“Chronic absenteeism is a problem across the country,” a reporter.

But actions by the department she leads could leave the public without accurate information on whether schools are making any progress in getting kids back into the classroom, according to a from a federal watchdog agency.

The Department of Education this year suspended key efforts to closely track whether states are meeting education requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, including those related to chronic absenteeism, according to the . Those core department functions ensure that federal funds, particularly in schools serving the neediest students, are used properly.

“By significantly curtailing the scope of fiscal and programmatic monitoring, especially for Title I, given the size of the program relative to other ESEA programs, Education has left over $18 billion in federal funding at heightened risk for undetected waste, fraud, and abuse,” GAO said. 

The department also uses a formula for calculating chronic absenteeism that produces unreliable data, only making it harder to “identify schools struggling the most,” the report said. 

In a response to GAO, Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, said officials still conduct some reviews of whether districts and schools follow the law and plan to announce a new monitoring system this fall. But she rejected two of the GAO’s three recommendations for resuming oversight and revising how the department collects chronic absenteeism rates.

“While we were in a transition year and have not carried out consolidated monitoring, we continue to monitor across ESEA programs,” she wrote. 

During its , the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was the first to define a chronically absent student as one who misses at least 15 days of the school year. Then, the Every Student Succeeds Act, which passed in 2015, changed the definition to missing 10% of the school year. 

Most states now include chronic absenteeism as an indicator of school quality in their accountability systems. The department is supposed to monitor whether those states include the data, broken down by race and other categories, in their state report cards for the public. The agency is also required to collect chronic absenteeism data for all states. 

Members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, asked GAO for the report, which shows that between 2019 and 2025, the department reviewed chronic absenteeism requirements in 26 states. 

That’s insufficient, said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who tracks chronic absenteeism and conducts research on strategies to improve it.

At the current pace, “states might expect a review once every 15 years,” he said. Even if the department resumed monitoring, it “won’t be transformative.”

, like real-time dashboards, and early warning systems have been more effective at lowering rates than federal action “by a mile,” he said. 

Carl Felton III, a policy analyst at EdTrust, a left-leaning advocacy group, agreed that there was room to improve the federal monitoring process. “But to back off doesn’t put us in a better position to help students,” he said. 

‘39 months older’

Recent data from 44 states and the District of Columbia shows that 22.6% of students were chronically absent in 2025. That’s a 1 percentage point improvement over the previous year, but overall, . Many districts, like , and , still struggle with rates of 30% or more.Ìę

Malkus has long been frustrated with the untimeliness of the federal data. , an Education Department website, has rates from 2022-23. 

“That most recent data is 39 months older than the end of the school year, and counting,” Malkus said. Even if the Trump administration wants to hand more authority over to states, he said an appropriate role for the federal government is to get data out earlier. “I am two-plus years ahead of [the Education Department] without the leverage, or the responsibility, they carry.”

The GAO report also noted that the department uses a formula that leads to some “overstated and implausible chronic absenteeism rates.” 

Before the Biden administration left office, staff began the process of revising the data it collects from states so it can report more accurate figures. But mass layoffs, including an 85% cut at the Institute of Education Sciences, disrupted those efforts. 

Baesler acknowledged the limitations, but said the department would stick with its method “rather than imposing additional reporting burden on states.” 

Malkus said that it wouldn’t be overly complex to fix the issue, but he found GAO’s concerns about waste, fraud and abuse to be “overwrought.”

“It’s about compliance and following the law, with less effect on Title I,” he said.

Felton, who previously led school climate improvement efforts in the Baltimore City schools, said even if there’s no intentional misuse of federal dollars, schools still need “guardrails” so they’re not “throwing money at the coolest new thing.” Accurate counts of which students miss the most days, he said, are necessary.

“We can’t solve problems that we can’t see,” he said. “Ineffective data is one of the barriers to getting our kids in school.”

What’s left unsaid in this bill is what any Mainer has experienced recently: The weather is changing drastically. “My daughter’s classroom was 96 degrees” a few years ago, said Jeremy Ray, the superintendent of both the Biddeford and Dayton school departments in Maine. “Thirty-five years ago, no one had heard of a heat day,” he added. 

Maine is far from alone. A quick glance at a map of weather-related school closures from shows that since the 2020-21 school year, all but two states have faced school closures due to extreme weather. In fact, the nonprofit organization estimates that weather disrupted school for 9 million students in 10,000 schools during the 2024-25 school year. In California alone, students lost about a half-million hours of instructional time in the last school year, says Jonathan Klein, the organization’s co-founder and CEO. 

And these issues aren’t stopping. As of Sept. 2, before school even opened for some districts, there have already been at least 30 school closures or disruptions in 14 states, ranging from floods in Indiana to wildfire smoke in California to power outages caused by severe storms in Tennessee.

“This is happening all over the country,” said Klein, adding that the nonprofit’s site likely undercounts the extent of the problem. “This phenomenon is happening everyday.” 

Add these closures to the stubborn chronic absenteeism trend that hasn’t faded much since the pandemic, and it becomes obvious that school has become more disrupted for more students. Today, will miss 18 school days each year, hitting the mark to be classified as chronically absent. 

Even though weather-related school closures don’t count as absences and can be rescheduled, they represent missed time in the classroom. And missing a week of school can compound student learning loss for up to three weeks, according to a from NWEA. The effects don’t stop only when schools are closed; a report shows that for schools without air conditioning, a one degree rise in temperature can decrease student learning by 1%.

That data backs up a study in New York state that linked academic achievement increases to schools which improved their building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning, said Lucy Sorensen, an associate research professor at the University of Albany. Sorensen and two other researchers examined 3,000 schools over 14 years and found that schools making HVAC improvements saw attendance gains, fewer suspensions and “modest” increases in student math and reading scores. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that at a time when education funding is tight, schools are older than ever, and fixes can be expensive. The average age of public schools is 49 years old, with more than half of those buildings needing, at a minimum, significant repairs. 

Nationwide, the American Society of Civil Engineers has given school infrastructure a D+ for three consecutive years, while noting that the country’s infrastructure had improved during that period. A 2021 report estimated that 13,700 schools still need air conditioning at a cost of $40 billion. 

Take Ann Arbor, Michigan, for example. In a district with more than 16,000 students and 32 schools, the average building age is 70, with five of its historic buildings more than 100 years old. While those buildings “are well loved by the neighborhood,” making improvements to keep up with weather challenges are difficult, said Jason Bing, the director of capital programs for Ann Arbor Public Schools. 

The classroom temperature inside the top floors of schools has topped 90 degrees, he said, while schools also closed during last January’s polar vortex when wind chill temperatures plunged to well below zero. “We’ve definitely seen greater extremes,” Bing added. 

Work in Philadelphia shows how expensive it can be to update old school buildings. Pre-pandemic more than half the city’s 218 schools didn’t have air conditioning; the city used COVID relief funds and a $200,000 donation from Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts to address the problem. But four years into the work, still lack air conditioning, and 52 schools closed early last week because of hot classrooms. 

In California, nearly 20% of a $1 billion account created to fund school HVAC and plumbing repairs went and will be returned to the utility companies that originally funded the work. More than 4,500 schools used the fund to assess HVAC systems, but only 172 schools made significant upgrades using the money. 

While Sorensen’s study showed that academic achievement can improve when building infrastructure is upgraded, it also showed that low-income students and students of color are more likely to attend schools with poor HVAC systems, a factor that she said contributes to the lagging academic achievement for those student populations. 

In New York state, not counting New York City, about 18% of Black or Hispanic students attend schools with inadequate ventilation systems compared to 13% of White or Asian students, the study reported. Digging deeper on this issue, a that Sorensen helped write shows that “schools serving more students of color are significantly more likely to have poor overall conditions, inadequate ventilation [and] mold exposure.”

Klein points out that while more than 700,000 students were affected by the Los Angeles wildfires in 2025, 75% of those students were socioeconomically disadvantaged, 60% were Latino, and 40% multilingual learners. 

Up to 5% of the racial achievement gap between test scores for Black students and their white peers can be explained by excessively hot classrooms, Klein added, citing the UCLA Luskin Center . “For schools with air conditioning, the negative effects virtually disappear,” he added.Ìę

One of UndauntedK12’s goals is to help schools leverage federal energy tax credits to install ground-source .Ìę

Back in Maine, Ray says two new elementaries are slated to open in 2028 and both will employ geothermal heat pumps. But until then, he’ll continue to cobble together methods to keep his schools comfortable. 

Of course, extreme heat isn’t the only weather-related problem Maine schools face. Most of the state expects to close school about five times a year for snow, but lately power outages, floods and ice have been affecting when schools are in session, Ray said. 

The state is warming faster than the global average, and the estimates that in 60 years the climate of the most northeastern state in the contiguous United States could resemble current conditions in New Jersey. 

Ray leaned on OSHA guidelines to set his district’s temperature standards as requiring action if classrooms are below 40 degrees or above 99 degrees, both of which could become pretty uncomfortable for students. But his concerns don’t end when the final bell rings because “once these buildings heat up, they just don’t cool down,” he said. The district has used industrial fans at night to try to lower building temperatures, but even that has limited effectiveness. “In the first week, it’s very challenging for educators to do academics,” he admitted. 

It’s 2026. Satellites connect to devices in our pockets, artificial intelligence algorithms can drive cars and scan X-rays, and Homer’s 3,000-year-old poem is the basis for the summer’s hottest movie.

But there’s always a but. And right now, in a time when public school absences remain stubbornly high since Covid closures five years ago, it seems amazing not that educators can’t fix this problem, because it is complicated and occurs for many reasons, but that they can’t even agree on how to count whether a student is absent or not.

That’s not an exaggeration. While the number of chronically absent students nearly doubled after schools returned to in-person schooling in 2022, there is no universal consensus on how to determine the extent of this problem.

In fact, when Iowa put together comprehensive legislation in 2024 to address the state’s attendance problem, it became clear that different counting methods made it impossible to compare attendance statewide. Starting with the 2025-26 school year, the state mandated that all districts use the same method to count attendance. 

For the most part, school attendance policies fall into three buckets:

• If you are present for any part of the school day, you are counted as attending.
• If you are present for at least half of the day, you are counted as attending.
• Your attendance is tracked at the period or even the minute level.

While Iowa has chosen the minute-level attendance as its state standard, there is no universal agreement or any research about which method is the best. Sixteen states leave that decision to local discretion. In fact, two experts, Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, the CEO and president of Attendance Works, and Justine Oliva, the director of Policy & Research for the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, stay away from endorsing any one method. But both call for standardizing how attendance is counted within each state.

“The lack of a common definition of a day of attendance continues to make it difficult to interpret and compare data within and across states,” reads a 2025 report from Attendance Works.

Attendance throughout history

While the first school law in the country is the, passed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, it is not known when schools first started taking attendance. But there’s a good record of the initial attendance complaint. Near the end of Horace Mann’s in 1838, Mann wrote about the state’s inability to collect even basic “information respecting the number of scholars attending the public schools, and the regularity of that attendance.”

By 1918, all states had laws mandating school attendance, but truancy did not become a federal focus until 2001’s bill made it mandatory for all states to report truancy data to the federal government. Fourteen years later, the pushed attendance further into the spotlight, when many states recognized chronic absenteeism’s importance in student outcomes. Unlike truancy, this indicator reflects both excused and unexcused absences. As part of ESSA, 36 states and the District of Columbia included chronic absenteeism as one of the markers of educational progress in their states.

The first thing to understand about attendance is how schools use their data. In six states, is used to determine state funding; the rest of the states use enrollment counts assessed once or twice a year to decide how much money districts receive. But even within a school there can be different uses for attendance. For instance, at Ponus Ridge STEAM Academy in Norwalk, Connecticut, principal Damon Lewis said the middle school reports its homeroom attendance to the district and state, but uses its period-by-period attendance to keep a closer eye on each student.

Before the pandemic, about were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year or about 18 days. When schools reopened after Covid shutdowns, student behavior had changed, with nearly twice as many learners chronically absent, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

Research proves the link between attendance and achievement, Malkus said; for every day a student is absent, the average achievement for that student decreases. “It’s not just kids who are chronically absent,” he said, the effect of attendance on achievement “is pretty much linear. Every day matters.”

A new report from NWEA last month backed up those findings, showing that chronic absenteeism played a major role in students failing to reach pre-pandemic academic levels. “Improving attendance should be part of the academic recovery strategy in most districts rather than seen as a distinct issue,” the report concluded.

While chronic absenteeism is a big issue for many state education leaders, Malkus warned that it can be an arbitrary distinction. “One of the shocking things [about attendance] is that 7% of kids miss over 20% of the school year,” he said, adding that these absences can affect an entire school’s achievement.

Best ways to count

While there is no research that measures one method of counting attendance versus another, it’s also difficult to know even how most schools measure attendance. In an Attendance Works 2026 , only eight states require districts to use a per-minute attendance calculation, while 24 states require attendance for a half day or more to count a student as present. But there are some signs that a growing number of schools are opting to get granular and track student attendance per minute. Arkansas and Oklahoma moved to period-based attendance in the 2025-26 school year, and both Ohio and Iowa will make that move in this year.

Jesse Roy, the senior director of education value for PowerSchool, said his customers are trending toward wanting more information. “We see states going from daily to half-daily to per-minute. More data is kind of what you’re after.” PowerSchool is a student information software company used in 90 of the country’s largest 100 school districts.

Oliva of Rhode Island mentioned that counting attendance so closely could have some pitfalls. “More granular methods (like per hour) may better capture instructional time if the data are accurate but may be more difficult to implement consistently at the local level,” she said.

When Rhode Island tried to pass a comprehensive attendance bill in 2024, it was using “at least half the day” method of counting a student present, she said, adding that this method is the more widely used benchmark in education. Even though that bill never became law, the state did implement several components of the proposal and has had success improving its attendance rates. Rhode Island’s chronic absenteeism rate posted the fifth largest decline in the country from 2021-22 to 2023-24, according to a from the state’s Public Expenditure Council.

Iowa’s push to improve attendance originally focused on how schools must take specific steps to notify parents as students’ absences piled up, as well as a major publicity push to inform the public about the importance of good attendance. But the next year, the state’s legislators passed some smaller changes that specified not only how schools must count attendance, but also what could count as an excused absence.

“They are sweating the details on this, and that is what state leadership looks like,” Malkus said.

Des Moines has been tracking per-minute attendance for years, well before Iowa’s new requirement. “The per-minute calculation really matters,” said Jennifer Stalder, who oversees the case managers who track attendance in district schools. “It allows us to home in on what’s happening and have more meaningful conversations with parents.”

