trends, identify challenges early, and respond with the right supports before students fall behind.”
Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Director Stephen D. Dackin discusses Ohio’s new Statewide Attendance Dashboard.
In Ohio, a student is considered chronically absent when they miss at least 10% of the minimum number of hours required in the school year for any reason – including excused absences. Students only need to miss the equivalent of two to three days per month to be on track to be chronically absent.
By the end of the school year, this equates to missing nearly a full month of school.
The consequences of missing school are significant. Studies show that students with good attendance are three times more likely to be proficient readers, nearly four times more likely to be proficient in math, and almost 12 times more likely to graduate on time than students who are chronically absent.
During his recent State of the State Address, Governor DeWine highlighted that more than 25% of Ohio students were chronically absent last year statewide. In the state’s major urban districts, nearly half of students were chronically absent.
While the Statewide Attendance Dashboard represents a major milestone for transparency and accountability, Director Dackin noted that some districts and community schools are not yet represented in the tool. Many of those schools are actively working to update their data systems – including coordination with third-party vendors – so that they can provide attendance data in the correct format to populate within the dashboard.
Additional schools and districts are expected to be added in the coming months.
“We hope – and we expect – that every school and district in Ohio will do the work to get their data on the dashboard,” said Governor DeWine. “The more complete this information is, the more powerful this tool becomes. This is a community problem, and it’s going to take a community response. This dashboard gives us a way to see the challenge clearly and act faster to help make sure students are in school.”
The Statewide Attendance Dashboard was developed through a partnership between the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce and the Stay in the Game! Attendance Network.
Launched in 2019 by the Cleveland Browns Foundation, Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, and Harvard’s Proving Ground, and managed by Battelle, the Stay in the Game! Attendance Network brings together school leaders and other local partners in communities across Ohio to collaborate on strategies to improve attendance.
The Management Council, a key partner in the Ohio Education Computer Network, developed the Statewide Attendance Dashboard and works closely with districts and Information Technology Centers to ensure students have appropriate connectivity, support, software, and digital resources to succeed today and into the future. Ohio’s 16 Information Technology Centers serve more than 1.5 million students in public school districts, career centers, and community schools, providing high-quality internet access and a wide range of technology services that support both operations and learning.
The dashboard is available now at Attendance.Ohio.gov.
