NYC School Attendance and Chronic Absenteeism Records 2016-2021

Attendance and chronic absenteeism data for New York City public school students from the 2016-17 to 2020-21 academic years. The dataset includes counts of chronically absent students, days present, days absent, and total days for each school, grade, and demographic category. It is published by data.cityofnewyork.us, with records updated as of November 2024.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in % Attendance and % Chronically Absent by School Name and Year to identify schools needing intervention.
• Model the relationship between demographic Category (e.g., SWD, ELL) and # Chronically Absent counts to study disparities.
• Forecast future # Days Absent at the district level using historical Grade-level time-series data from 2016-2021.
• Correlate # Total Days with # Contributing 10+ Total Days and 1+ Pres Day to understand enrollment stability's impact on absenteeism metrics.

Strengths

• Covers five consecutive school years (2016-17 to 2020-21), enabling longitudinal analysis.
• Includes 13 specific columns for granular breakdowns by school, grade, and demographic category.
• Applies consistent NYSED chronic absenteeism definition across all reported years for comparability.

Limitations

• Excludes charter schools, home schooling, and District 79, limiting citywide representativeness.
• Pre-K student data is incomplete, omitting those in Early Education Centers and District Pre-K Centers.
• Rows with five or fewer students or 900 or fewer total days are suppressed ('s'), creating data gaps for small groups.

Provenance

Source

data.cityofnewyork.us

Collection Method

Administrative records from the New York City Department of Education.

Time Range

2016-17 to 2020-21 school years

Freshness

Data last updated November 2024, covering periods up to the 2020-21 school year.

Geography

New York City public school districts (1-32, 75)