In response to questions raised by the Pupil Accounting System Advisory Group concerning the criteria for determining a day of attendance and whether study hall time should be counted when measuring attendance, the Illinois State Board of Education conducted a comprehensive survey to ascertain current study hall policy and practice among the state's public high schools. A questionnaire was mailed on April 26, 1989, to a random sample of 251 of the 681 public high schools in Illinois asking the school administrators to comment about study halls or the personnel who supervise them; the response rate was 95 percent. An analysis of the results indicates that: (1) 47 percent of the students had only one study hall per day while 37 percent had no study halls; (2) 80 percent of the schools did not allow the scheduling of back-to-back study halls; (3) for the most part, students were not permitted to skip a scheduled study hall; (4) students usually used study hall time for independent study; (5) only 31 percent of the schools had a policy that required each student to have at least one daily study hall; and (6) school administrators did not want to have students scheduled for more study halls. (KM)