Even though Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had not yet gone to per-minute attendance last school year, Jennifer Van Fleet, the district’s executive director of student services, said she imagined the extra information might help each school discern which student has an aversion to math or highlight a student who is late everyday. “We can match the support and intervention to be specific,” she added.

Ohio is another state that uses the per-minute method as part of its statewide goal to reduce chronic absenteeism in half by the end of the 2028-29 school year. The state has shifted to trying to predict and prevent students from becoming chronically absent, instead of only intervening after they have missed 10% of school. Part of this effort is not only collecting more information about student attendance, but sharing that data quickly and accurately.

The state’s , shows weekly updates statewide, including the number and percentage of students in each district who are both chronically absent and at-risk of becoming chronically absent.

Even though PowerSchool’s Roy wondered if data overload could reach a point of diminishing returns for school officials, he did express wonder at how specific schools can be now when tracking student attendance. “Fifteen years ago,” when he worked in a school district, “I would have to walk around with binders and do two hours of work per student” to find out all this information, he said.

An earlier version of this story misstated the school district where Jennifer Van Fleet works. It is Cedar Rapids Community School District.

, 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’t 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’t directly link absenteeism and lower academic gains, it does overlay attendance figures against NWEA’s 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.  

“Improving attendance should be part of the academic recovery strategy in most districts rather than seen as a distinct issue,” 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.

“This 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,” said Hedy Chang, the CEO and president of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit that works with school districts to increase attendance. “The good news is significantly improving attendance is within our reach,” 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’s tracker. 

“Even though we’ve talked about chronic absenteeism a lot, it’s shocking to me how high it still is despite the efforts districts and states are making,” said Megan Kuhfeld, the director of growth modeling and data analytics at NWEA, and one of the report’s 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. “One 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,” Kuhfeld said. 

NWEA’s 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 “where persistent absenteeism and academic recovery gaps overlap,” the report concluded. “Then [leaders] can ensure those communities have the support needed to help students attend school consistently and regain lost academic ground.” 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’ 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. “It does seem like math is really more driven by what happens in school than out of school,” she said. “Math really happens in the classroom; kids may still read at home” if they aren’t 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.Ìę

Joy Smithson, a data scientist at SchoolStatus, said her company’s research shows that parents can underestimate their children’s 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. “It’s better to intervene early; five absences is too long to wait” 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. 

“Take your favorite book,” he said. “Let me rip one page out and it’s no longer your favorite book.” The loss of knowledge and continuity mirrors what students face when they miss even a single day of school, he added. 

Yet after the pandemic, students who missed 10% of the school year — meaning more than one in four students were missing lots of key lessons, according to Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Student absences — spurred by trauma, remote learning, school closures and other factors — have stubbornly persisted long after the COVID shutdowns.

Prior to the pandemic, about 15% of students nationally missed at least 18 days of school each year, what is known as chronic absenteeism. The situation was serious but stable, said Malkus. But, in the 41 states Malkus monitors in his , chronic absenteeism soared post-pandemic, peaking at 28% in 2022 before dropping down to in 2024.

“The permission structure of when it’s OK to miss school loosened up,” Malkus said, adding that schools now face the challenge of reversing ingrained behavior. 

One state that stands out for its progress in beating this trend is Iowa. It passed a wide-ranging that requires each school to notify parents if a child’s non-exempt absences hit 10% of a grading period, create a specific attendance plan for that student if missed days reach 15% and those absences are affecting academic progress and push the case to a county attorney for possible misdemeanor charges if a student misses 20% of school days. 

In just one year after the law was passed, chronic absenteeism in Iowa fell to just below 16% in 2024-25 from 21.6% in 2023-24. Over the last three years, the state has seen a in chronic absenteeism — significantly better than the 5.9 percentage point decrease seen nationwide during that time, Malkus said.Ìę

While the helped improve attendance, the state had been laying the groundwork for its battle against absenteeism years earlier, said Hedy Nai-Lin Chang, the CEO and president of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that partners with schools and states to improve attendance. In the 2023-24 school year, Iowa made chronic absenteeism one of its under the Every Student Succeeds Act, putting the issue on every district’s radar, she said. It also for every district in the state, adding statewide attendance data requirements starting in 2021-22. This data platform allows officials to track student progress in attendance, behavior and achievement either individually, for a school or an entire district. 

The state also began offering training to school personnel, including “intensive support” that embeds attendance improvement teams in schools. It encourages building staff to “zero in on barriers to attendance,” such as specifically mentioning how food, clothing, communication, transportation or mental health issues could affect attendance, and how they should be considered in each case. 

“This wasn’t something we crafted out of thin air,” said state Senator Lynn Evans. “We looked at [the policies of] school districts that were good at [reducing] chronic absenteeism even before the pandemic.” 

To allay any concerns about local control, the state ran the proposed laws past school officials and allowed schools to create their own specific plans, as long as certain benchmarks were followed, Evans added. One big change was how to count attendance; prior to the law, school districts were able to determine whether a student’s absence was exempt. Now the law lays out the specific exemptions, and absences for any other reason must count toward chronic absenteeism totals.

In Iowa, where the vast majority of districts are rural, building flexibility into the law was vital, said McKenzie Snow, the director of the state’s Department of Education. 

‘All hands on deck’

Davenport, a city that borders both the Mississippi River and Illinois, is home to roughly 13,000 students. In 2021-22, its chronic absenteeism rate ballooned to 42.5%, but three years later it had fallen to 33.2%, according to data from Iowa’s Department of Education. That’s still one of the highest rates in the state, but Schneckloth said his district had tried everything from supplying families with alarm clocks to setting up ride shares to commissioning a new bus to serve an entire housing complex, even though the homes are just inside the district’s busing zone. 

The law is “like a snowplow out front” of our efforts, the superintendent said.Ìę

Des Moines, the state’s biggest district with 29,700 students, uses 46 case managers to help with attendance, said Jennifer Stalder, who runs the district’s case management services program. are assigned to students and families based on absenteeism, behavior referrals or the student being disengaged from school. They help students and families address basic needs, social emotional wellness and health concerns, while supporting the family’s ability to advocate for their needs.  

Even though the district’s own policy is to notify families after just three absences, the “really clear guidelines” from the state helped Des Moines send a straightforward message to school employees, families and students, she added. “There’s no grey area.”

Des Moines’ chronic absenteeism rate peaked at 45.4% in 2021-22, but that figure has fallen to 21.2% just three years later. Stalder says the district celebrates students who improve their attendance, rewarding them with extra recess time or by allowing them to be first in the lunch line even if their rate still lands them above 10%. They also host celebrations for classrooms, grade levels or the whole school when attendance improves. Students have been rewarded with everything from popsicle parties to smashing a pie in their principal’s face, school officials said.Ìę

The payoff has come not just in the form of better attendance, but in widespread academic gains as well, school officials said. In 2025, the district’s jumped 5%, while for everything from fourth grade English Language Arts proficiency to tenth grade math and science proficiency. 

In Cedar Rapids, where the chronic absenteeism rate for its roughly 15,000 students rose to 38.6% in 2021-22, three years later the rate has dropped to 27.8%. 

The state law helped the district go beyond tracking average daily attendance to digging deeper into why each student was missing school, said Jennifer Van Fleet, the district’s executive director of student services. Cedar Rapids has taken an “all hands on deck” approach to absenteeism, she said, and is notifying families when students miss 5% of days.Ìę

In February, the district used an Olympic-themed campaign to encourage students to attend school. Offering prizes such as a weekly trophy for the best class attendance in a school and other rewards, the campaign was a great success. “It was our best February since we started tracking,” she said, with the district reaching pre-COVID attendance levels.Ìę

Involving the courts

While the state’s law seems to have helped push attendance in the right direction, one part of it has cultivated divisions: the mandate to notify county attorneys if a student’s non-exempt absences hit 20%. While some people feel that leveraging the legal system to crack down on student absences is the only way to get families to take truancy seriously, many consider it a controversial and ineffective approach, adding a legal burden to a family likely to be dealing with other issues as well.

The attorneys in Iowa have leeway to decide if parents or legal guardians should be charged. The penalties for a first offense could range from a simple misdemeanor that carries a fine of up to $100 or 10 days in jail, or a civil penalty where the fine of between $100 and $1,000 would be paid to the student’s school district. The penalty for a second referral could result in up to 20 days in jail or a fine of up to $500. 

Davenport’s Schneckloth said the threat of legal action “perked up the ears of a lot of our families.” But he did not provide any figures of how many cases his district has referred. 

Yet this same threat seemed to have no effect in Cedar Rapids, Van Fleet said. “The punitive approach doesn’t seem to work for us ever.”

Des Moines’ Stadler said the district referred 80 cases to attorneys last year and it only did so in the most extreme cases. “We refer [parents or guardians] when they won’t engage with us, or they agree to a plan but then drop off. It’s never a surprise to any family,” Stalder said. But before referring a case to attorneys for a second time, where the penalty would be more likely to result in jail time, “We take a very, very big pause,” she added.

Attendance Works’ Chang said the effectiveness of involving courts in truancy cases needs more research. “We know prevention is more effective and less costly,” she said. “Lawyers are expensive and courts get overwhelmed.” 

Of course, the ultimate goal of any attendance policy is to improve learning, said Evans, the Iowa senator. The state also now requires schools to reduce access to electronic devices during instructional time.  

In addition to improvements in attendance, the state has also seen , he said, with students’ reading scores increasing 11% from third grade to fourth and a 7% bump in science standardized test scores, according to data from the state’s education department.. 

“The longer we move down this line, the more acceptance it will gain,” Evans said. “It becomes part of the school culture.” 

The preschooler’s prolonged absence was related by Decca Calloway, the executive director of early learning at Puget Sound Educational Service District in Renton, Washington. And this young learner was not the only one to feel the effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, said Calloway, whose district serves nearly 1,000 Head Start and roughly 360 Early Head Start children across two large counties.Ìę

“Many children stop coming to school,” she told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. “It happens to one family, but most of our families — especially our immigrant community families — are really tight knit (and) they take each other’s children to school. So when you have one child or one family afraid, you essentially have many families and many children afraid.”

Calloway is one of nearly 300 Head Start directors, parents and teachers across seven states who participated in an April which found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions are causing significant fear, stress and disruption for preschool-aged children and their families. 

In total, just over half of surveyed Head Start leaders reported at least one instance of ICE activity near their facility within the past 12 months, and 6% noted that activity was during particularly vulnerable school pickup and drop-off times. 

Nearly 80% of surveyed staff reported that ICE enforcement has had a noticeable impact on student attendance: On average, surveyed programs have experienced 7% of their students disenrolling altogether, and 14% of directors said they faced delays in new student registrations, attributing both to immigration fears. Center leaders estimate an average 7% chronic absenteeism rate explicitly tied to ICE, though that number varies drastically among the surveyed districts and states, ranging from 0% at some centers up to a reported 62% in others.

When Calloway analyzed her district’s attendance data, she found that up to 20% more young children were chronically absent this February as compared to 2023, much of which she attributes to increased panic around immigration enforcement. Even before ICE and border patrol officers made their presence known in the state, concerns around impending action had a chilling effect, she said, leading to significant dips in enrollment.

Just under half of all survey respondents said they had observed negative behavior changes in children in response to the crackdown, consistent with clinical symptoms of anxiety, stress and trauma. This has appeared in a variety of ways, including kids having more frequent tantrums and expressing concern around going outside to play. Others have told teachers they’re afraid to leave their homes, “thinking that they won’t see their parents again.”

Children at some centers also appear to be mirroring language they hear on the news or from adults around them. For example, one staff member wrote, “I have had 4 instances (between HS children) where 4 individual, separate white children have told Latino children in their classroom that either the police were coming to shoot them or telling them that they were going to report them and have them sent away.”

The survey was conducted by the Washington, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin Head Start associations throughout April. The groups surveyed 277 respondents in their own three states and across four others: California, Florida, Virginia and West Virginia. Those queried encompassed 90 program leaders, 165 staff members and 22 parents or caregivers. 

Sandy Diaz, an advocacy and family engagement specialist at the Washington State Association of Head Start who led the survey, noted that even children who are not from immigrant families are being impacted by ICE enforcement actions.

“It’s everybody in these Head Start communities who is witnessing and hearing about ICE activity (that) is being affected,” she said. “And that ultimately affects the quality of learning that children are receiving.”

‘It wiped out our parent programs’

For nearly three decades, immigration enforcement was largely prohibited in and around schools, hospitals, places of worship and other so-called sensitive locations. But President Donald Trump as one of his first acts in office in January 2025. 

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security faced a , the longest in history, amid heated debates around immigration. A bill to fund ICE and border patrol in the Senate ahead of the Memorial Day recess, meaning it won’t pass before the June 1 deadline set by Trump.

Democrats have that protections for sensitive locations be reinstated as yet as it stands, the stalled legislation does not appear to include this provision.

A separate bill, , was introduced in the House in February 2025 and would prohibit immigration enforcement actions within 1,000 feet of places such as Head Start centers and hospitals, except in certain extreme circumstances. Since early January of this year, the bill has gained 33 co-sponsors in the House and four in the Senate, meaning over two-thirds of the Democratic caucus is officially in support. No Republicans have signed on, leaving it in limbo.

Without such protections, providers fear continued harmful effects for their staff and families. Of the nearly 50% of Head Start leaders who reported ICE activity around their program, 3% said it had occurred directly at their site and nearly 10% said it had occurred at a family’s house. 

One-third of parents said they were more anxious or cautious about being involved in program activities and felt worried about traveling to their Head Start centers or being in public spaces. Over a quarter said they have changed the way they routinely do pickup or drop-off at their programs.Ìę

“Staff have been heartbroken that families ask them if they will be the emergency contact for the child if the parent is picked up,” wrote one provider.

“We have seen a decrease in playgroups/socialization,” wrote another. “Families are not as willing to hang out during drop-off/pickup to speak with teaching teams. More families are requesting transportation for their child, limiting their exposure at the center.”

The recent survey also found that local ICE activity has impacted staff and center operations: Three-quarters of leadership members received requests from employees for guidance on how to handle immigration officer encounters and 71% of programs have actively altered their systems or security operations, such as installing doorbell cameras.

Calloway, the Washington director, has seen this play out with parents and staff firsthand. 

“At some locations, it wiped out our parent programs, because we have a high population of children who speak a language other than English in their household, and those parents were the most afraid 
  Parents didn’t come anymore,” she said. 

