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How does a Missouri school manage in-person and distance learning attendance?

This article explains how Missouri schools manage calendars and attendance in SchoolInsight, to be in compliance with the DESE 2020-21 attendance reporting guidelines. The DESE guidelines specify that a student’s in-person attendance rate be used to calculate distance learning attendance hours. For example, a student who has a 90% present rate on in-person days, is considered 90% present on distance learning days. As a result, schools need to keep track of when students are in-person vs. when they are distance-learning. Furthermore, schools should continue to track in-person attendance, however, tracking distance learning attendance is optional.

Schools manage planned distance learning dates and school closures via academic calendars. On the other hand, individual and group shifts to distance learning due to COVID are managed via the Self-Isolation/Quarantine feature. Below are the four steps that schools should take to implement calendars and attendance in the 2020-21 academic year:

  1. Enter Student In-Person and E-Learning Calendar Days
  2. Enter Student Self-Isolation/Quarantine Dates
  3. Enter Attendance
  4. Review Attendance

Enter Student In-Person and E-Learning Calendar Days

Schools manage planned in-person and planned e-learning dates on calendars. These are dates that the school has predetermined or planned for students to be either in-person learning or distance learning. To track student planned in-person and distance learning days:

  1. Create / Modify calendar(s)
  2. Select calendar in-school and e-learning learning days
  3. Assign calendars to students

Create/Modify Calendar(s)

It’s best practice to create separate calendars per group of students who are scheduled to be in-person or distance learning together on the same days. For example, students who attend in-person on Mondays and Tuesdays will have one calendar. Students who attend in-person on Wednesdays and Thursdays will have a separate calendar. Furthermore, virtual learners will have a calendar in which all days are e-learning days. Alternatively, fully in-person students will have a calendar in which all days are in-person days. You can also create calendars for individual students if they have a unique distance learning schedule.

If you already have your calendar(s) created, you can edit your existing calendar to support e-learning days. On the other hand, if you need to create a new calendar or calendars, you can do that as well.

To edit an existing calendar:

  1. For district managed calendars go to School District Admin Main and for school managed calendars go to Admin Main 
  2. Go to Yearly Setup > Academic Calendars > edit
  3. Select Supports E-Learning Days
  4. Save

To create a new calendar:

    1. For district managed calendars go to School District Admin Main and for school managed calendars go to Admin Main 
    2. Go to Yearly Setup > Academic Calendars > Create Calendar
    3. Select the Academic Year
    4. Enter a Title that describes the group of students that the calendar will be assigned to
    5. Enter calendar data
        • Enter First day of attendance
        • Enter Last day of attendance
        • Select Supports E-Learning Day
        • Select Days school is scheduled
        • Select all days of the week that school is in session
        • Select Grade levels
          • Choose the grade levels that apply to this calendar
    6. Create Calendar

After creating the calendar, update it to indicate instructional days, holidays, breaks, teacher institute days, parent/teacher conference days, etc. For more information about creating calendars and updating calendar days, refer to the following articles:

Select Calendar In-School and E-Learning Days

The calendar has a feature that allows you to indicate which days students are planned to be in-person and which days they’re planned to be e-learning. Dates on the calendar should be set to e-learning in the following situations:

  • Students are scheduled to be distance learning
  • The entire school shifts to distance learning due to school closures

Student calendars should always reflect their planned in-person and e-learning days. Therefore, make sure to create a new calendar for students when planned e-learning days change in such a way that they vary from other students who share the same calendar.

To set the e-learning option on each date that students will be distance learning:

    1. For district managed calendars go to School District Admin Main and for school managed calendars go to Admin Main
    2. Go to Yearly Setup > Academic Calendars
    3. Click view next to a calendar
    4. Click edit for a month
    5. Select E-Learning: e-learn at home for all days in the month that students who use the calendar are planned to be distance learning
    6. Save
    7. Repeat steps 3-6 for each month

Below is an example of how a calendar appears for an E-Learning day and an In-Person day.

E-Learning Day

In-Person Day

         e-learning_day.PNG               in-person_day.PNG

Assign Calendars to Students

After the calendars have been set, you can assign calendars to students. SchoolInsight allows you to filter by grade level and other demographic information in order to balance the student groups.

