One more thing coming today: Janice Jackson said last week's in-person student attendance will be released this afternoon.

We say this every time, but it's still remarkable that with something as significant as this, CPS is waiting until Friday afternoon to dump information

It's past 5 p.m. on a Friday and CPS still has not released this data that has been promised since last week

6 p.m.!

NEW: Fewer than two-thirds of the preschool and special education cluster program students who opted to return to Chicago Public Schools classrooms this month actually showed up.

There were 6,470 expected back, and 3,882 (60%) actually went.

This means 77% of the CPS students who were eligible to return this month decided to stay home. That's 13,062 out of 16,944.

Of those expected back who didn't show, 1,811 (28%) decided to stay home and 776 (12%) were absent altogether

CPS officials say they're "encouraged that, on average, 60 percent of students expected for in person learning attended during the first week of school.

"It is especially encouraging considering it’s an enormous, yet welcomed, transition for many families after ten months..."

OK, I've taken a closer look at these numbers. First of all, there's no raw daily attendance data. These figures are the average number of students who showed up each day from Jan. 11-15.

That means any given day could've had higher or lower attendance

Second of all, big correction needed on this because looking closely at the numbers it's clear CPS did not present its data in a very genuine way.

CPS said 60% of students who opted in returned to schools. It's actually just less than half. Here's why... https://twitter.com/NaderDIssa/status/1352774721138528257?s=20

I saw 60%, applied that to the # of students who opted in for in-person learning based on the figure CPS gave us in December: 6,470.

Scroll down, it turns out CPS got 60% using a different number: 5,352.

Another 1,100 kids opted out since December and CPS didn't make that clear

So that means there wasn't a daily average of 3,882 kids in schools like my first tweet said. It was 3,189.

And if we look at who opted in for in-person learning at the deadline in December and who showed up the first week, it's 49.3% of those students, not 60%.

Sorry for the mistake and unclear numbers. It would really have saved us and CPS a lot of time if this data was presented with a little more clarity and not at 6:15 p.m. on a Friday a week after numbers were entered into an online system

So, to be crystal clear:

49% of the CPS preschool and special education cluster program students who opted into in-person learning actually showed up

19% of all eligible pre-K and cluster students returned to classrooms

One in five eligible students returned for in-person learning, CPS data shows https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2021/1/22/22245292/in-person-learning-cps-data-remote-learning-coronavirus