BU
Attendance
District Wide
BR
Briana Kehoe
Director of Educational Services
Burton School District, Rural California
Finding the Root Cause: Using Attendance Data to Explain Academic Struggles
Root Cause Identification
Guesswork
Data-confirmed
New
Attendance-Academic Correlation
Invisible
Visible on dashboard
New
Targeted Interventions
Academic only
Academic + attendance
Holistic
Symptom
Students were failing academically and the default response was more academic intervention — tutoring, small groups, extra practice. But the interventions weren't working for a significant subset of students. The team couldn't figure out why some students responded to intervention and others didn't.
The data to answer the question existed — but it lived in separate systems. Academic data was in the assessment platform, attendance data was in the SIS, and behavior data was tracked elsewhere. No one was looking at all three together.
People
Briana Kehoe, Director of Educational Services for Elementary, led the data integration effort.
Team:
- Briana Kehoe — Director of Educational Services, data analysis lead
- Building principals — Site-level implementation
- Intervention teachers — Adjusted intervention plans based on findings
Data
When attendance, academics, and behavior data were combined on a single dashboard, patterns emerged immediately. Students who weren't responding to academic intervention had chronic attendance issues — they were missing the very instruction designed to help them.
"Having multiple measures in one place — including attendance — has been an eye-opener," says Kehoe. The dashboard made it impossible to ignore the connection.
Plan
The district implemented a two-step protocol:
1. Before assigning academic intervention, check the student's attendance pattern on the dashboard. If attendance is below 90%, address attendance first. More tutoring doesn't help a student who isn't in the building.
2. For students with both attendance and academic gaps, create a dual-track plan: attendance outreach (family contact, barrier assessment) AND academic support. Track both on the same dashboard so the team can see if improving attendance improves academic performance.
This simple filter — "check attendance before adding academic intervention" — redirected resources to the right students and improved intervention effectiveness.
Resources
Root Cause Checklist
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