After making strategic investments in improving attendance, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) released a District-wide attendance rate from the 2015-16 school year, hitting a District record of 93.4 percent attendance. The District’s attendance rates show a steady increase over time, and this increase marks a 0.2 percent rise, from 93.2 percent in the 2014-15 school year. The District’s attendance rate for the 2010-11 school year was 91.7 percent. Two-thirds of District schools showed improved attendance over the previous year. Every tenth of a percentage point gained represents another hour of instruction time gained per student over the course of the year, meaning that the District gained the equivalent of two hours of instruction time for every CPS student. The District’s Pre-K through 12th grade strategy to improve attendance and reduce chronic absenteeism and chronic truancy includes:

• prioritizing good attendance for students in preschool and the primary grades so good habits are cultivated early on;
• improving data tools and reporting mechanisms for schools and networks;
• identifying students who are at risk of becoming chronically absent and truant with tailored interventions much sooner;
• increasing training to implement best practices uniformly across the district and increase collaboration between departments;
• providing a $1.9 million District attendance grant to improve attendance rates of schools that are in the bottom quartile and have the greatest need.

The 2015-16 attendance data is available at www.cps.edu/schooldata/pages/schooldata.aspx.