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Dive Brief:
- While chronic absenteeism rates have continued to decline since the COVID-19 pandemic, 1 in 5 students remained chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, according to an analysis of 31 states.
- The research released on Tuesday from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University found that chronic absenteeism rates dropped from 29% to 21% among the 31 studied states between the 2021-22 and 2024-25 school years.
- The latest results are still higher than chronic absenteeism rates before the pandemic, when 15% of students were chronically absent in the 2017-18 school year.
Dive Insight:
Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing 10% or more of school days from excused or unexcused absences as well as suspensions.
The 31-state analysis also found that the share of “extreme” levels of chronic absenteeism — where schools have over 30% rates of chronically absent students — has declined from 41% in 2021-22 to 23% in 2024-25.
At the same time, schools in those states still had a consistent portion of “high” levels of chronic absenteeism — where schools experience 20-29.9% chronic absence — following the height of the pandemic. For instance, 23% reported high chronic absenteeism rates in 2024-25, which is slightly above the 22% of high levels of chronic absenteeism in 2021-22.
Before the pandemic, during the 2017-18 school year, states reported 12% extreme chronic absenteeism and another 13% experienced high levels of absenteeism.
The report cited a study by Policy Analysis for California Education, which Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center said found that high and extreme levels of chronic absenteeism persisted and “barely decreased” in schools statewide that have a large majority of socio-economically disadvantaged students.
These latest findings come as schools continue to find ways to recover from the surge in student absenteeism during the pandemic. In 2024, Attendance Works, EdTrust and the American Enterprise Institute called on all states to commit to reducing their chronic absenteeism by 50% over five years.
Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center stressed in their new report that solutions for curbing chronic absenteeism require leaning on the support of community partners through a “comprehensive approach that addresses the underlying barriers to getting to school.”
The chronic absenteeism report added that it’s equally crucial to use “quantitative and qualitative data to assess what is working and what needs to be changed in order to motivate students to attend and engage while overcoming underlying challenges.”
