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Every Day Matters - Increasing Regular Attendance and Reducing Chronic Absenteeism

Every Day Matters

Students with regular school attendance are more likely to succeed. 

Every day matters for every child.

Everyone can help make this happen – schools, families and community members.

Everyone can help Oregon's students get to school – educators, parents and community members.

This website is intended to provide resources to students, families, educators, and community members about attendance in Oregon.

School Districts


What is Chronic Absenteeism?

Absenteeism forumla: Unexcused Absences + Excused Absences + Exclusionary Discipline = Chronic Absence </= 10% instuctional days.

Experts in the field define chronic absenteeism as missing 10 percent or more of school days and severe chronic absenteeism as missing 20 percent or more of school days, including excused, unexcused and discipline-related absences (Ehrlich, Gwynne, Pareja, Allensworth, Moore, Jagesic, & Sorice, 2014; Buehler, Tapogna & Chang, 2012; Connoly & Olson, 2004). This definition is used at the National Technical Assistance Center to support attendance intervention, the state and national initiative, Attendance Works and will be used with subsequent national data collection through the Office of Civil Rights. For years, the issue of chronic absenteeism was not widely understood as most states, districts and schools were not measuring it. Instead, many schools use the metric of “Average Daily Attendance” which can greatly mask the number of students who are chronically absent. For example, a school may have a daily attendance rate of 92 percent or higher while one in four students at the school is chronically absent.

If you have questions or are looking for specific information related to attendance, please contact us at: EveryDayMatters.