Which Attendance Report Should I Use?

If you are looking for a report to show you a list of students who received a particular number of tardies, absences (sometimes called chronic absenteeism), whether you want to look for period attendance/classroom records (the count of the selected attendance flag per section) or daily records (the count of daily marks), you can use Search Records. This is most relevant if you want to see a count of specific attendance flags (not just categories). You can run this by reporting period, term, or even a custom date range.

If you want to run a report that shows students who exceed a specific percentage of absences or tardies (but not specific flags/attendance marks), you would benefit from building a custom report and adding columns from the categories "Attendance by Session" (for year to date) or "Attendance by Grading Period."

To learn how to build a custom report, see our Custom Reports chapter.

If you do not see the categories "Attendance by Session" or "Attendance by Grading Period," partner with your System Admin to have them shared to you. If you are a System Admin, see Manage Custom Reporting Data to share the categories.

If you wish to view count of daily attendance (all day marks) or period attendance (classroom attendance totals) for year-to-date or for a full year (including previous years), you would benefit from building a custom report. You would want the Type: Core Data, Category: Attendance by Session, and at a minimum, pull in Academic Year and Attendance Category columns. Depending on what data you need, that's when you can choose which other columns you wish to add to your report.

See Create a Custom Report from Search 2.0 for reference if you need to start a new report from a search.

See Add Columns or Data to a Custom Report for reference on adding columns to your report.

See Manage Columns on a Custom Report for reference on managing what/how you see data in your report.

Once you add your columns, you would then want to filter to the academic year you are trying to pull data for (example, if trying to view 2018-2019 year's attendance, set your Academic Year filter as "equals" 2019). You may also want to narrow down to which attendance category you wish to pull into your report. See Use Filters on a Custom Report to add filters to your report.

Note: If you do not see the categories "Attendance by Session" or "Attendance by Grading Period," partner with your System Admin to have them shared to you. If you are a System Admin, see Manage Custom Reporting Data to share the categories.

If you want to run a report to see total present (apportionment), total scheduled days, percent present (apportionment), etc., you would benefit from running the Daily ADA report.

If you want to run a report to see total present, total scheduled days, percent present, etc., and break it down by District of Residence, you would benefit from running the Daily ADA report.

Note: District of Residence is reliant on transfer data in Illuminate (meaning this relies on students having transfer records). This is also mentioned in our Daily ADA report help document.

If you want to see attendance counts, including breakdown for all attendance flags, or total present, total absent, total tardies, or percentages of these, by class (section), you would benefit from using the Class Summary report (Attendance > (Reports) Class Summary). This report allows you to select a date range (Attendance Period, Grading Period, or custom date range), and provides filtering options to search by a particular teacher, and/or course, and/or timeblock, and/or grade level.

This is useful if you are wanting to see attendance data for a specific timeblock or teacher or course. This can also be useful for running data on after school programs (ASES). It can even be exported to Excel or PDF.

If you want to run a report that shows students whose attendance marks match 100% the selected flag(s) within a date range, you could run the Perfect Attendance report (Attendance > (Reports) Perfect Attendance). This report will look at all period attendance for the students and those who only have the flags that are marked will show.

Note: Works best for elementary students where their schedules are set up for attendance in only 1 timeblock. For secondary students, where you may want to allow wiggle room for tardies, it may be better to build a custom report as mentioned in scenario 2 above.

Pro Tip: If you select all attendance flags when running this report, you can essentially get a spreadsheet view of counts for all flags students have received.

If you want to view a summary of all attendance counts or all attendance records for 1 student, you would want to run the Student Summary report. This shows you totals for all attendance flags, attendance categories, and even a list of what attendance flag(s) the student received each day. It can be run by Reporting Period, Term, entire Session, Grading Period, or custom date range. You can also download this into Excel or PDF.

Note: There is also a way to run this for an entire grade level or teacher if you wish to run the data in mass.

If you wish to view comments and how attendance was reconciled, you would benefit from downloading the Call Logs in the Absence Reconciliation tool.

Another option for this is installing a report from Ze Library called "District - Attendance Comments." If you are not able to access Ze Library, partner with your System Admin.

If you are wanting to review logs of which user(s) made changes to attendance flags for a student(s), see what it was changed from and changed to, and when, you would benefit from running the Attendance Verification Log. This is a prebuilt report found by going to Reports > View Reports and searching for Attendance Verification Log.

Note: If you do not see this report in your reports list, please contact your System Admin to have it shared to you. If you are a System Admin and do not see this report, please contact Illuminate to have it shared with you.