Attendance
Track student's attendance in several ways using the various attendance functions. Depending on your school's needs, you can track daily attendance, section attendance, or attendance by time. You can also consolidate the multiple roll calls typically required when multiple course sections meet simultaneously. There are also several attendance-related reports available.
Given the proper permissions, administrators, teachers, and substitute teachers can take attendance using the following:
- PowerSchool SIS Admin Portal: There are several ways to take and change attendance for a student or group of students, either for one day or several days.
- PowerSchool SIS Teacher Portal: Teachers can take attendance for their current classes.
- PowerSchool SIS Substitute Portal: Substitute teachers can take attendance for their designated classes.
- Schoology: Teachers can take attendance for their current classes. For more information on taking attendance in Schoology, refer to Using PowerSchool SIS Attendance with Schoology.
Attendance Modes
There are five modes of taking attendance: by day, by meeting, by interval, by time, or concurrently.
To switch between Daily and Meeting attendance mid-year, refer to Attendance Synchronization.
| Mode | Description | Location | Additional Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily Attendance | Take attendance for one or more days. Daily attendance calculates attendance by the minute or by attendance code. | PowerSchool SIS Admin Portal PowerTeacher Pro | |
| Meeting Attendance | Take attendance by meeting. An expression, formulated by combining the periods and days in which this section takes place, represents meetings for a section. Example: "1-2(A)" can represent a section of Biology that meets during first and second period on "A" day. | PowerSchool SIS Admin Portal PowerTeacher Pro | |
| Interval Attendance | Interval attendance is similar to Meeting attendance in that attendance is taken at least once during any meeting. The difference is that attendance can be recorded more than once per meeting. Whether a class uses interval attendance is specified in the Section Attendance Settings for each class. The length of the period (or periods), determined by the bell schedule, and the interval duration, specified in Attendance Preferences, determine how often you should record attendance. The system divides the length of each period by the interval duration (always rounding up) to calculate how often you should record attendance. Example: A class that takes place from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM that has an interval duration of 60 minutes would have two opportunities to take attendance. Interval attendance does not assume that a student is present or absent like meeting or daily attendance. Therefore, you must record an attendance code for each interval. | PowerSchool SIS Admin Portal PowerTeacher Pro | Meeting/Interval Attendance |
| Time Attendance | Time attendance provides an opportunity to directly enter an attendance value for a student by entering total minutes (or hours) for a given day. Time Attendance does not relate to a specific course, but it can relate to a student's program, such as a work-study or independent study. | PowerSchool SIS Admin Portal | Time Attendance |
| Concurrent Attendance | Take attendance for concurrent meeting sections. Concurrently meeting sections are different sections that meet at the same time and place and have the same teacher. Teachers can choose to combine the sections' rosters and take attendance for both sections simultaneously. Example 1 If a teacher teaches Spanish, SPA100, with a "1(A)" meeting, and a second section of Spanish, SPA200, also with a "1(A)" meeting, the teacher could use the concurrent attendance function to take attendance for both sections at the same time. Example 2 If a teacher teaches English 1-3(A) (Record Once All Meetings), TA1 1(A), TA2 2(A), TA3 3(A), and Math 4(A), the teacher can take attendance for English and then click "Record MultiMeeting Attendance for Multiple Sections," which results in the combined roster of English + TA1. Example 3 If a teacher teaches English 1-3(A) (Record Once All Meetings), TA1 2(A), and TA2 2(A), the teacher can navigate to the attendance page for TA2 1-2(A) and click "Record MultiMeeting Attendance for Multiple Sections," which results in the combined roster of English + TA1 + TA2. Example 4 If a teacher teaches English 1-3(A) (Record Each Meeting), TA1 1(A), TA2 2(A), TA3 3(A), and Math 4(A), the teacher can take attendance for English (period 1) and then click 'Record Meeting Attendance for Multiple Sections," which results in the combined roster of English (per1) + TA1. Example 5 If a teacher teaches English 1-3(A) (Record Each Meeting), TA1 1(A), TA2 2(A), TA3 3(A), and Math 4(A), the teacher can take attendance for English (per2) and then click "Record Meeting Attendance for Multiple Sections," which results in the combined roster of English (per2) + TA2. | PowerSchool SIS Teacher Portal |