To assign a calendar to a single student:

  1. Go to (School District) Admin Main > Student Single View > Search/Select a Student
  2. Edit
  3. Select the correct calendar
  4. Save

To assign a calendar to a group of students:

  1. Go to (School District) Admin Main > Yearly Setup > Academic Calendars > Mass Assign Calendars
  2. Select a Calendar to assign
  3. (Optional) Filter the students by clicking on the menu button next to any column title and choosing the desired filter
  4. Check the students you would like to assign the selected calendar to
  5. Save

For more information about mass assigning calendars to students, refer to the following KB:

Enter Student Self-Isolation/Quarantine Dates

Schools also need to manage changes from planned in-person learning to e-learning when the change occurs due to self-isolation or quarantine. This can be done per individual or group of individuals via the Self Isolation/Quarantine Feature. The feature allows you to indicate when students cannot come to school and will therefore shift from planned in-person learning to distance learning. To learn how to use this feature, refer to the following article: Self Isolation/Quarantine feature.

Enter Attendance

In-Person Learning

Entering attendance for in-person learning days is required.  The procedures for entering in-person attendance have not changed. Therefore, you should continue to enter attendance for in-person days as you always have. For example, when students are present, set their attendance to a “present” type attendance code.  Furthermore, when students are expected to be in-person, but are not in school and are not participating in distance learning, set their attendance to an “absent” type attendance code.

Distance Learning 

While you are not required to enter attendance for distance learning days, you can do so by using the same procedures that are used for in-person days. Keep in mind that attendance that is entered for distance learning days will not be included in the student attendance calculation for state reporting. Instead, SchoolInsight calculates distance learning attendance hours by applying the in-person attendance rate.  

Below is an example of how attendance appears on days when a student’s calendar is set to e-learning. The word *Offsite appears in the attendance code column and the phrase E-Learning Day appears in the Notes column.

offsite_and_e-learning_notation.PNG

Review Attendance 

The best way to see the 2020-21 attendance for both in-person and distance learning days is to generate the Individual Student Details report. The report can now be generated in two modes. 

2020-2021 MO Attendance Mode

The 2020-2021 MO Attendance mode option displays attendance hours by applying the in-person attendance rate to the distance learning days. This mode replicates the same calculation that is used for your 2020-21 June Cycle Enrollment/Attendance export. Virtual student calendars include only e-learning days. Therefore, following DESE guidelines, the virtual student present attendance rate defaults to a 94% present rate, assuming that the students have completed their work in their virtual courses.

To generate the Individual Student Details report using the DESE 2020-21 guidelines for attendance reporting:

  1. Go to Admin Main Attendance > Individual Student Details
  2. Select Report Type Summary
  3. Select a Time Frame
  4. Select Student(s)
  5. Select Calculation Mode 2020-2021 MO Attendance
  6. Select Options
  7. Generate Report

The below example shows how the report appears for students who have some in-person learning days and some distance learning days. The sample student was enrolled for 8 days. One date on the calendar is set to an e-learning day. On another date, the student was quarantined. As a result, the student has 6 days of in-person attendance.  Of the 6 in-person days, the student was marked present for 5 of the 6 days. Therefore, the program applied an 83.3% (5 / 6) present attendance rate to the hours for 2 days of distance learning:

ISD_-_new_mode_hybrid.PNG


The below example shows how the report appears for virtual students. Virtual students attend DESE-approved virtual courses and have no in-person learning days. As a result, there is no in-person attendance to be used to calculate an attendance rate. Rather, the DESE allows schools to report a 94% attendance rate for virtual students who complete all of their coursework. Below is an example of how the Individual Student Details report appears for virtual students. In the example, a 94% attendance rate is applied to a student who was enrolled for 95 days at 7.1833 hours per day. 

mceclip0.png

 

Traditional Attendance Mode

The Individual Student Details report still includes the option to report on your hand-entered attendance for both in-person and distance learning days. To do this, select the Traditional Mode option. To include distance learning days, select the option to Include E-Learning Attendance. 

Below are examples of the Traditional Mode report, using the same scenarios as shown in the 2020-2021 MO Attendance mode screenshots above.  In the below scenarios, the school has entered attendance for e-learning days.

Partial In-Person / Partial E-Learning Student

sophi_traditional.PNG

Virtual Student

mceclip3.png