The purpose of this document is to recommend practices that will help education agencies collect, report, and use attendance data to improve student and school outcomes. This publication substantively revises and expands the information included in "Every School Day Counts: The Forum Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data," published in 2009, and incorporates current best practices, real-world examples, and role-specific tip sheets. It is designed to help state and local education agency (SEA and LEA) staff improve their attendance data practices. One goal of the Forum is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and program decision-makers. An approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the collective experiences of Forum members to produce best practice guides in areas of high interest to those who collect, maintain, and use data about elementary and secondary education. Improving student attendance data quality, collection, reporting, and use is one of those high-interest areas, and this document aims to provide best practices that meet the common needs of the education community, as determined by the collective experience of working group members. This document focuses on attendance data from the perspectives of the education data community and does not attempt to present a comprehensive account of the many issues related to student attendance. [For "Every School Day Counts: The Forum Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data," see ED504716.]