Kentucky Youth Advocates (KYA) was just informed by the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) that the chronic absenteeism data provided by KDE in the recently released 2012 Kentucky KIDS COUNT County Data Book is inaccurate for all school districts. KYA has taken the chronic absenteeism data off of our online KIDS COUNT Data Center until the corrected data is provided by KDE. KYA has also put a hold on fulfilling book request orders until this issue is resolved.

Once KYA receives the corrected data from KDE, we will take all possible steps to disseminate the corrected data to KIDS COUNT users, including:

      • Issuing a notice about the corrected data to our listserv and posting the notice to our blog;
      • Posting the correct data to the online KIDS COUNT Data Center;
      • Revising the electronic versions of the Data Book and the state fact sheet to portray the corrected data; and
      • Placing an insert that provides the corrected data into all of the hard copies of the Data Book.

Kentucky Youth Advocates has been publishing a KIDS COUNT Data Book for 22 years and strives to be the gold standard for data on the well-being of Kentucky’s children. We regret any confusion caused by this situation.