Explanation of Attendance Data

What is the data source for attendance information?

Attendance data is provided by school districts to the Georgia Department of Education via the October FTE count and the Student Record data collection

Why is the number of students indicated on the graphs sometimes greater than the school enrollment for my school?

The enrollment data for the school system and the school is generated through the October 2006 FTE count. On the graphs, the number of students is the count of all students enrolled at that school or in that system for any duration during the 2005-2006 academic year. This information is generated through the Student Date record

How does GOSA show attendance data?

The graph shows the percentage of students absent 0 to 5 days, 6-15 days, and more than 15 days for all students and disaggregated by student subgroups. This graph is a distribution of your student population against days absent. The target is to have the majority of a school's population in the YELLOW bar. For students to maximize their benefit from school, they should be absent 5 days or less.

In the future, schools will be assigned indicator ratings of exemplary, acceptable, or unacceptable based on the following criteria:

Exemplary	5% or less of the students are absent more than 15 days
Acceptable	Greater than 5% but less than 15% of the students are absent more than 15 days
Unacceptable	15% or more of the students are absent more than 15 days

To see how a particular school is performing, check the RED bar for ALL STUDENTS against the criteria above. A school's goal is to have less than 5% of its students absent more than 15 days.