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Chronic absenteeism is playing a major role in students failing to reach pre-pandemic academic levels, a new report from NWEA shows. 

, issued last week, shows that the academic progress of students in districts with the highest rates of chronic absenteeism are more likely to lag behind districts that haven鈥檛 experienced drastic rises in absences. The relationship between attendance and achievement is even stronger in high-poverty districts, the report concluded. 

While the report doesn鈥檛 directly link absenteeism and lower academic gains, it does overlay attendance figures against NWEA鈥檚 MAP Growth data from 2019 to 2024 in grades 3 to 8. The chronic absenteeism rates were provided by American Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit that publishes a tracker of attendance rates nationwide.  

鈥淚mproving attendance should be part of the academic recovery strategy in most districts rather than seen as a distinct issue,鈥� the brief concluded. NWEA offers assessments and learning tools to more than 13 million students in over 12,400 districts nationwide. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt bought NWEA in 2023.

鈥淭his report is important because it confirms that when chronic absence reaches high levels, it affects learning for all students, not just those who were chronically absent,鈥� said Hedy Chang, the CEO and president of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit that works with school districts to increase attendance. 鈥淭he good news is significantly improving attendance is within our reach,鈥� she added, citing both Connecticut and Georgia as states making sizable attendance gains in the past school year. 

Absenteeism skyrocketed when schools returned to in-person learning after Covid shutdowns. Chronic absenteeism, where a student misses at least 10% of the school year or about 18 days, rose from affecting 15% of students before 2020 to 28% in 2022. While absences have receded since then, the chronic rate remains at about 23% for the 45 states that have already released 2025 attendance figures, according to AEI鈥檚 tracker. 

鈥淓ven though we鈥檝e talked about chronic absenteeism a lot, it鈥檚 shocking to me how high it still is despite the efforts districts and states are making,鈥� said Megan Kuhfeld, the director of growth modeling and data analytics at NWEA, and one of the report鈥檚 three authors. 

In high-poverty districts, attendance is even more of an issue with one in three students missing at least three weeks of school each year. 鈥淥ne of the key messages we want to get out there as states continue to think about how we tackle this issue is directing resources to high-poverty districts that have the longest road to recovery and consistently high rates of chronic absenteeism,鈥� Kuhfeld said. 

NWEA鈥檚 data showed that while any district facing high absenteeism was further from academic recovery than districts not facing this issue, the contrast was starkest in high-poverty districts, while the discrepancy was much lower in more affluent districts. 

When deciding how to most effectively impact learning, school leaders should identify 鈥渨here persistent absenteeism and academic recovery gaps overlap,鈥� the report concluded. 鈥淭hen [leaders] can ensure those communities have the support needed to help students attend school consistently and regain lost academic ground.鈥� Sofia Postell and Emily Morton, both of NWEA, also worked on the eight-page report. 

Another finding of the report is that school absences appeared to affect students鈥� math learning more than reading, Kuhfeld added. This follows the same pattern as summer learning loss and what is quantified when schools close after a natural disaster. 鈥淚t does seem like math is really more driven by what happens in school than out of school,鈥� she said. 鈥淢ath really happens in the classroom; kids may still read at home鈥� if they aren鈥檛 attending school. 

Kuhfeld said she hoped publicizing this information to teachers and parents before the school year could help to avoid absences from piling up. Schools could use data from previous years or the first month of school to intervene before students reach the chronically absent level, she added.聽

Joy Smithson, a data scientist at SchoolStatus, said her company鈥檚 research shows that parents can underestimate their children鈥檚 absences by up to 50%, making them less likely to realize the overall impact both excused and unexcused absences can have on student achievement. SchoolStatus is a software company schools nationwide use to track attendance for more than 22 million students. 

In June, a showed that 89 districts using the platform were able to reduce chronic absenteeism by 36% over the last two school years. The findings showed that districts which used proactive, structured strategies to fight absenteeism had the best results, she added. 

Setting clear attendance goals and communicating those goals to teachers and parents at the beginning of the school year can help set expectations, Smithson said. If a district is seeing that parents are cautious about sending children to school if they are even slightly sick, it could tell parents that children can visit the school nurse to determine if a child should be held out of school. 

Smithson also said that personalized messages to parents, even after a couple of absences, are shown to improve attendance. 鈥淚t鈥檚 better to intervene early; five absences is too long to wait鈥� to contact parents, she said. 

While the disparate ways that different schools track attendance, sometimes even within the same district, can hinder comparisons, Smithson said more school leaders seem keenly aware that they need to prioritize attendance plans and early detection. Standardizing attendance coding can be hard work and take a lot of collaboration, she added, but districts should push through any first-year problems and give new attendance plans three years before fully judging the changes. 

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