When a family in crisis — immigration status, housing or food insecurity or chronic health issues — opens that door, the central question is who they trust enough to let in. The effectiveness of human-centered efforts to combat chronic absenteeism depends not just on what advocates do, but also on who they are.

to return chronically absent students to the classroom fail because the outreach often triggers fear and deeper institutional distrust in the communities it is meant to help. Successful community outreach requires professionals who share cultural background, common language and lived experience. 

The fundamental flaw in the traditional, compliance-based approach to chronic absenteeism is that it assumes everyone views institutional authority in the same manner. However, for marginalized families — such as undocumented households, those in poverty or those with prior experience with the judicial system — contact from official institutions inspires fear, not partnership. A recent report from Concentric Educational Solutions details this phenomenon. 

To reconnect the chronically absent to opportunity, a new approach — and a new face — is needed.

That is why the key to reengaging the approximately 25% of American students who are chronically absent is systematic, supportive outreach conducted by local community members who know the cultural background, language, lived experience and neighborhood context of the families they serve. 

This approach, which focuses on learning the “why” behind absenteeism, is about understanding why a parent might not answer the door, what a family’s silence communicates and how to build a relationship in a living room that is often a family’s safest space. 

The presence of a professional who is invested in the community, who speaks a family’s language and understands its culture is qualitatively different even the most well meaning truancy officer. A shared identity is essential, ensuring advocates are perceived as trusted neighbors, not representatives of a system that may have previously failed the family.

Data shows that supportive interventions by trained community members lead to positive results. of this type of in-home outreach found that 48% of chronically absent students returned to school after just a single supportive intervention. This data shows the importance of families trusting the person delivering the help and the limits of compliance-based approaches to chronic absenteeism. 

For K-12 school districts and policymakers, the implications are clear. When thinking through outreach to the chronically absent, the messenger matters. Some districts use school staff for such outreach, but this often requires overtime pay and is hard to sustain; others hire members of the community specifically for the work. This is not a soft add-on: It is a critical component of how evidence-based attendance models actually function in the real world.

Unless school leaders hire individuals who are culturally and linguistically connected to the communities they serve for this sensitive outreach, they cannot expect genuine relational trust to simply materialize. That means prioritizing local hiring, language concordance and lived experience. This strategy ensures that the face at the door is one families recognize and trust and will directly translate institutional goals into positive student outcomes.

The knock at the door that can truly change a student’s trajectory is not the one carrying the authority of a uniform and truancy summons. It simply is the knock a family recognizes. Returning a student to school, engaging them in learning and reconnecting them to opportunity is sensitive work that occurs by rebuilding relationships one conversation at a time. And these critical conversations require individuals sharing a common language, a shared background and a face families already know and trust.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Department of Education and Workforce Director Stephen Dackin have announced the launch of a statewide Attendance Dashboard in an effort to combat chronic absenteeism in K-12 public schools. 

Over 25% of Ohio students were chronically absent last year, missing nearly one month of school. 

A student is considered chronically absent in Ohio when they miss at least 10% of the minimum number of hours required in the school year, including excused and unexcused absences, according to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.

The dashboard announced last week is an that compiles self-reported data from districts and schools across the state, aiming to assist administrators, parents, and taxpayers in identifying trends in attendance patterns down to the grade level.

It will update weekly as more schools report their data. 

The dashboard is organized on a trend line that allows users to see the weekly percentage of statewide absenteeism. It can be viewed from the district down to grade levels of individual schools, with customizable features comparing specific absentee rates.

Dackin said this feature was designed with the intention of allowing districts to learn from each by these comparisons. 

The launch comes after DeWine’s emphasis on improving the lives of children during his address. During his final stretch in office, the dashboard is seemingly another step towards rounding out his agenda. 

“When students are not in school they are not learning, and the consequences are significant,” DeWine said. “Chronic absence isn’t just a school problem, it is a community problem, it is a state problem. It is also a parent problem.”  

Ohio is the second state to have a system that updates so frequently, Dackin said.

While districts and schools are not mandated to share their data, he said the more information that is provided will allow administrators to identify the root causes of chronic absenteeism, as they can widely differ between grade levels.  

“This helps communities understand the interventions needed at a particular grade level, and what kind of supports would be necessary based on the age group of young people,” Dackin said. 

As of last week, 24% of Ohio’s districts and schools’ data is unreported, including Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland Public School Districts, who have some of the highest rates of chronic absenteeism.

“We’re working actually with a lot of those districts,” Dackin said. “We do not have a unified data system in this state, so one of the challenges we have is there are different data systems that have to talk to this system. Many of these 24% districts, we are actively working with them to solve and resolve those technical problems.”

DeWine pointed to East Cleveland City Schools as a prime example of the benefits of attendance tracking, who used its attendance data to proactively reach out to chronically absent students and their families, which reduced its chronic absenteeism by over 10%.

He said the tracking also helped them identify key reasons why students were absent, including transportation barriers, health issues and difficult home situations.  

“We urge every school in Ohio to join the dashboard,” DeWine said. “The more data each school and community have the more innovative and collaborative they can be to solve this huge problem in Ohio.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10% or more of the school year, has reached historic levels in the past few years. While the policy world often treats this as a statistical trend to be managed by administrators, the reality is that schools cannot solve this crisis behind closed doors.

To turn the tide, there must be a radical shift in how schools, districts and states share information. At the state level, that means disaggregated chronic absenteeism data that helps educators peek behind the curtain of statewide averages. But there also needs to be school-level transparency that empowers the most important stakeholders in a child’s life: their parents and caregivers.

For too long, attendance data has been treated as a compliance metric, a number reported to the state to secure funding. But for a parent, knowing that their school has a 30% chronic absenteeism rate isn’t just a “stat.” It is an urgent signal.

Many parents are surprised to learn that missing just two days a month adds up to chronic absenteeism. They may see their own child’s absences as isolated incidents, unaware that their school is struggling with a systemic culture of disengagement. When schools provide clear, accessible, and frequent data on current rates and how those rates have shifted over time, it strips away the normalcy of the empty classroom.

Transparency builds awareness about the consequences. tells us that by third grade, chronically absent students are less likely to read on grade level. By middle school, it is a primary predictor of high school dropout rates. When parents see the data, they aren’t just looking at numbers; they are looking at the foundational health of their school community’s future.

Transparency isn’t just about showing a single percentage; it’s about providing the context necessary for decision-making. Parents deserve to know how their school compares to others with similar demographics or within the same district.

If School A has a chronic absenteeism rate of 40% while School B, just three miles away with similar resources, sits at 15%, that data tells a story. It suggests that School B may have found a successful recipe for student engagement, transportation solutions or mental health support that School A could learn from.

When parents have access to comparative data, they can move from being passive observers to active advocates. They can ask the right questions: What is School B doing differently? How can parents support teachers to implement those strategies here? This isn’t about shaming schools; it’s about using data to identify bright spots and scale what works.

has long helped families compare and choose schools based on factors that matter most to them. Understanding attendance patterns alongside traditional performance measures offers families a more detailed view of the overall school experience. That’s why GreatSchools recently introduced on school profiles in nearly 20 states (with more to come) — focusing the display on simple language (“81% of students are present nearly every day”) that would resonate with families.

Indeed, how we frame attendance data to families matters. Among the most significant barriers to solving chronic absenteeism is the “us versus them” mentality that often develops between families and front offices. When a school hides its struggles with attendance, it misses the opportunity to ask for help.

True transparency creates a bridge for partnership and builds trust. When a school leader stands before parents and says, “Our data shows that 25% of our students are missing critical instruction, and our biggest spike is on Friday mornings,” it invites a community-wide solution.

• Parents can coordinate carpools or “bike/walking school buses.”
• Students can voice the specific barriers — whether it’s bullying, a lack of belonging, or family obligations — that keep them from going to school.
• Schools can realign resources to provide the specific support families actually need, rather than what administrators think they need.

We have seen firsthand through our work in education innovation and leading schools that when you give parents high-quality, actionable data, they don’t just consume it — they act on it. They become partners in the “why” behind the absences. Is it a lack of reliable transit? Is it a chronic health issue? Is there a disconnect between engagement with the curriculum and its real-world application? 

This last one hits home, as from Edmentum in 2024 shows that personalization and engagement might be among our best solutions yet. In their research, a district featured in the study already had a strong Multi-Tiered System of Supports framework in place. Flexible, personalized digital curriculum was one component within that broader system of supports, not a standalone intervention. The district was actively examining attendance data and deliberately selecting tools to re-engage students.

The TL;DR: Schools and parents cannot solve these problems if they aren’t looking at the same map.

The “post-pandemic” era brings a new reality where the bond between home and school has been both strained and redefined. To strengthen that bond, educators must treat parents as the sophisticated decision-makers they are.

We call on district leaders and policymakers to make school-level chronic absenteeism data a centerpiece of their public reporting. This data should be:

• Real-time: Not a post-mortem delivered six months after the school year ends.
• Hyper-local: Broken down by school site.
• Accessible: Translated into multiple languages and presented in a way that is easy to digest and can spark a conversation.

The empty desk is a symptom of a larger disconnection. By pulling back the curtain on attendance data, schools do more than just count heads; they build a culture of accountability, care and partnership. It’s time to stop treating attendance as a private administrative burden and start treating it as a shared public priority. Our students cannot learn if they aren’t there, and they won’t be there unless we all — parents, educators, and community members — are looking at the truth together.

Statewide averages, while useful for tracking overall trends, often mask these disparities. Students who experienced the largest pandemic-era increases — Black and Hispanic children and those from low-income families — are generally the furthest from their pre-pandemic attendance levels. In many states, the gaps between these students and their peers have widened rather than narrowed.

Because chronic absenteeism — defined as missing 10% or more of the school year — is closely linked to academic achievement, engagement and long-term outcomes, these disparities carry significant equity implications. Without recovery, gaps in learning and opportunity are likely to persist.

This analysis examines trends in chronic absenteeism in 26 states and the District of Columbia, using data from the 2018-19 through the 2024-25 school years, broken down by income, English learner status and race. Together, the 27 jurisdictions educate just under half of the nation’s students.

Income

Low-income students had higher absenteeism rates in every state before COVID and experienced greater attendance disruptions than students overall during the height of the pandemic. Between 2018-19 and 2021-22, the average state saw chronic absenteeism among low-income students increase by more than 17 percentage points, versus 13 points statewide. In all but one state, Nevada, increases among low-income students exceeded the state average.

In some states, the divergence was especially pronounced. In Nebraska, 26% of low-income students were chronically absent in 2018-19; by 2021-22, that number had jumped to 43%. Over the same period, the state’s overall absenteeism rate rose by about 9 points — roughly half as much.

Since the peak, chronic absenteeism rates have declined for all students, with 21 of 27 states seeing larger reductions among low-income students. Those have varied widely, with decreases ranging from just 1 percentage point in Oklahoma to nearly 20 points in Rhode Island.

Despite these somewhat larger decreases, low-income students remain further from pre-pandemic attendance levels in almost every state. On average, chronic absenteeism in this population in 2024-25 remains more than 9 percentage points above 2018-19 levels, compared with about 7.5 points statewide. In Tennessee, absenteeism among low-income students remains roughly 10 points higher than before COVID, while the state overall is about 5 points above its baseline. In Rhode Island, West Virginia, Nevada and Ohio, low-income student attendance is closer to pre-pandemic levels than the state average.

As a result of these trends, attendance gaps between low-income students and their wealthier peers have widened in 23 of the 27 states analyzed. The average difference increased from about 7 to 9 percentage points in 2024-25. In Oregon, the gap widened from roughly 5 points to more than 13.

Where data are available for wealthier students as well, the divide is often stark. In Ohio, roughly 33% of low-income students were chronically absent in 2024-25, compared with 11% of more affluent kids. Similar gaps persist in Rhode Island (30% versus 12%) and Washington state (35% versus 19%).

English Learners

English learners followed a similar, and in some ways more striking, pattern. Between 2018-19 and 2021-22, the average state saw their chronic absenteeism rise by 16.5 percentage points — 3 more than the statewide average increase. In Iowa, English learner absenteeism rose by more than 21 points, from nearly 15% to more than 36%, compared with a nearly 14-point statewide jump. 

Post-peak declines among these students have been roughly comparable to statewide averages, around 6 percentage points. But because they experienced sharper increases initially, they remain further from their pre-pandemic baseline. On average across the states analyzed, English learner absenteeism rates in 2024-25 are about 11 points higher than in 2018-19, compared with 7.5 statewide. Except in Rhode Island and South Dakota, English learners are further from recovery than their peers overall — and in Rhode Island they have not only recovered, but now post lower absenteeism rates than before the pandemic.

In several states, English learner absenteeism remains especially elevated: in Alaska, Hawaii, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah, more than 15 points above pre-pandemic levels. In Utah, it is 17 points higher than in 2018-19, compared with a 9.5-point gap statewide. 

Perhaps most notable is how these students’ relative position has shifted. Before the pandemic, English learners were not consistently absent more than their peers, as were low-income students. In 14 of the 27 states, English learner absenteeism was below the statewide average or within 1 percentage point of it in 2018-19. By 2024-25, that was true for only six states, and in every state, the gap has widened. In Missouri, for example, chronic absenteeism among English learners rose from 12% in 2018-19, about 1 percentage point below the statewide rate, to 27% in 2024-25, more than 5 percentage points above the state average  of 21.5%.

Race and Ethnicity

Pandemic-era increases also varied sharply by race. White students experienced smaller hikes than the average in nearly every state, rising by about 10 percentage points between 2018-19 and 2021-22, compared with 13 points statewide.

Black and Hispanic students saw substantially larger increases. Across states, absenteeism among Black students rose by about 16 points on average, and among Hispanics by about 16.5 points. In every state analyzed, except Washington, D.C., the increase among Hispanic students exceeded the statewide average, and in 14 of the 27 states, Hispanic students saw the largest spikes of the three racial groups.

Recovery since 2021-22 has been somewhat stronger for Black and Hispanic students than for white kids. Across states, Black and Hispanic students have each seen average declines in chronic absenteeism of roughly 7 percentage points, compared with about 5 points for white students. But because absenteeism rose more sharply for Black and Hispanic students during the pandemic, these improvements have not fully offset the larger initial increases.

White students’ attendance remains closest to pre-pandemic levels, averaging about 5.5 points above baseline. Black students remain nearly 9 points above pre-pandemic levels, Hispanic students, nearly 10 points. In 17 of the 27 states analyzed, Hispanic students are the furthest from their 2018-19 attendance rates. Rhode Island again stands out as an exception; there, they now post lower absenteeism rates than before the pandemic. 

