1. Attacking the Daily Monster…
Open conversation around attendance enabling
Jason Wrage – OVRTR
Dr. Larry Fruth – A4L Community
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

2. Attendance Impacts Campaign for Fiscal Equity (2013)
Attendance and achievement are inextricably linked.
Attendance data can be an indicator of students and schools at risk.
Improving attendance can reduce the achievement gap
Attendance Works (2014)
Most schools/states don’t look at all the right data to improve school attendance.
50% of students who miss 2-4 days in Sept go on to miss nearly a month of school.
5 to 7.5 million U.S. students miss nearly a month of school each year.
One in 10 kindergarten and first grade students are chronically absent
Chronic absence by 6th grade is the leading indicator of high school dropout
Missing 10% of the school, or about 18 days, negatively affects academics.
The academic impact of missing is the same whether the absences are excused
Improving attendance rates improve academic prospects and graduating.
Attendance improves when schools engage students/parents in positive ways
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

3. NCES/Forum Attendance Guidance
“Why does technology matter? In organizations that lack automated data systems, school staff members are more likely to fall behind when trying to track student attendance on a daily or more frequent basis. Although technology has improved greatly over the years, attendance continues to be recorded by hand in some organizations, which invariably leads to entry errors and data quality concerns. Finally, a school without an automated data system may fail to contact parents in a timely manner when students don’t come to school. This may not be, strictly speaking, a data quality issue, but the timeliness of those calls to parents is often a key factor in attendance intervention efforts.”
Summary of Recommendations
✓  Establish a mutually exclusive and exhaustive, yet manageable taxonomy.
✓  Build a culture of quality data.
✓  Plan carefully with input from attendance collectors, reporters, and users.
✓  Upgrade information systems.
✓  Automate communication technology
- NCES Handbooks “Every School Day Counts” 2009
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

4. Reality Challenges – Front Lines!
Teachers identify tracking school attendance is a challenge at best, a nightmare for many.
Teachers within the same schools track attendance differently even when provided with sophisticated tracking systems.
Many track attendance only at the beginning of class which can lead to tardies being counted as absences.
Some teachers believe it is the students’ responsibility to correct the inaccuracies
Some teachers are non-compliant, especially if there is no motivation
Counselors and other staff who may be meeting with a student during his/her which again leads to inflating the absence rate
Attendance tracking is wildly inconsistent, often between classrooms, schools, and districts.
Pressures….
Inaccurate data has financial ramifications for schools (states and NCLB/ESSA)
Inaccurate data is a safety issues for students.
Inaccurate data has impact on teacher/parent interactions
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

5. xPress API Development
A 101 on the Development of xPress Roster and xpress sre api’s
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

6. What Do People Want?
Simplify application connections for high “pain point” functions
Align to Common Education Data Model Initiative
Real time, bi-directional movement of information – not limited/unsafe CSV files
Enter once – use many times!
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

7. What is xPress?
Is a new line of modern, open, standard APIs for education
Provides schools/developers a way to simply and securely exchange data among apps – locally, cloud or mobile.
Developed from real-world use cases focusing on practical, easy to implement solutions.
Uses contemporary technologies like REST and OAuth, enabling direct communication among systems (the “broker” is optional)
Built on SIF 3x Infrastructure and Data Model
RESTful with both JSON and XML Support
No M.O.M. (I.e. ZIS) required
Represents commonly used CEDS data in a straightforward manner.
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

8. Who Are Implementing Them?
Developers
SIS vendors
Content providers
T&L applications
Integrators
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

9. Who Are Implementing Them?
Districts, States, and Intermediate Agencies
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

10. xPress Roster API
Make it easy for consumers to get most commonly used data  ROSTER, DEMOGRAPHIC, CONTACT
Guiding principle: Simplify and Flatten
Utilize SIF 3 element naming conventions to provide provide a logical link to the full enterprise model
Providers maintain a single set of refIds
Minimize reliance on XML-specific features (ease transition to JSON)
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

11. xPress SRE API
One of the major factors impacting the incidence and impact of parent involvement and student mobility is the easy access and portability of student information. There is a need for an Student Records Exchange (SRE) leveraging the current marketplace activities and “lessons learned” from the development of the record exchanges.
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community

12. Attendance xPress?
© Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community