Giving Compass' Take:

• Taylor Swaak explains how states are working to prevent attendance manipulation as ESSA raises the stakes.

• How can funders help districts measure attendance accurately? What resources do schools need to increase attendance? 

• Learn about the state of chronic absenteeism in the U.S.

What gets measured, gets done, as the popular education maxim goes. But what gets measured can also get gamed.

Tackling chronic absenteeism is now part of education plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act for 36 states and Washington, D.C., making student attendance a factor in determining school success under federal education law.

An audit of the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) released in January found that educators had manipulated attendance records for class of 2017 graduates. The most egregious was Dunbar High School, where records were tampered with more than 4,000 times.

In 2016-17, nearly 250 California schools reported perfect attendance, which education department officials have largely chalked up to data input errors.

Officials from all three departments say they have data systems in place that help discourage manipulation and safeguard against errors.

In California, for example, schools and districts can’t submit their attendance data to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) — which the education department utilizes to monitor and aggregate student-level data for the public — without addressing all computer-generated red flags.

If a student’s absences and days attended don’t add up to the total number of days enrolled, an automatic error message pops up. If a pupil’s name is linked to more than one student attendance record, that’s another error. Any data point that’s left blank — error message. The list goes on.

Sometimes, though, catching data anomalies comes down to a good set of eyes and diligent reviews of the data, according to state officials.

Connecticut staff who monitor PSIS, which also tracks where students are enrolled, have become increasingly aware of schools dis-enrolling and re-enrolling students who miss multiple weeks of school. In these cases, the department reaches out to districts directly — oftentimes finding that these districts, in the absence of concrete guidance, are unaware of when removing students is warranted.

Read the full article about preventing attendance manipulation by Taylor Swaak at The 74.