At the same time, Black students continue to show some of the highest absenteeism rates, leading in 14 states in 2024-25. In some cases, gaps are extreme: in the District of Columbia, absenteeism among white students is about 9%, compared with nearly 49% among Black peers; in Nebraska, the figures are roughly 15% and 43%, respectively.

Attendance has improved nationally since the pandemic, but underserved student groups remain further from their pre-pandemic attendance levels than others, and the gaps are wider than they once were. Rhode Island has bucked this trend, offering a promising example of what can achieve. Through a commitment to collecting and disseminating detailed, daily school-level data, and bringing together mayors, hospitals, business leaders and other community partners under the leadership of the governor’s office, the state has helped several student groups not only recover, but surpass their pre-pandemic attendance levels.

The persistent disparities in many states and Rhode Island’s progress in addressing them underscore the importance of timely, disaggregated attendance data. Without it, policymakers and educators risk overlooking which students are missing school and why, making it harder to direct supports where they are most needed.

FutureEd Policy Analyst Tara Moon and Research Associate Giana Loretta contributed to this analysis.

“Out with the flu for a week.”

“He’s moving to Texas.” 

“When we said we would show up at her house, she started coming.”

 â€œI don’t know where to go with him. When all his teachers are here, he’s OK, but he takes advantage of subs.”

Assistant Principal Evan Byron runs the meeting; grade-level counselors go through every student in danger of being chronically absent, missing 10% of the school year. On this day, Jan. 13, near the halfway mark of the school year, the team ran through 25 seventh-grade students in about 10 minutes. 

While the pace is rapid, it can be detailed, as they observed one student’s absenteeism problem stemmed from the days she had French class. Since the class isn’t required, they hope to resolve this issue by moving her to another subject. 

Their data is up-to-the-minute: They know whether all the students notified yesterday are in the building today; they know how parents are likely to react to repeated warnings; and they can even take an educated guess that the upcoming travel basketball season might improve one student’s attendance. 

The school follows a strict regimen about absences: an email home if a student misses two days in a row, a letter home once a student misses six days, another letter at 12 days, and an email home each day a student is absent if they have missed more than 10 days. School officials can also schedule home visits, where they can show parents a student’s academic and attendance records while extolling the wide variety of classes and extra curriculars that may entice a student into attending. 

“It’s effective,” Byron said. “A lot of students magically show up” after these correspondences. For any student who reaches the level of chronically absent –18 absences out of 180 school days – the school sends a referral to the state Department of Children and Families. 

“That’s an absolute last resort,” said principal Damon Lewis. 

Chronic absenteeism has spiked in schools nationwide since 2020’s pandemic. Before then, the number of students who missed at least 10% of school was about three of every 20 students, or 15%, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. Data from 39 states and Washington, D.C., showed that number nearly doubled to 28.6% at its height, he said, although it has dropped back slightly under 23% in the last year. Malkus tracks school attendance nationwide at the website.

“The permission structure of when it’s OK to miss school loosened up” after schools were closed for the COVID-19 virus, Malkus said. If the new normal of students chronically absent is above 20%, “that’s not good.” 

At Ponus, a middle school in a small city north of New York City, Lewis and his team were not immune to this trend. The 637-student school’s chronically absent rate spiked to 31% after the pandemic; Lewis and his administrators were able to slice that number to under 10% in just one year. 

A lot of what Ponus officials do is the hard work of paying close attention to students and their patterns. Lewis mentions attendance in every weekly email he sends to all parents; homeroom teachers keep close tabs on their students; and the biweekly attendance meetings aim to make sure no student slips between the cracks. 

During the January meeting, seventh grade counselor Kaitlin Douglas points out a student who nearly did just that. “She wasn’t missing consecutive days, so she was flying under our radar,” Douglas said, noting that the student popped up on her list because of the total days missed. 

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck initiative,” Principal Lewis said. “We drew a line in the sand and said, ‘We’re not doing this anymore.’ ”

While all this effort is put into attendance, Lewis and his team have revamped the school to make children want to attend. “We try to entice the student back to school” through high-interest courses such as robotics, 3D printing, music technology, he said. The school has also beefed up its afterschool clubs; it currently offers 17 options ranging from weightlifting and rock band to crochet and jewelry making. 

Norwalk has become a choice district, meaning any student inside the city’s 23 square miles can attend any of the city’s five middle schools. (The Concord Magnet school is a K-8 school on the same campus as Ponus Ridge.) For the first time, the school has a waiting list this year, Lewis said proudly. 

Francesco and Brayden Christopher – who enjoy pointing out that they are in grades 6-7, hand motion included – attend the school from across town because their parents like the teachers and the people. “My dad texts with [principal Lewis] every day,” Brayden said.Ìę

Eighth grader Olivia Hempstead agreed that her family was impressed with the frequent communication when her older brother attended the school. She said she has a “true relationship” with principal Lewis and that he cares about students without trying to be their friend. “I’ve never heard him yell,” she added. 

Lewis, who has been principal at Ponus Ridge for 11 years, works to include the entire community in the school. He features Walk-Through Wednesdays where anyone can visit the school once a month, a Hispanic parent group and an in-school food pantry for families. When ICE raids began in the city, he brought immigration attorneys to the school for a night-time event so parents could learn their rights. “I want to meet people where they are, and they are hungry for resources,” he said. 

Three of every four Ponus Ridge students are eligible for free or reduced lunch and 90% are students of color. 

Lewis was named the Middle Level National Principal of the Year by the this year. Lewis “demonstrates how visionary leadership can transform school communities,” said association CEO Ronn Nozoe. 

The attendance increase has had other benefits for Ponus Ridge students. Even though the school’s overall accountability index from the state is a mediocre 61.9 on a scale to 100, Lewis said his students’ Preliminary SAT scores have outpaced the district, the state and the nation. The school also outperforms its district and the state for ninth grade students on track to graduation. This measure looks at former Ponus Ridge students after their first year of high school; 91.5% are on track to graduate within four years, slightly ahead of the city’s 89.3%. 

But the area Ponus Ridge really stands out in is attendance. Of the city’s 21 schools, Ponus has by far the lowest rate of students chronically absent, with 9.1% in 2024-25 compared to Norwalk’s overall 17.2% rate. AEI’s Malkus points out that the increase in student absences has consequences even for students who aren’t chronically absentAchievement on standardized tests is pretty linear, he said, meaning the more days students miss, the worse they tend to achieve. “The long-term challenge is to change people’s behavior,” he added. 

Lewis and other administrators understand how difficult that can be. Sometimes parents complain about all the school’s correspondence, but the school remains committed to following its plan. “We’re not afraid to put our heads in the lion’s mouth,” Lewis said about dealing with criticism. 

“When people say to me, ‘Stop sending emails,’ I say, ‘Send your son to school and I will,’ ” Lewis said. “I try to tell them, this is bigger than Ponus. This is a life lesson.”

But not all parents resist the emails, the principal added. In one recent case, a father had to leave home for work before his child left for school. When he saw an email mid-morning that his son wasn’t at school, the father called the school and said he was leaving work to go home. “He’ll be there within the hour,” he told Lewis. 

Today, with thousands of federal agents targeting Minnesota schools, bus stops, day care centers and other places where immigrant parents gather with their children, remote learning options have been revived in numerous districts, with varying degrees of success. And, unlike the pandemic-era emergency measures, the steps schools are taking to keep kids safe are anything but uniform. 

In many schools — especially those that enroll diverse student bodies — who can show up and who can’t changes by the day, forcing teachers to improvise continually. Still confronted with the absenteeism, mental health crises and lost learning of the pandemic shutdowns, educators know what’s being lost — and exactly which children are going to suffer the disproportionate impact of an emergency now in its ninth week.   

Two St. Paul Public Schools teachers recently gave Âé¶čŸ«Æ· glimpses inside their classrooms. In his 18th year on the job, John Horton teaches at Barack and Michelle Obama Montessori, where classes contain multiple grade levels and the student body, as he puts it, “looks like the people that live in St. Paul.” So far, all 28 of his first, second and third graders have been in school, every day.

Across the city, in the equally diverse Como High School, 31-year veteran Eric Erickson teaches a host of subjects where current events are inescapably relevant: AP Psychology; a University of Minnesota College in the Schools government course; and U.S. history, co-taught with an English learner instructor. 

As improbable as it sounds, the families of Horton’s pupils want them physically present in class and have moved mountains to get them there safely. But the divides in in-person attendance in Erickson’s classes are illustrative of a deepening inequity. He knows that a persistent chasm of unequal opportunity is likely to yawn wider. 

Until the abduction of a child or violence at or near their school forces them into the spotlight, most Minnesota educators have been too fearful to speak out, using their names and those of their schools, about what it’s like in classrooms right now. Yet Horton and Erickson, both of whom have been Minnesota Teacher of the Year finalists and/or semifinalists, told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· they want people to know what school is like in this unprecedented moment. 

These excerpts from conversations with them have been edited for length and clarity.

Who’s in class in person, and who isn’t

Horton: Children really, really thrive on structure, routine, predictability. The problem that’s different from COVID to now is that during COVID, even though things were upended, there were still some structures and routines and things in place. But with the way things are heading right now, those things aren’t present anymore. 

Our school has some teachers that have been reassigned to take on virtual learning. They’re pausing their in-person job and moving to the online school. They’re teaching children who haven’t ever been to online school. So it’s a whole new program and a whole new mode of instruction.

My classroom has 28 kids normally, and I have 28 kids still here. I have a very good relationship with a lot of the families, and they really wanted to stay in person as a community. There’s definitely some fears and anxiety, but for young children, that predictability is really important. 

We are fortunate to have a community of volunteers keeping watch around the school. We have precautions in place for children who don’t feel safe waiting for the bus. There’s been a lot of community- and school-level action that has helped mitigate the fear. But there’s a lot of anxiety about leaving the house. 

Erickson: The students who are not here tend to be students with brown skin and black skin. And in many ways, this division along race and ethnicity makes this version of virtual learning feel a lot more like battles we thought we had overcome in the Civil Rights Movement, and with equal access to opportunity and education.

The difference in who’s here and who’s not can be seen in the difference between a U.S. history English-language cohort and a senior-level, University of Minnesota college-level government course. I’ve got 95% of my seniors in college-level government present, and about 30% of my co-taught U.S. history classes are online. But our English-learner classes, some of them are less than half in attendance in person. 

(Students are) not able to listen to their (in-person) peers and process what’s happening. They’re living in isolation with their family and social media as connectors, as opposed to the support of peer-to-peer and caring adult interaction. 

We are still their teachers. They are still on our class lists. We are pushing out lessons, videos, documents and assignments to students in their homes. But there’s no substitute. Students who miss live instruction and interaction with peers and their teachers cannot obtain the same quality of education.         

What they’re hearing from students 

Horton: The challenges the kids are experiencing at home and in the community are real. Children talk openly about the immigration crackdown. They’re making posters and expressing their frustration. A couple of my kids have been to protests. A few of my kids have had knocks at the door and agents enter their homes.

And, of course, a lot of children are aware of what’s going around the community because of parents’ stress. In a lot of ways that’s very similar to COVID, where families are trying to isolate children from everything that’s going on and yet the children know something is going on.

I don’t know if I can share all my stories. There was an incident at a child’s house a couple weeks ago. And that was scary. The child was scared, the family was scared. I was shook. They called me Sunday at 6:50 in the morning to tell me what was going on. Some of the people in our community are going through a lot, and they don’t have a lot of people they might be able to know or connect with or trust.

I’ve worked with these families for three years in a row, and I have good relationships. There’s a lot of blessings with that and also heartbreak. It’s really hard to hear what’s transpiring, but I’m also really surprised by the outpouring of love. 

When they’re struggling through traumatic events — and our city has been through so many over the last few years — children also need a sense of hope and joy. To see their friends, to have things they know how to do, be it an art project or something. Having those things, those distractions, those avenues are really important. The children that have been coming to school have been very happy in my class.

Erickson: When we are debriefing the current events in the news cycle, Minneapolis and St. Paul are at the center of a federal surge that has drawn the attention of the world. It’s imperative that we’re able to discuss, analyze and evaluate the impact of the situation surrounding us. I take pride in listening to my students, taking their questions and helping them think critically about what we’re experiencing in relationship to what we’ve studied with the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. 

They ask appropriate questions. They see injustice. They observe an overreach of federal power. They notice that the guardrails are off with regard to checks and balances. Congress is not holding the Executive Branch accountable. Court decisions are not necessarily checking the expansion of presidential power. They wonder if it’s their time and place to exercise their First Amendment rights.

How students are expressing themselves   

Horton: This is a Montessori school, and we believe in honoring children’s voices. The posters children have written are very simple. They say “ICE out.” Or, “Leave our friends alone.” “You are not welcome” is one of my favorite ones. The kids are expressing themselves through art. Having that outlet is so important. 

The kids started a food shelf in the classroom. And they’re collecting money for the [a St. Paul nonprofit that helps refugees and immigrants resettle]. Two children are carrying around a box, collecting change. 

Families have donated gift cards to support other families. To see all the people coming together, that makes me hopeful.

Erickson: We saw a highly organized, peaceful student protest on Jan. 14, a week after Renee Good’s killing, where students from across St Paul high schools — mostly public, but also peers from private and charter schools — converged on the state Capitol to call out the injustices they’re seeing and to ask for human decency from the federal government. 

We were fearful as a school community about what might happen to them if they exercise their freedom of speech and freedom to assemble. We were inspired to see them advocate for themselves. We, of course, did not attend or endorse the student walkouts. But parents and community members coordinated to serve as unofficial marshals and watch over the routes they were taking to the Capitol, and to be there for support, to be observers of their constitutional rights. 

There were three students in the room with me, the other 20 were at the rally. We were able to watch a livestream. And as we observed democracy in action, two of their classmates gave speeches on the steps of the Capitol. One addressing the humanity of all people and immigrants being the backbone of this country, and another addressing the impact of ICE’s actions. They were articulate messages — positive and hopeful in tone — while also criticizing the overreach of the federal government.

Their own mental health

Horton: Well. Oh boy. That’s a doozy of a question. My job is to make sure the children are safe and secure, and sometimes that means that you have to co-regulate with them. You have to show them what calm, caring and compassion looks like. And also anxiety. You need to model it: “I’m feeling this way, and this is how I can deal with it.” It’s almost like you’re teaching as you’re feeling, which is tough. 

