The 20 day ADA attendance reports that feed into reports that go to the CDE as First Principal Apportionment (P-1 ADA), Second Principal Apportionment (P2 ADA), and Annual Apportionment (Annual ADA) are used as key metrics for a significant portions of school funding.

ADA = The total days of student attendance divided by the number of instructional days in the school year

P-1 ADA = July 1 through the last school month ending on or before December 31 of a school year

P-2 ADA = July 1 through the last school month ending on or before April 15 of a school year

Annual ADA = July 1 through June 30 of a school year

Apportionment is based on a schools P-2 ADA, making that specific report very important.  There are exceptions for other programs (adult ed, regional occupational centers and nonpublic school funding) which are based on Annual ADA numbers.

When should we run our ADA numbers from PowerSchool?

Before ADA reports are considered final, it is extremely important that no users within the Student Information System make any future changes to attendance information.

Whenever attendance is changed for a particular date range, the ADA data can change and must be re-run.

Sounds like a hassle?  It is.  This is why attendance roles, responsibilities, and data management processes need to be tightly regulated to avoid inaccurate reporting.

Running an ADA report in PowerSchool

Step 1: From the PowerSchool home page, click on “System Reports (Reports Section)”

 

Step 2:  From the State tab, select “Attendance Summary by Grade”

 

Step 3:  Select the reporting month range and Submit.

If the options need to be changed, see below the screenshot for explanations of each of the fields to change before you submit.

 

Other useful fields:

• Use
  • This field can be used to select a specific school for the report
• Attendance Mode
  • In most cases, this is likely Meeting Attendance
• Include Verification Line
  • This is useful if an administrator is required to sign the reports for certification to authorities that require it.
• Display Student Audit Table
  • This is for troubleshooting purposes if the reported numbers need to be reconciled or are not calculating properly.

Step 4:  View the report

 

Explanations of the columns:

• Carry Fwd
  • This is the enrollment count of students that were “Carried Over” from the previous monthly report.  This should match the ending value of the previous month but should be 0 in the first reporting month of school.
• Gain
  • This is the number of students who newly enrolled at the school during this time period.
• Loss
  • This is the number of students who dropped from the school during this time period.
• Ending
  • This is the enrollment count of students that were present on the final day of the reporting period.
• Actual Days
  • This is the number of days in attendance.
• Days N/E
  • If a student was not enrolled for a certain number of days during the reporting period, the count of days that they were not enrolled will be listed here.
• Days Absent
  • This is the count of days that a student was absent during the reporting period.
• Days Attd
  • This is the count of days that a student was present during the reporting period.
• ADA
  • Days attended divided by the number of instructional days in the reporting period.
• ADA%
  • Days attended divided by days possible as a percentage.