The K-3 Absenteeism and Early Childhood Participation report shows absence rates for students in kindergarten through third grade, and allows users to compare absence rates of students who participated in select early childhood programs with rates for all students.
Research has shown that school attendance during the early years of school is one of the keys to academic success. Chronic absenteeism (missing 10 percent or more of school days) puts young children at risk for falling behind their peers, especially in reading proficiency.
The following state-funded EC programs are included in this report:
- Early Childhood Special Education*
- Early On®*
- Great Start Readiness Program*
- GSRP/Head Start Blend*
- Head Start†
- Early Head Start†
*Districts are required to report participation in early childhood special education, Early On®, Great Start Readiness Program and GSRP/Head Start Blend to the state.
†Children who participated in Head Start and Early Head Start are reported optionally. Beginning in 2016-17, these programs are included as part of an effort under the Race to the Top grant to integrate this data into the early childhood reports on MI School Data.
Family income must be below a certain threshold for children to be eligible for GSRP and GSRP/Head Start Blend. Because these two programs are income dependent, the report category chosen can impact what results are shown. For instance, if “All Students” is selected, the report will likely show that children who did not participate in the early childhood programs have a lower absence rate than those who participated. However, when the report category Economically Disadvantaged is used, it is likely that the opposite is true, and those who participated have a lower absence rate than those who did not. For this reason, it is important to keep in mind that the report category chosen will probably affect the comparison on the resulting screen.
The report is updated in early winter. See the Recently Posted Reports page for when the report was last updated.
Historical Changes
- Beginning in 2016-17, Head Start and Early Head Start data were included in the “Participated in State-Funded EC Program(s)” category.
Use the Location and Report Settings to select a location, school year, and report category. Categories include race/ethnicity, gender, economically disadvantaged, English learners, students with disabilities, and absentee status.
Data view options include:
- Snapshot (a graph and table of the selected data)
- Trend (a graph and table showing changes over time). The trend view for the EC Absenteeism report plots the median values from the snapshot.
Click the “About This Graph” link for an explanation of the box plot graph used in this report.
See the MI School Data Quick Start Guide for the basics of navigating the site and customizing a report.
Location Options
Locations Setting options: Statewide, or search by County, by ISD/District, or by Early Childhood Provider. Use the Location Search radio button to search all options, or to select which location options to search.
Logged-in Users
Users with secure access who are logged in can see unsuppressed numbers for the entities for which they have been specifically authorized.
The Center for Educational Performance and Information collects the data for this report from public schools and intermediate school districts via the Michigan Student Data System. For more information on the MSDS application and reporting rules, please see the MSDS Collection Details Manual on the CEPI website.
If you have questions not addressed here or in the linked resources, please contact CEPI customer support at cepi@michigan.gov.
Disclosure Avoidance
To protect the privacy of individual students, CEPI applies data suppression rules to sensitive data when report settings would yield fewer than 10 students in a given group. Complementary groups may also be suppressed. In some cases, values less than 10 may be shown when there is no risk of identifying individual students. Secure users can log in to view unsuppressed data for their authorized location. Please see How CEPI Protects Education Data for more information.
Report Labels
See the glossary for additional terms and acronyms used on MI School Data.
Data Calculations
Absence Rate = Number of Days Absent / The total number of days education services were available to the student.