And then my own children. You know, what they hear when I talk at home. I’m trying to be a really good role model, and that comes first. Sometimes as an adult and a parent and someone in the community, you just have to put aside your own preferences for the good of the group. 

Talking to children about hard things is important, but they can only take so much at a time. As a teacher, and especially a teacher of young kids, having difficult conversations is part of life. But they really need time to process things. Talking briefly about these incidents and then giving them an opportunity to have a say and have some hope and have some joy in their life is very important.

The hardest thing for me is I know the impact it’s having on our families. That’s really hard. And I also know it’s impacting staff. There’s staff that carry around documents now, and they’re scared to go out. 

I keep using the word “community,” but I really have found a lot of comfort in that. You know, comfort with the children, the families, the staff. But to say it’s easy would be a lie. 

It’s a relief in some ways that they can be together. Just being in community is such a powerful thing for the people out protesting — even in our classroom.

Erickson: As much as I pride myself on teaching from a non-partisan perspective and analyzing political issues and the role of government with objectivity, seeing the harm to our students and families has caused me to choke up more than once in class while listening and guiding discussion on these matters. 

Yes, it has taken an emotional toll on teachers. Teachers love and care for all of our students. To have 30% of them not be able to reach school and go to your class where they belong is a cruel and sad injustice.

When enrollment drops, districts often slash programs, lay off staff and close schools. All this hurts students in the process. Yet fewer students can be an opening to improve learning. In fact, declining enrollment offers a rare chance to to better incorporate research on how students learn best, paving the way for smaller learning communities, expanded personalized learning options and stronger relationships — all of which can lead to more individualized, joyful and relevant learning.

State leaders can help districts seize this moment by rethinking California’s practice of funding schools by daily attendance, not overall enrollment, which punishes districts for every absence. The current system worsens budget instability for those districts already experiencing long-term enrollment declines; it also hits immigrant communities hardest in an era of heightened enforcement and fear.

Stanford professor Thomas Dee that immigration enforcement in five Central Valley school districts led to a 22% increase in absenteeism compared to the same months in the prior years. Similar patterns emerged during in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The financial implications are significant: LAUSD loses approximately in state revenue for every one percentage point drop in average daily attendance. For a district already navigating declining enrollment, this revenue loss compounds fiscal strain and penalizes schools that serve communities most affected by immigration enforcement.

Stabilizing school budgets amid enrollment decline starts with a simple fix: fund districts by whom they enroll, not who shows up each day. This would recognize that school districts hire teachers and other staff and equip schools with computers and textbooks , not attendance. The California legislature offered a short-term safeguard by approving , which would hold districts’ funding harmless if they experience sudden changes to average daily attendance due to immigration action.

The state can also increase its funding amounts under the Local Control Funding Formula to recognize that California is still falling short of providing adequate funding. Two other bills in the two-year legislative session, and, aim to increase school funding so that districts can pay teachers what they are worth, keep pace with rising costs, and remain nationally and globally competitive. 

But districts can’t afford to wait while these proposals move slowly through the legislature[. The fiscal challenges created by declining enrollment are already here, leaving districts like LAUSD with limited options for achieving financial stability as they serve fewer students. The district’s enrollment decline is acute. In a we detail how LAUSD has lost more than 316,000 students – approximately 40% of its enrollment – since the 2002-03 school year. This trend stems from falling birth rates, demographic shifts and a housing crisis; it’s further exacerbated by the pandemic, wildfires and federal immigration raids.Ìę

State policymakers could turn this fiscal challenge into an opportunity by enabling districts to experiment with new staffing models, flexible use of facilities and innovative instructional designs. These require local will, but also stable, equitable funding and regulatory flexibility, which are tools only the state can provide.

Without them, even the most promising local ideas will fall short. LAUSD’s per-pupil funding has risen, but costs and long-term obligations have grown faster, narrowing the district’s fiscal margin. The real challenge isn’t just fewer students, but the widening gap between needs and resources. Districts like LAUSD are being asked to do more with less in a system that remains inadequately funded. 

Education leaders nationwide are watching how California navigates this moment. Districts must redesign for the future as enrollment shrinks, and the state must ensure they have the means to do so. Enrollment decline may be inevitable, but a decline in student opportunity doesn’t have to happen.

As an in longstanding partnership with public schools and the of a nonprofit organization focused specifically on attendance, we’re hearing questions from educators, district leaders, families and policymakers about whether the old standards for attendance are still reasonable. Do students still need to go to school every day? Is it fair to ask educators to work on improving attendance when so many barriers exist outside of school? 

Given what we know from research and from schools across the country, backing away from a strong focus on chronic absence places children’s well-being in jeopardy, because attendance matters as much now as ever.

Early evidence from a UChicago Consortium on School Research study that is underway shows that the relationships among attendance and grades, test scores and test gains remain as strong as before COVID-19. This suggests that, despite all the extra supports that have been put into schools since the pandemic, chronic absence is a key factor in poor performance on exams across the country. This is for every age and demographic group.

These findings affirm decades of research showing that school attendance matters for students’ academic success, holistic development and well-being. Children in pre-K-2 who were chronically absent for several years by grade 3. Attendance also is important in the elementary and middle grades for students’ eventual , ability to pass their classes and graduate. And it’s not just the absent students who are affected; the content and pace of the classroom and even how adults and resources across the school are deployed can be detrimental to those who do show up.

Beyond academics, school is a key space for young people’s development — building social connections and skills with peers and adults, exploring their interests through classes and extracurriculars, and accessing resources, whether directly in school or through referrals from teachers. Students who are absent frequently miss out. 

Attendance rises when schools focus on fostering students’ development. Those with strong — where young people feel safe and supported and teachers collaborate with one another and with families — have higher attendance rates than other schools. No wonder boosting students’ is seen as a to chronic absence. When students and see their school as a place of community, stability, safety and support, they are more likely to come consistently, even when there are challenges. Teachers and school staff get a clearer sense of what families need, and how to help. They are more likely to seek assistance when they need it and work with to find solutions that work for them. In turn, school leaders and staff get a clearer sense of what families need, and how to help.

Addressing chronic absence can feel like an overwhelming, or even an impossible, problem because it is affected by many aspects of a young person’s life. Yet, we’ve seen schools make substantial progress when they focus on key data and supports. Chicago moved ninth grade attendance rates from 80% to 91% from 2008 to 2018 after showed absenteeism in the first year of high school was the driving factor behind low graduation rates. The district provided schools with real-time data on ninth graders’ attendance and grades, and principals and teachers were held accountable for a metric they could actually move, while being helped with by organizations like the Network for College Success. 

Nathaniel Green Middle School in Providence reduced its chronic absence rate from in three years after Principal Jackson Reilly organized students into cohorts taught by teams of teachers so they could build in time for relationships among students, teachers, and students and their teachers. This created a sense of community that brought back joy into the classroom. They then used data on who was missing 10% or more of school to identify which students needed extra outreach and support.

At Compass Berclair Charter School in Memphis, absenteeism dropped from 28% to 2% between 2021-22 and 2023-24. Principal Camie Cowan used morning meetings with all students and monthly family check-ins to strengthen relationships. Like Nathaniel Green, it also used chronic absence data to identify and offer assistance to students still struggling with attendance barriers.   

Kansas City Kansas Public Schools have reduced chronic absence districtwide from over 50%  in 2021-22 to less than 35%, and leaders anticipate further reductions in the coming school year. The district has moved away from taking a punitive approach to absences; a key component of its success has been a focus on relationship building. Every school has a team that reviews data as well as develops and implements a year-long plan of action that emphasizes universal strategies (morning meetings or restorative circles) along with targeted supports (positive phone calls and mentoring).

These examples demonstrate that schools can have a big impact on students’ attendance rates. The key is building relationships with young people and their families — asking students and families what motivates them to show up even when it isn’t easy. Are the barriers an unsafe path to school or a lack of access to health care? Is the student struggling academically or being bullied? Schools can use these answers to partner with students and families to find solutions. 

What educators in schools do matters — a lot. Progress is not just possible for improving attendance rates in schools; it’s critical. Children’s current and future well-being depend on it.  

States that joined a national pledge led by three high-profile education advocacy and research groups to cut chronic absenteeism in half over five years fared better. The 16 states and Washington, D.C. posted results “substantially above the average rate” of decline, though exact numbers are not yet available, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the trio.

The national chronic absenteeism average dropped from 28.5% in 2022 to 25.4% in 2023, and fell an additional two points to 23.5% in 2024. Virginia, which is among the 16 participating states, cut its chronic absenteeism by 4.4 percentage points, year over year, to 15.7%, as of spring 2024.

Speaking of the states collectively, Malkus told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·, “That’s good but it’s not as good as we need it to be. I think it points to the need for sustained pressure and a sustained campaign to bring absence rates down and to bring more students back to consistent attendance.”

Last July, AEI and EdTrust, right-and left-leaning think tanks, respectively, and the national nonprofit Attendance Works joined forces to launch The 50% Challenge. This week, the organizations hosted in Washington, D.C., to report on their progress, re-up the call to action and hear insights from state, district and community partners on how they are improving student attendance and engagement.

With California and Georgia recently joining, the 16 states and D.C. who signed on to the pledge account for more than a third of all students nationally. While Malkus doesn’t necessarily attribute their better results to the pledge itself, he noted that their participation shows a willingness to commit to the cause and be publicly accountable for their results. 

“I will hold their feet to the fire on this goal,” he added during his opening remarks in D.C.

While felt most acutely by students of color and those in poorer districts, the spike in chronic absenteeism — students missing more than 10% of school days a year — regardless of size, racial breakdown or income. Chronic absenteeism from 13.4% in 2017 to 28.5% in 2022 before beginning to drop in 2023.

Only about one-third of students nationally are in districts that are on pace to cut 2022 absenteeism in half by 2027, according to an , and rates improved more slowly in 2024 than they did in 2023, “raising the very real possibility that absenteeism rates might never return to pre-pandemic levels.

Research has shown that students with high rates of absenteeism are more likely to fall behind academically and are at a greater risk of dropping out of school. About 8% of all learning loss from the pandemic is attributed just to chronic absenteeism, according to soon-to-be-released AEI research.

The continued disproportionate impacts of chronic absenteeism were confirmed by recent , which found that in roughly half of urban school districts, more than 30% of students were chronically absent — a far higher share of students than in rural or suburban school districts.

RAND also found that the most commonly reported reason for missing school was sickness and one-quarter of kids did not think that being chronically absent was a problem.

SchoolStatus, a private company that works with districts to reduce chronic absenteeism, also released  for some 1.3 million K-12 students across 172 districts in nine states. Districts using proactive interventions, the company reports, drove down chronic absenteeism rates from 21.9% in 2023–24 to 20.9% in 2024–25.

At this week’s event, numerous experts across two panels emphasized the importance of a tiered approach to confronting the issue, which has resisted various remedies. Schools must build enough trust and buy-in with kids and their families that they are willing to share why they are absent in the first place. Once those root causes are identified, it is up to school, district and state leaders to work to remove the barriers.

And while data monitoring must play a significant role, it should be done in a way that is inclusive of families.

“We need to analyze data with families, not at them,” said Augustus Mays, EdTrust’s vice president of partnerships and engagement.

It’s imperative to understand the individual child beyond the number they represent and to design attendance plans and strategies with families so they feel supported rather than chastised.

“It’s around choosing belonging over punitive punishment,” Mays added.

One major and common mistake schools make is “accountability without relationships,” said Sonja Brookins Santelises, the superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools.

“You can’t ‘pull people up’ if you don’t have enough knowledge of what they’re really going through,” she said.

Panelists were transparent that all this would require immense funding, staff and community partnerships.

Virginia achieved its noteworthy drop in chronic absenteeism after launching a $418 million education initiative in the fall of 2023, in part after seeing their attendance data sink, with about 1 in 5 students chronically missing school. At least 10% of those funds are earmarked to prioritize attendance solutions in particular, according to panelist Emily Anne Gullickson, the superintendent of public instruction for the Virginia Department of Education.Ìę

These strategies are far-reaching, she noted: Because parents had been told throughout the pandemic to keep their kids home at the slightest sign of illness, schools partnered with pediatricians and school nurses to help counter the no-longer-necessary “stay home” narrative.

Gullickson said she also broke down bureaucratic silos, connecting transportation directors and attendance directors, after realizing the role that transit played in chronic absenteeism. The state now has second chance buses as well as walking and led by parents or teachers along a fixed route, who pick up students along the way.

And they are “on a mission to move away from seat time and really deliver more flexibility on where, when and how kids are learning,” she said. 

“This isn’t one strategy. It’s a set of strategies,” said Attendance Works founder and executive director Hedy Chang, who moderated the panel.

In Connecticut, state leaders have launched the , a research-based model that sends trained support staff to families’ homes to build relationships and better understand why their kids are missing school. 

A recent study confirmed that six months after the program’s first home visits, attendance rates improved by approximately 10 percentage points for K-8 students, and nearly 16 percentage points for high schoolers, said Charlene Russell-Tucker, the commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education.

Schools must also work to motivate kids to want to show up in the first place, panelists said, making it a meaningful place that students believe will support and help them in the long run. The only way to do this is to start with student and family feedback, said Brookins, the Baltimore schools chief.

During the pandemic many parents saw up-close for the first time what their kids’ classrooms and teacher interactions looked like, “and I don’t think a lot of folks liked what they saw for a variety of different reasons,” Brookins said.

“I think it opened up boxes of questions that we — as the education establishment — were unprepared to answer,” she added. But chronic absenteeism cannot be successfully fought without engaging in those uncomfortable conversations.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to EdTrust and Âé¶čŸ«Æ·.

It is impossible to solve a problem without knowing what it is. A recent Attendance Works reveals that “as of mid-April 2025, the majority of states (43) published their chronic absence data for 2023-24. This represents a significant improvement.” Improvements are relative; this is embarrassing. There is nothing to celebrate in that,10 months after the previous school year, most states have shared data that is now wildly out-of-date. The federal government alone has spent around $1 billion in the past two decades to help states build longitudinal data systems, the exact kind of operation that can readily track and publish chronic absenteeism data. It’s the state longitudinal data system in Rhode Island, for example, that allows the state to for every school. Any state that continues to publish merely annual chronic absenteeism data is making a statement that attendance isn’t paramount.

