INTERACTIVE TOOL: CREATE A DAILY ATTENDANCE "HEARTBEAT" CHART FOR ANY SCHOOL IN THE CITY

Daily attendance bumps up and down like a heartbeat at all New York City schools. Heavy snow, bitter cold or steady rain can send attendance diving. Unusual schedules for events like parent-teacher conferences always take a toll. But several other factors like health and school climate affect attendance as well, and those “bad attendance days” tend to hit low-income communities harder than the city as a whole.

Use the search function below to find any non-charter public school in the city, and click “Show Heartbeat” to display the results. The two lines show the percent of students who attended school, day by day, over the course of the 2013-14 school year. The red line in the chart shows the daily attendance for the school of your choice. The grey line represents the citywide average for all schools of the same grade level. Hover over the chart to see calendar and weather events throughout the year.

Data visualization by Aaron Hill