# Chronic-absenteeism method bake-off — results & review package

Companion to the pre-registered design memo (`../03_bakeoff_design.md`). The bake-off
selected **candidate (c), the WLS residual-z**, as the chronic-absenteeism *status*
measure, with a **within-year-z trend** (direction + magnitude over 2022-23 → 2024-25,
plus a dual-endpoint persistence gate). Full recommendation, criteria, and the six open
editorial decisions are in the memo.

## Views — served from `public/bakeoff/`

Self-contained HTML (inline CSS/JS, no build step). Reachable at `/<file>` on the site
**once this is merged**; on this branch they appear only in the Vercel preview. Every page
is `noindex, nofollow`, internal debug links are stripped, and names are **leads to
investigate, not verdicts** (the validation gate applies to an advertised/published story,
not this working draft).

- `04_bakeoff_results_review.html` — **results memo (start here)**
- `02_descriptives_packet.html` — descriptives background (overall trends, grade splits)
- `named_outliers_WIP.html` — status outlier candidates
- `trend_candidates_WIP.html` — trend candidates (z-path + actual %, persistence gate)
- `grade_control_sensitivity_WIP.html` — grade-control (spec E vs F) sensitivity

A shared "Working views" nav links them together.

## Source / reproducibility — this folder

- `04_bakeoff_results.md` — memo source (the memo HTML is rendered from it)
- `render_results_html.py`, `render_named_outliers_html.py`, `render_trend_html.py`,
  `render_spec_sensitivity_html.py` — view generators
- `compute_trend.py` → `trend.csv`, `trend_meta.json` — trend layer (within-year-z change
  2022-23 → 2024-25 + the dual-endpoint persistence gate, race-unaware)
- `pooled_trend_diagnostic.py` — decision-6 diagnostic (pooled + year-FE vs within-year;
  Δz rank-correlation 0.97, ~13/17 worsening & 13/14 improving names common)
- `export_public_views.py` — regenerates the public-safe copies in `public/bakeoff/`
  (strips localhost debug links, forces `noindex`)

Upstream compute (per-year candidate fits, the grade-mix index `gmx`, the criteria
evaluation) lives in the non-git working tree, not the repo.

## For review

The open decisions are in the memo's **"Candidate schools & decisions for the checkpoint"**
section: (1) race in the model, (2) D11 strict vs loose composition-stability, (3) naming
policy + validation gate, (4) charter coverage, (5) trend framing, (6) within-year vs
pooled trend expectation. This is a **review request** — not published to the production
site (that happens on merge).