This lack of detailed state data hides the fact that not all students are missing school equally, even though the attendance gap between low-income students and their more affluent peers has grown since the pandemic. University of Southern California professor Morgan Polikoff last month that show “substantial variation” between the chronic absenteeism rates of different groups of students. Least likely to miss school are gifted students, Asian children and students in grades 2 through 5. Most likely to be chronically absent? Homeless and foster youth, low-income students and 12^th graders.

Low-income kids, in other words, were most likely to suffer during the pandemic, were more likely to experience and remain significantly more likely to miss more than 10% of school days.  If “every day counts,” as the attendance slogan states, why won’t most states publicly report on this data but once a year?

Parents should demand better attendance data, too. It’s not only the kids missing school who lose out — research shows that all students with high chronic absenteeism rates. This finding holds , too. Parents have a right to know what the chronic absenteeism rate is at their child’s school and in their child’s classroom, and should receive clear information about their own child’s attendance patterns. 

Second, reset the messaging.

One explanation for the continued higher rates of chronic absenteeism is an uncomfortable one — that the education sector is allowing it to happen. State, district and school leaders, along with mayors, city councils, state legislators and other political leaders, all play a role. Schools have sent mixed messages to students and families over the past few years about attendance, whether that’s allowing students to “” an absence by attending a Saturday session or the fact that they continue to earn high grades and timely diplomas despite many absences. And don’t forget the biggest mixed message of all: When schools closed during the pandemic, whether for two months or two years, the clear signal to parents was “schools are closed but your child will be fine.” study shows that graduation rates continued to climb after COVID despite rampant chronic absenteeism and serious learning loss. This cemented the implicit idea that physically attending school every day is no longer required for academic success. 

To undo this unintentional messaging, political and education leaders can start by acknowledging that pandemic-era school closures harmed students and should be avoided in any future crisis at all costs. Next, they should tell parents that students are expected to attend school every day. The new message must be: “If your child is not in school every day, she will fall behind.” Consider incentives like one implemented by a , New York, with low absenteeism: Only seniors who maintain a certain are permitted to leave the premises for lunch. In middle and high school, talk to students directly about why coming to school every day is essential for their long-term goals. If incentives and motivations aren’t enough, make promotion to the next grade contingent on attendance. If a student has missed more than 20 days, require summer school or make the student repeat a grade. Think this unfair? It’s hard to conceive of something more unfair to children than passing them from grade to grade without ensuring they accumulate sufficient knowledge and experience.

Finally, it’s not enough to tell students, especially high schoolers, that they should come to school every day. The learning that happens in the classroom should be so good that they don’t want to miss it. This is a  massive challenge, to be sure, but the one that may matter the most. It’s one thing to convince parents and students of the importance of coming to school every day, and another to make that attendance worthwhile. If a robust academic experience is the long-term goal for every public school student, members of society, from parents to politicians, must reject the new normal of scattershot attendance and get all kids back in school buildings every day. No hope remains but Americans’ own actions; better data and clear messaging are places to start. 

School attendance is critical for success in the classroom, and success in school is core to health across a lifespan. Children who attend school regularly are far more likely to achieve academically and graduate from high school than those who are chronically absent. In turn, high school graduation leads to better health outcomes, and students who graduate are more likely to have fewer chronic illnesses and fewer injuries, and live , than those who do not.

Yet today, is chronically absent, defined as missing more than 10% of school days. In some districts, that proportion is closer to 1 in 2. The COVID pandemic widened and deepened a longstanding problem, and now, the obstacles that prevent children from coming to school — chronic illness, disengagement in the classroom and unmet social needs — are wide-ranging. While many teachers and principals have worked tirelessly to get students back into the classroom, chronic absence has become a problem too big for educators or schools to solve alone. 

A new public health , developed by education and public health experts at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Kaiser Permanente and Attendance Works, offers a comprehensive, community-driven approach with three core elements: data, partnerships and prevention.

First, school attendance data should be tracked and analyzed on a regular basis by district-level teams of educators, epidemiologists and clinicians who can interpret patterns and target solutions. Key questions include: When during the academic year does attendance dip? At what age does it start to falter? Which neighborhoods are most affected? Public health departments can include chronic absence in their community health needs assessments. 

Sharing school attendance data securely with health providers can help identify children with particular conditions, like asthma, who are missing school and require extra attention. In the , for example, pediatricians — with the consent of parents — receive regular reports about which children in their practices are on track to become chronically absent. They then can talk to families about what’s happening. If children are missing school for health reasons, more intensive medical treatment may be needed. If the problem is disengagement in the classroom, clinicians can help assess whether there are additional educational needs. If there are social factors, such as inadequate child care or housing, clinicians can work with social workers in schools or community services to find resources to assist families.

Data alone is not enough; partnerships are essential. Beyond health care providers, community organizations, afterschool programs and religious institutions all have a role to play in supporting families in areas with low attendance rates. Such broad coalitions have a track record of success.

For example, the is a citywide collaborative anchored by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the public school system. The collaboration reviews education and health data and uses it to inform targeted action in the clinic and classroom; for example promoting access to primary care. The results include increased improved and reduced .

The third pillar is prevention. It can be easy to see troubling attendance patterns as simply an issue with a truant student, a problem family or a bad school. But punitive approaches are less likely to work than efforts that listen to parents, address their needs and anticipate future challenges. Using data and evidence to guide action, coalitions can take such steps as providing safer transportation routes to school by improving sidewalk safety, creating protected bike lanes, installing flashing lights on crosswalks and offering better public transportation options; adding services to afterschool programs; and expanding school-based mental health support. Communities can also set a widespread expectation that all kids must go to school every day. Encouraging the development of such norms is difficult, but doing so was at the core of other successful public health strategies, like smoking cessation and traffic safety.  

Not every approach will succeed. To sustain progress, it is important to document, evaluate and share what works and why. Research-practice partnerships such as the build long-term collaborations among researchers, health practitioners and representatives from districts and state agencies to quickly assess the implementation and results of innovative programs. In San Francisco, youth are to help in such efforts.

Most fundamentally, this framework’s approach to chronic absence means keeping focus on a measurable outcome and innovating with solutions until every child has the best chance of success, both in and out of the classroom. 

Like heart rate and blood pressure, school attendance is a vital sign for health. Like weight and height, it is fundamental to child development. Now is the time to prioritize reducing chronic absence to support the long-term health of children.

A new analysis of data from three states — North Carolina, Texas and Virginia — shows that prior to COVID, 17% of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of the school year. By 2023, long after schools had to cope with new variants and hybrid schedules, that figure hit 37%.

“Absences are both more common for everybody, but they are also more extreme,” said Jacob Kirksey, an associate professor of education policy at Texas Tech University.

Additional new research shows that while post-pandemic chronic absenteeism lingers across the board, rates were substantially higher for low-income students. In North Carolina, for example, the chronic absenteeism rate for students in poverty before the pandemic was 9.2 percentage points higher than for non-poor students. By 2023, the gap increased to 14.6 percentage points.

“The income gap really was the main driver that showed up over and over again,” said Morgan Polikoff, an education researcher at the University of Southern California. But it’s hard for schools to make a dent in the problem, he said, if they aren’t investigating the reasons for chronic absenteeism. “There’s a big difference between the kid [who] has an illness and is chronically sick versus the kid [who] is super disengaged.”

Kirksey and Polikoff were among several researchers who Friday at an American Enterprise Institute event focused on facing what Kirksey called the “under-the-hood dynamics” of chronic absenteeism in the post-COVID era. Since 2022, when the national average peaked at 28%, the rate has dropped to 23% — still much higher than the pre-COVID level of about 15%, according to the conservative think tank’s . 

“I have a question that keeps me up at night. That question is ‘What’s the new normal going to be?’ ” said Nat Malkus, the deputy director of education policy at AEI. “We see this rising tide, but I think that it’s incumbent on us to say that chronic absenteeism still affects disadvantaged students more.”

The research project began in September with the goal of offering guidance to districts in time for students’ return to school this fall. The researchers stressed that those most likely to be chronically absent this school year — low-income, highly mobile and homeless students — are the same ones who will frequently miss school next year.

“Absenteeism should seldom come as a surprise,” said Sam Hollon, an education data analyst at AEI. “It’s hard to justify delaying interventions until absences have accumulated.” 

Teacher absenteeism

One new finding revealed Friday contradicts a theory that gained traction following the pandemic — that students were more likely to be absent if their teachers were also out. As with students, teacher absenteeism increased during the pandemic and hasn’t returned to pre-COVID levels. 

The relationship between teacher absences and student absences, however, is “pretty negligible,” said Arya Ansari, an associate professor of human development and family science at The Ohio State University. 

“These absences among teachers don’t actually contribute to the post-COVID bump that we’ve seen in student absences,” he said. “Targeting teacher absences isn’t going to move the needle.”

The researchers discussed how even some well-intentioned responses to the COVID emergency have allowed chronic absenteeism to persist. States, Malkus said, made it easier to graduate despite frequent absences and missing school doesn’t necessarily prevent students from turning in their work.

“In my day, you had to get a packet and do the work at home” if you were absent, Polikoff said. In interviews with 40 families after the pandemic, 39 said it was easy to make up work because of Google Classroom and other online platforms. “How many said, ‘Let’s make it harder’? Zero.”

In another presentation, Ethan Hutt, an associate education professor at the University of North Carolina, estimated that chronic absenteeism accounts for about 7.5% of overall pandemic learning loss and about 9.2% for Black and low-income students — a “nontrivial, but modest” impact. 

He stressed that missing school also affects student engagement and relationships with teachers. While technology has made it easier for students to keep up, “there may be other harms that we want to think about and grapple with,” he said. 

From one to 49

The new research comes as states are mounting new efforts to more closely track chronic absenteeism data and share it with the public. In 2010, only one state — Maryland — published absenteeism data on its state education agency website. Now, 49 states — all but New Hampshire — report rates on an annual, monthly or even daily basis, according to a released Tuesday by Attendance Works, an advocacy and research organization.Ìę

The systems allow educators and the public to more quickly identify which students are most affected and when spikes occur. Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. post rates even before the end of the school year. Rhode Island offers real-time data, while Connecticut publishes monthly reports.

The New Hampshire Department of Education doesn’t monitor chronic absenteeism, but has a statewide 92.7% attendance rate, a spokesperson said. 

The report highlights states that have taken action to reduce chronic absenteeism. In Virginia, bus drivers ensure their routes include students who might be more likely to struggle with transportation. With state funds, , west of Washington, D.C., opened a center for students on short-term suspension to minimize the when a student is removed from the classroom. 

Overall chronic absenteeism in the state declined from 19.3% in 2022-23 to 15.7% in 2023-24. To Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, such improvement proves “we can still get things done in our country and in education, despite all of the culture wars and binary thinking.”

‘Priced out’

Some district and school leaders have looked to their peers for ideas on how to get kids back in school. After participating in a six-month program with 16 other districts across the country organized by the nonprofit Digital Promise, Mark Brenneman, an elementary principal in New York’s Hudson City Schools, started interviewing families about their challenges. 

He learned that Hispanic parents often keep their children home when it rains because they’re worried they’re going to catch a cold. Several had transportation challenges. His school, Smith Elementary, even contributed to the problem, he said, by holding concerts, award ceremonies or other family events in the morning. Parents would come to celebrate their children’s accomplishments, then take them out for lunch and not return.

Hudson, about 40 miles south of Albany, has undergone significant change since the pandemic, added Superintendent Juliette Pennyman. Some families leaving New York City have settled in Hudson, driving up the cost of housing. 

“Our families are being priced out of the community,” she said. “Housing insecurity was 
 affecting families’ and students’ ability to focus on school.”

As a result of the intense focus on the issue, Smith, which had a 29% chronic absenteeism rate last year, has seen an about a 15% increase in the number of students with good attendance. 

“It’s not like we’re down to like 10% chronically absent,” Brenneman said. “But we’ve hammered away.” 

This scenario played out in 15,700 elementary schools across the nation in the 2022-23 school year, our of the latest federal data shows, up from 3,550 elementary schools before the pandemic. 

The impact from so many students missing so much school has made learning more challenging not just for the students who are chronically absent (missing 10% of the school year) but also for those who . These very high levels of chronic absence are also causing teachers to feel less satisfied with .

The disappointing results of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) underscore that high levels of absenteeism continue to contribute to the decline in student performance. In fact, an analysis of past NAEP results show that students who missed more school scored far lower than their peers. Keep in mind that this year’s 4th grade NAEP scores are for students who were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit, causing huge disruptions to acquiring the fundamental habits and academic skills needed to lay a strong foundation for school success.

When chronic absence is pervasive, it has a profound impact on the learning experience of all students. When teachers are constantly having to reteach kids that have been absent, that limits their ability to continue making progress with the kids that are there every day. 

Recent studies show that when chronic absence reaches high levels, it has spillover effects dragging down the math and reading scores of even those classmates who aren’t missing too much school. It can also that regularly attending peers will become chronically absent.

The U.S. Education Department data for the 2022–23 school year shows that 61% of schools had chronic absenteeism rate of at least 20% – the level at which it affects all students, not just those who are chronically absent. That’s down from the previous year’s 65% levels but still more than twice the 28% of schools with these levels in 2017-18. This meant that for the average-sized school in 2022-23 that reached the 20% mark, there were at least 88 chronically absent students in each elementary school, 113 in each middle school and 139 students in each high school.Ìę

The federal data also reflect that 30% or more of students are chronically absent at 36% of all schools, compared to 43% in 2021-22 and 14 percent 2017-18. This kind of absenteeism can overwhelm a school and certainly is too much for just one attendance monitor, social worker, or counselor to address. 

Overall, the federal data found that the share of students who were chronically absent slightly decreased from its high of 30% of students in the 2021-22 school year to 28% in 2022-23. for 2023-24 shows some improvement but still not a return to pre-pandemic levels.

The improvements reflected in the federal data were uneven – some places didn’t improve and some places even found it getting worse – but overall there were small improvements. This means that chronic absence remained highly elevated during the second year of in-person schooling for students, even though during the 2022-23 school year, attendance was not affected by widespread Covid-19 outbreaks.

While chronic absence was decreasing for all student groups, sizable gaps remained. We see that historically marginalized groups – Native American, Pacific Islander, Black and Hispanic students, students with disabilities and English language learners – continued to experience much higher absenteeism. At the same time, there were encouraging attendance improvements for Black and Hispanic students overall. 

The years following the pandemic have, for many families, resulted in a shift in s around education. High levels of schoolwide absenteeism can exacerbate the mindset that showing up to school in person is optional. It harms teachers’ perceptions as well. Research shows that significant chronic absence leads teachers to view students who are missing 18 days more negatively, and also leads teachers to feel worse about their jobs. 

Given the persistence of chronic absence, we can all agree that focusing on student engagement and attendance must be a top priority for every state, district, school and community. States and districts must set ambitious but achievable goals like reducing chronic absence  and implementing a systematic road map for change. 

It’s true that in many cases elevated levels of chronic absence will not be eliminated overnight. The good news is that we have seen substantially improved student engagement and attendance in states including , , ,  and  as well as in many districts across the nation. 

How did these improvements happen? Each involves an investment in a comprehensive, data-informed, prevention-oriented, all-hands-on-deck approach to improve engagement and attendance.

Nearly 5,000 Detroit high school students have earned at least one $200 incentive for perfect attendance since early January.

High school students in the Detroit Public Schools Community District in which they have perfect attendance, from Jan. 6 through March 21.

There have been two cycles so far for which students have received the gift cards and, in addition to the 4,936 students who had perfect attendance in at least one of two-week periods, 2,028 have had perfect attendance in both cycles, according to data Superintendent Nikolai Vitti shared with Chalkbeat this week.

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The attendance incentive is aimed at improving attendance in the district, where two-thirds of nearly 49,999 students were considered chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year. The incentive is among a number of efforts the district has employed over the years to create an attendance-going culture among students. The district has invested heavily into and this school year announced that students with extremely high rates of chronic absenteeism will be held back a grade at the K-8 level and required to repeat classes at the high school level.

The number of students earning the perfect attendance incentive is a fraction of the nearly 15,000 high school students in the district, leading one school board member to question last week whether the incentive is working. But Vitti said he is encouraged that the program is and resulting in a small decrease in the chronic absenteeism rate for high school students. He said the district and board will have to evaluate the program’s success at the end of the school year.

Chronic absenteeism has been one of the district’s biggest challenges for years. The chronic absenteeism rate has declined, from a high of nearly 80% at the height of the pandemic, when quarantining rules meant many students missed school because of COVID exposure. But last school year’s much lower chronic absenteeism rate of 66% still means it is difficult to have consistency in the classroom and improve academic achievement.

Students in Michigan are chronically absent when they miss 10%, or 18 days in a 180-day school year. Statewide, 30% of students are considered chronically absent, . A recent education scorecard cited the state’s rate as being a factor in students’ slow academic recovery from the pandemic.

Here are some of the highlights of the students who’ve received the incentive so far::

• 3,473 students had perfect attendance during the first cycle.
• 3,492 students had perfect attendance during the second cycle.
• About 10% already had perfect attendance.
• About 4% were considered chronically absent at the time the incentive began.
• About 16% had missed 10% of the school year at the time the incentive began.
• About 25% had missed 5-10% of the school year.
• About 44% had missed 5% or fewer days in the school year.

At a Detroit school board meeting last week, Vitti said the statistic showing that just 10% of the students who earned the incentive already had perfect attendance is an indication that “this is not just rewarding those that have already been going to school.”

Board member Monique Bryant questioned what school leaders are doing to promote the incentive to students who haven’t earned it.

Bryant suggested that data Vitti shared at the meeting showing that chronic absenteeism is down by 5 percentage points for high school students since the incentive began is an illustration that most students aren’t rising to the goal of the incentive.

Vitti responded that it depends on how you look at the data.

“Right now, chronic absenteeism at the high school levels improved by five percentage points,” Vitti said. “That means that 700 high school students are not chronically absent where they were last year. I’d also say that at least on the 97th day, our chronic absenteeism at the high school levels is the lowest it’s been since the pandemic.”

The question for board members to decide at the end of the school year is whether the incentive “is the right investment with other challenges that we have districtwide,” Vitti said. “But I think the data is suggesting it’s working for many students 
 but not all.”

Board member Ida Simmons Short urged the district to survey students to learn more about what is preventing them from coming to school.

The causes of chronic absenteeism are numerous and include physical and mental health reasons, lack of transportation,and lack of affordable housing. Most of them tie back to poverty. Vitti specifically , because half of the students in the district don’t attend their neighborhood school and the district doesn’t provide school bus transportation for high school students, who must take city buses to get to school.

“Sometimes they’re unreliable, they’re late, they’re too far away from where the child lives,” Vitti said.

Vitti said traditional school bus transportation for high school students “was decimated” under emergency management and it could cost between $50 million and $100 million to bring that level of transportation back.

Another factor, Vitti said, is that for some students, school isn’t relevant. Middle and high school students, in particular, “struggle to understand, ‘why am I going to school every day? How is this connected to what I’m going to I need to know for life.’”

Mi’Kah West, a Cass Technical High School student who serves as a student representative on the board, said that when talking to other members of the District Executive Youth Council last week, many said students overall are excited about the incentive.

One thing that stuck out, she said, was council members saying they heard students in the hallways or on social media saying they were coming to school because they want the money.

“And, while we don’t want to just say we want to come to school for the money,” West said, “I think it’s important to see that students 
 may have stayed home because they don’t want to come to school, but they’re willing to come to school now.”

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Indiana’s top education officials applauded the state’s on Wednesday but conceded that too many Hoosier students are still missing a “significant”  number of school days.

The latest attendance released by the Indiana Department of Education reported that 17.8% of K-12 students — roughly 219,00 kids — were “chronically absent” during the most recent 2023-24 school year, meaning they missed at least 18 days.

It’s the second year in a row that the number of chronically absent students went down, dropping from 19.2% in 2023, and 21.1% in 2022.

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“It’s an improvement — and we always want to celebrate improvements and data moving in the right direction— but we still have some work to do,” said John Keller, IDOE’s chief information officer, during Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting.

Keller maintained that the reasons for absences vary, but “the interpretation of the ‘why’ is really going to have to be a locally determined thing.”

“Our general focus has been making sure that there are no insights in the data that remain unturned. But what we’re doing is holding up the mirror on this attendance data and allowing schools to slice it any way they can possibly think of,” Keller said. “I’m guessing there are probably different approaches that we use to address the most chronic of the chronic absenteeism, versus things that are maybe a little bit more episodic and not as much of a long-term pattern. But that’s what we’re trying to look at with broader analysis.”

Educators around the state have pointed to family challenges some students face at home, along with hard-to-break tendencies to keep kids home when even mildly unwell — a habit borne out of the pandemic — as key factors.

to try to combat the growing problem, like increasing communication with parents and incentivizing absence-prone students to come to class.

IDOE officials are also working on responses to improve school attendance, including development of a new “Attendance Insights” dashboard that breaks down weekly habitually truant and chronic absenteeism rates at the local and school levels. The state has already made the tool available to Hoosier school officials and plans to launch a public version later this month.

“It is statistically significant — students who are coming to school 94% of the time are doing better, significantly,” said Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner. “As a parent or a grandparent or whatever, that 94% or more really, really matters. Teachers could have told us this before we ran the data, right? But running the data, it is very clear students need to be in the classroom in order to make the greatest performance.”

A deeper look at the data

Student absences have been on the rise since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Indiana and across the nation. Chronic absenteeism surged during the pandemic, nearly doubling to peak at 21.1% in 2022, according to IDOE.

Keller said the latest data suggests Indiana has “turned the corner” and appears to be reversing from its high-absence period during the pandemic. He emphasized that all grades levels improved their chronic absenteeism rates in 2023-24 by one to two percent when compared to the year prior.

“These are not insignificant improvements,” Keller said. “But obviously, we have not returned to the pre-pandemic attendance.”

According to the 2023-24 data, 23.7% of students who receive free or reduced lunch were chronically absent — nearly 11% higher than their peers. English language learners were also slightly more likely to miss class; 18.5% of English learners were chronically absent during the last school year, compared to 17.7% of non-English language learners.

The Indiana Code as being absent 18 or more days within a school year for any reason — a higher standard than “habitual truancy,” which is ten or more days without an excuse.

Under the “compulsory education” laws in Indiana, children must regularly attend school from the time they’re seven years old until they turn 18, with some exceptions.

But unless they’re excused, students who cut class too often could end up under a juvenile court’s supervision. Built-up absences could also prompt prosecutors to file misdemeanor charges against Hoosier parents, given that they are legally responsible for making sure their children go to school.

Keller took notice of “consistent, dramatic differences” in academic performance for students who are chronically absent versus those with better attendance.

“The data pretty much speaks for themselves. There are stark differences between the populations on all these measures,” he said, referring to “noticeably” lower scores on IREAD, ILEARN and the SAT among chronically absent students.

“No matter the quality of the interventions, it doesn’t matter so much if (students) are not in the room,” Keller continued.

IDOE officials further noted that students who are chronically absent are significantly less likely to read by third grade, master key ELA and math skills, or be college-ready.

“The magnitude of that is startling,” Jenner said. “We look at the high schools, which is certainly the most significant, but if you look at kindergarten and first grade — that is a lot higher than it should be. That’s when our teachers are working on the foundations with kids. So, we’ve got to make sure that habit is early, that kids are getting to school.”

New tools going live

At IDOE, Keller said state officials have “shifted” their focus from “just a school-focused look at attendance” to honing in on individual students.

“The old way of looking at attendance was adding up all the days kids could have attended school, looking at all the days they did attend, and then creating a rate out of that number,” Keller explained. “Now we’re looking at the student level and saying, ‘For this kid, did they attend 94% of the time they could have attended?’”

Other ongoing analyses at the state level are digging into patterns of chronic absenteeism.

“Are the students who are chronically absent in any grade this year, were they the prior and the prior and the prior and the prior years?” Keller questioned.

Data shows that in 2023-24, about half of the chronically absent students had been chronically absent in one of the last prior three years. “And half of them were new to the roster, if you will,” Keller said.

The new “Attendance Insights” dashboard — meant to help state and local officials investigate data trends — went live for school officials Aug. 23. A public version will be available later this month or early in October. 

The dashboard shows several years worth of week-by-week attendance data — including excused and unexcused absences, as well as rates of chronic absenteeism and habitual truancy — for individual schools. Because schools already report their attendance numbers to IDOE, Keller said the dashboard will show the most up-to-date data.

Filters additionally allow users to break data down by students’ race, ethnicity and socioeconomic and English learner statuses.

“We want to set the table for schools to do that analysis, identify trends and patterns, areas where data collection can be improved,” Keller said. “We want to work with a variety of stakeholders to identify root causes.”

Board member Pat Mapes said the dashboard can help school and district administrators show parents “that difference between academic achievement and whether or not you’re at school.”

“Because it doesn’t matter how much the school sends letters, makes phone calls — parents have to understand that your kids in our buildings is how they can progress academically and build the skills they need to be successful,” Mapes said. “We’ve really never had anything like this to be able to pull data out to really make that story.”

Also in the works is an “early warning system” that studies more than a decade of data patterns among students who graduated high school — and those who did not graduate — to identify possible behaviors of concern and risk factors for becoming chronically absent.

Currently, the 11 Hoosier school corporations are participating in a two-month pilot.

“We want to get it out as soon as possible. We want to stop the trial, take away the placebo, and give everybody access,” Keller said. “But we’re not going to do it until we’re confident.”

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Most districts try to prevent chronic absenteeism through early warning systems that identify students who miss too much school, according to the report by . Districts also conduct home visits, call families when students are out and hire staff who specifically address attendance. 

But those efforts meet with pushback from parents. Some say, for example, that letters sent home nudging students to attend school are “too harsh.” 

“Parents’ overall feelings about the importance of school have changed,” said Jessica Hull,  executive director of communication and community engagement for the Roseville City School District, outside Sacramento. Chronic absenteeism in the district has dropped from its pandemic high point of 26% to 11%, but that is still roughly double its pre-COVID rate.

Some students with family members outside of the U.S. can be gone for weeks at a time. Others frequently miss Fridays and Mondays, while some older children are tasked with caring for younger siblings. 

“I’m generally a very positive person,” Hull said. “But I don’t know that we’ll really dramatically change those things.”

The report comes as more states are showing leadership on the issue. On Monday, Attendance Works, an advocacy and research organization, announced that have committed to cutting chronic absenteeism in half over five years in response to a challenge it issued in July along with the American Enterprise Institute and EdTrust. Chronic absenteeism peaked at 28% nationally in the 2021-22 school year. The Rand survey of nearly 200 district leaders estimates that rates dropped to about 19% last school year, but that’s still above the pre-COVID level of 15%. 

In a statement, Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, said states are “uniquely positioned to alert everyone to the size of this challenge.” 

But the Rand report suggests district leaders feel a sense of urgency to reach families with children who miss the most school now.

“The leaders we interviewed were frustrated because there are chronically absent students for whom their interventions aren’t working,” said Lydia Rainey, a researcher with the 

Center on Reinventing Public Education, which with Rand on the survey. “Some of the leaders had ideas for new programs to try; others were at a loss for what to do next. No one talked about giving up.”

The authors urged districts to emphasize approaches that foster stronger relationships between students and staff — an ingredient that even discouraged leaders say is the key to more successful strategies. Parents need to understand how poor attendance impacts their children’s academic performance, researchers said, and districts should collect better evidence on which methods make students want to come to school.

The U.S. Department of Education last week encouraged similar strategies in for low-performing schools identified as part of states’ accountability systems. The public has until Oct. 4 to provide comments on the draft. In addition, a recently posted  from the Department of Transportation offers other ideas, like teaching students to if transportation is unavailable.

In its effort to address the problem, the Roseville City district supplies gas cards to families who can’t afford to fill up and encourages transient and homeless families to transfer schools if their living situations have changed. 

“One school that works at the beginning of the year might not be the school that works at the end of the year,” Hull said.

Lines of communication 

School leaders sometimes modify district-level practices to keep the connections with parents positive. 

In central Wyoming’s Fremont County district, for example, home-to-school liaisons call families when students miss too much school. But Katie Law, principal of Arapahoe Charter High School in the district, changed the title for these liaisons to student advocate — “so families see that it is an attempt to help.” 

To comply with state laws and tribal codes, the district also sends letters and truancy citations to families of chronically absent students. But Law said those messages are often counterproductive.

“This just made relationships and trust between the school and the parents worse and led to students dropping out entirely,” she said. “It wasn’t effective.”  

Law has tried some of the conventional strategies Rand studied, but she has also added some home-grown ideas, like handing out prepaid phone cards so she can text students when they’re not in class.

“We can open those lines of communication instead of trying to find four different phone numbers that might be disconnected,” she said. 

Food is another incentive. Once a month, the school holds a community day, including a “giant potluck.” Last week, students and staff made pancakes and volunteered at the local food bank. 

“Kids start to feel that somebody’s depending on them the way they depend on other people,” Law said. “It shows them that accountability.”

‘Tricky’ questions

That mixture of approaches demonstrates how schools can connect with students socially. The “next phase” is ensuring families see an academic payoff as well, said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a research center at Georgetown University. She recently examined a to reduce chronic absenteeism in Rhode Island.

“Do students, especially high school students, feel that going to school has value? Is it a good use of their time?” she asked. “We have to start tackling the tricky and sticky questions of what happens within the school day, academically, that makes it worth it for students to stay in those buildings.”

As part of the Rhode Island effort, the state posts data showing how chronic absenteeism affects the percentage of students meeting math and reading expectations. The state also operates a that is updated every night and gives the public a real-time picture of absenteeism rates.

This year’s data is promising, with the rate declining from almost 29% in 2022-23 to less than 25%. 

Nearby Connecticut, which publishes on chronic absenteeism at the district and school level, has seen a decline from 20% in 2022-23 to 17.7%. 

But few states offer such timely, localized data, and most don’t even release statewide figures until October or later.

That’s part of the problem, Cohen said.

“This should be unacceptable,” she said, “given the agreement on how urgent this problem is.”

Knocking on the doors where kids had repeatedly missed school, the workers told parents of assistance the district could offer with transportation, school supplies, and even clothing. 

The effort, a standard strategy for LAUSD at this point, was designed and implemented by the district after the pandemic, when the number of students deemed chronically absent reached nearly half of total enrollment.  

Since then, the number of kids missing class has fallen, but it’s still nearly one-third of all students, so LA Unified has continued its push, said superintendent Alberto Carvalho. 

“The first priority is having kids at school,” he said. “We need kids in school.” 

Both for academic and financial reasons, as it turns out. 

Rates of chronic absenteeism – defined by the district as missing ten percent or more of a school year – exploded in the pandemic, with nearly half of students missing that much class.   

Prior to the pandemic, the fire had already started. In the two years before Covid,  percent of students deemed chronically absent jumped from 13% to more than 18%. When school returned after shutdowns it rose to nearly half of all students.

The situation in LA wasn’t unique. But it threatened both academic and financial standing of the district, as well as endangering the lives of children who missed school. And causes for the persistent problem are complex, said Victor Flores, principal of John H. Liechty Middle School in Westlake.  

“Sometimes it’s the parents that are working long hours, double jobs, and so it’s hard to get them to and from school,” said Flores. “Sometimes it’s chronic illnesses that some students may have. There may be mental illness or other issues in the family.” 

Even though daily attendance in LAUSD is rising, rates of chronic absenteeism stood at nearly one-third of students at the end of the last academic year, nearly double pre-pandemic levels. Officials in Los Angeles, around the state and even don’t see a full recovery any time soon. 

Here’s what’s to know about the sticky issue and how it affects LA Unified: 

1. No easy fixes for a long-term problem impacting LA’s most vulnerable students 

In L.A. Unified, just over 45% of students were chronically absent in 2021-22. The percentage dropped to 36.5% in 2022-23. The preliminary rate for the 2023-24 school shows improvement to 32.3%, but that’s still way above historic norms — and Carvalho said yearly, incremental gains will be how the district digs itself out.  

“Some of the challenges faced by these families transcend that which the school system can address,” said Carvalho.  

The students impacted by the problem are the city’s neediest, said Graciela Ortiz, field coordinator for pupil services and attendance. Data kept by the district show homeless kids, poor kids and students with disabilities are far more likely to be absent. Likewise for kindergartners and pre-kindergarteners entering the system, and high school kids.

“It’s our working-class families and low-income communities that are affected the most by attendance issues,” said Ortiz. “After the pandemic, it’s as if those barriers [that prevent kids from getting to class] were just exacerbated.”  

2. Showing up for class makes nine times the difference when it comes to LAUSD  academics 

Research has long shown chronic absenteeism is bad for academics. And showing up for class is good. But LAUSD has now quantified just how important this is, Carhvalho said at a press conference given at Venice High School on the first day of class. 

“For every one percent of daily attendance improvement, particularly for the most fragile students, we see a nine percent improvement in academic performance,” Carvalho said. The calculations were made with principals from 100 schools that are fighting the problem, he said.  

3. Chronic absenteeism creates a financial problem in LA Unified, too  

Unlike many other large states that look more aggressively at enrollment, California uses attendance as a weighty measure to make decisions about school funding, said Carvalho. For every 1% of improved attendance in the district, that’s an additional $60 million in state funding it would receive, he said. So students who don’t go to class regularly “actually deflate the total potential revenue for all students in the district,” he said. 

Like other districts, Los Angeles is under and is trying to avoid closing schools amid enrollment declines. Given those circumstances, Carvalho said, the money is more important than ever, even if the district managed to avoid layoffs this year.  

4. LA Unified’s novel toolbox to fight absenteeism includes “concierge” bussing for kids who miss class

The complex causes of chronic absenteeism demand a complex response. So LAUSD is using an array of tools at the problem, including “concierge” transportation that’s “almost door-to-door,” Carvalho said. Transportation is one of the most challenging obstacles in getting kids to class, so the district is rerouting its bus lines to pick up students as close to their homes as possible. “We’re constantly rerouting,” said the superintendent.

Customized bus routes are just part of the package. The district is continuing with home visits, attendance counselors at each school, and provides wraparound social services meant to boost attendance, such counseling, medical care, or even laundry. Other novel approaches include trying to make school fun, for example, and principals taking the time to talk to parents individually at pickup and dropoff.     

The researchers found that in 2016 there was no discernable difference between the chronic absenteeism rates of English learners and non-English learners. But around 2021, there was a marked shift: suddenly English learners were absent more frequently than their peers, both in the raw data and when controlling for other variables like socioeconomic status.

This trend was particularly acute for older students and those who had been classified as English learners for six or more years. 

The magnitude of this shift is small but “troubling,” according to the study, especially because previous research has shown a disproportionate effect of absences on English learners’ achievement in and . 

And these results seem to match statewide trends: the most recent data from California (2022–2023) show that the chronic absenteeism rate among English learners was close to , four percentage points above the rate for non-English learners. 

Across the nation, chronic absenteeism — students missing more than 10% of school days a year — surged during the pandemic, from 13% in 2017 to 28% in 2022, and remained high in 2023. While most acute among students of color and those in poorer districts, the spike cut across districts regardless of size, racial breakdown or income.

“I think our findings really highlight this as an issue that should be looked at with a sense of urgency,” lead researcher Lucrecia Santibañez told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. She noted that missing a significant amount of classroom time has a negative impact on both test scores and social emotional learning, effects that can compound over time. “Clearly this population has struggled to recover to where they were before. So if we were already worried about them before the pandemic 
 these higher absenteeism rates are probably going to make that worse.”

Santibañez, who is Mexican and a mother of three, said her personal experiences helped spur her interest in studying Latino populations in schools. During the COVID recovery period, she began hearing from English language development teachers who were struggling to engage their students and get them back to school.

Santibañez and her co-researchers analyzed data from 444,000 students in four urban, rural and suburban mid- to large-size school districts over eight school years, from 2014 to 2022. The researchers did not disclose the names of the districts in the study.

Data was also broken down by grade level, year and type of English learner status. Although English learners are often treated as a homogenous group, they’re made up of five different categories of students who typically have different needs, outcomes and prevalence of chronic absenteeism, according to Santibañez. This study is the first to disaggregate this group, which Santibañez said will allow district leaders and policy makers to better understand how to best serve students’ unique needs.  

“It’s important, I think, for the research community to look at these groups differently, because they’re going to exhibit things that — when you lump them all together — it’s going to wash out some of these nuances,” Santibañez said.

The rising absenteeism trend is most evident and persistent for students currently identified as English learners and long-term English learners — students who have been classified as English learners for at least six years, the research found. Reclassified students — those who were previously identified as English learners but have since demonstrated English proficiency— are less likely to be absent, which matches previous research. Although they also saw a rise in chronic absenteeism in 2021, they’ve since returned to previously lower levels.

The study also found that as English language learners enter middle and high school, they’re more likely to be absent. Santibañez said that this mirrors when these students tend to get put into lower-rigor — often lower-quality — classes, which might lead to a dip in engagement.

English learners are a growing population, representing just over of students enrolled in public schools nationally. The vast majority (76%) as their primary language, followed by Arabic (2%) and Chinese (2%).

Hedy Chang, founder and executive director of Attendance Works, said she’s not surprised by the outcomes of the study and has noticed similar trends across California over the past year and a half. It’s harder to nail down national trends, she said, because they’re not tracked the same way, but the 2021-22 federal data shows that the English learner chronic absenteeism rate was about 36% — six percentage points higher  

‘Something changed’

While English learners often face to educational success — stemming from lack of services, deficit-laden instructional practices and inconsistent inter-district policies — researchers hypothesize a number of demographic factors may have historically encouraged strong attendance. For example, the majority of English learners are the children of immigrants who tend to move less and

After the onset of the pandemic, though, absenteeism among English learners rose disproportionately as additional factors came into play, including a to services and support. 

English language learners and their families were often among “the essential workers and the communities most affected economically — and health-wise — by the pandemic [so] they may experience extreme death and trauma,” according to Chang. Parents who were essential workers were also less likely to be home to make sure their kids were attending remote classes.

“Now coming back from the pandemic,” she added, “you still have issues of access to health care to prevent kids from getting sick in the first place.” And families may still be confused and overly cautious about when to keep sick kids at home.Ìę

There are also safety and bullying concerns, Chang said.ÌęAccording to the 2023 — which surveyed 980 families, the vast majority of whom identified as Latino with kids who are English learners — almost two-thirds of families reported having concerns about gun violence, 79% reported they were worried about an illness outbreak and 1 in 3 said they do not have access to medical care.Ìę

Chang emphasized the need to understand and combat the root causes of chronic absenteeism since “remediation is always more costly than making sure kids get what they need in the first place.”

“I think we should be understanding the reasons from an assets-based perspective,” said lead researcher Santibañez, “from a sense of knowing that this was not a group that was disengaged with school before. This is not a group that’s been traditionally absent from schools. So something changed, and I think we need to understand how it changed and how can we go back to re-engaging these students and their families with schools.”

After nearly three decades working in education, I would hardly call myself naive. I’ve been a school counselor, principal and district superintendent. I’ve served or worked in rural, urban and suburban schools. Along the way, I’ve received recognition for closing learning gaps, increasing graduation rates and recruiting male teachers of color to the workforce.

Yet, for all my experience, there’s one thing I underestimated: chronic absenteeism and the challenge of addressing the many factors that contribute to it.

I now recognize that chronic absenteeism is a symptom of deeper, systemic issues in schools and broader society. The reasons for missing class are complex, representing a confluence of school, home and community factors. Logistical challenges like transportation or lack of child care can pose insurmountable barriers, while young people who lack a sense of belonging at school or are generally disengaged may simply opt out.

Because students and families are the groups most impacted by these impediments to attendance, they must also be a part of developing the solutions. consistently shows that engaging communities leads to innovative and effective solutions.

I’m encouraged by the efforts I’ve seen through my work with Digital Promise’s Center for Inclusive Innovation. Inclusive innovation — an education research and development model that fosters deep district-community partnership to create novel student-centered solutions — is an opportunity for students and families, who are often excluded from positions of influence in education, to lead, participate in and benefit from problem solving and decision making. Inclusive innovation is not a new concept, but it is underutilized — and has the potential to significantly impact the nation’s attendance crisis. 

To that end, Digital Promise has Chronic Absenteeism: Insights and Innovations — a six-month cohort supporting 17 school districts ranging from suburban California to rural Ohio. The goal is to address chronic absenteeism through the deep investigation of its root causes, collaboration among districts around shared challenges and partnerships with students and families to identify solutions for improving attendance in their communities.

With the potential to impact more than 210,000 students, the cohort will develop strategies that meet the unique needs of their students and families, together with and alongside their students and communities. These districts will develop a chronic absenteeism blueprint by conducting data analysis; identifying the systems, conditions and processes needed to improve attendance; and engaging students in the design and development of solutions.

El Segundo Unified School District, Greenfield Union School District, Lynwood Unified School District and Mountain View Whisman Schools in California; Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Colorado; Wilmington Learning Collaborative in Delaware; NOLA Public Schools in Louisiana; Roselle Public Schools in New Jersey; East Irondequoit Central School District, Hudson City School District, Mount Vernon School District and Suffern Central School District in New York; Springfield City Public Schools in Ohio; Allentown School District and Elizabeth Forward School District in Pennsylvania; Richland School District 2 in South Carolina; and Spokane Public Schools in Washington.

The cohort will be co-led by Lynwood Superintendent Gudiel Crosthwaite, whose district is making progress in addressing chronic absenteeism. To start, the district asked a basic question of families: What conditions and barriers are preventing each and every student from participating and engaging in school? 

To find answers, Lynwood, which is over 90% Latino/a, distributed four surveys and hosted in-person meetings with families to hear their concerns. They increased communications with parents, including a social media campaign highlighting real students and their positive experiences in school, to remind families how being present and engaged can contribute to young people’s physical and mental well-being. As a result of these efforts, the district went from 1,200 students who attended virtually last year to 55 attending online this year and the rest returning to classes in person. 

Lynwood is also improving attendance among foster youth through a program created with student councils and staff. The program “hires” foster youth, who have lower attendance rates than other students, to work in their schools’ front offices or provide tutoring. This motivates these students because they know they know they have a purpose, build relationships with caring adults and are seen as role models to their younger peers. It also sets them on a pathway to entry-level jobs within the school district or at partnering agencies and afterschool programs, guiding them toward potential careers in education as well.

Another promising approach also draws a clear connection between attending school and students’ career and employment prospects: 

Digital Promise’s district- and community-led cybersecurity initiative provides access to inclusive STEM pathways for high schoolers in 10 school districts, from Alabama to New York. Students participate in a three-year, in-school cybersecurity program, earning industry-valued credentials and, ultimately, opportunities to secure employment and/or enroll in vocational and trade schools or colleges and universities in a related field. In all 10 districts, actual enrollment doubled or tripled projections due to student and parent demand. And those districts have seen a decrease in absenteeism among students in the program. 

For school leaders who want to develop lasting solutions for chronic absenteeism, the first step is to ensure the conditions — and the commitment — are in place to work alongside students, families and community members. This will lead to the next, crucial step: building trust and relationships to design and sustain solutions that enable all students to participate, engage in and thrive at school.