Why Chronic Absenteeism Hasn't Dropped Back to Normal

Chronic absenteeism — missing 10 percent or more of the school year, about 18 days, for any reason — is still running far above pre-pandemic levels even though the sharpest drop-off happened years ago. The U.S. Department of Education put the national rate at 28 percent in 2022-23, and newer estimates from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) put it at 22.6 percent by 2025 — roughly 8 points higher than the pre-pandemic norm of about 15 percent, and researchers say the improvement is slowing.

For families, the number that matters is simpler: a student who misses 18 or more days in a school year, whether the absences are excused or not, counts as chronically absent under the federal definition used to track this problem, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That threshold applies at every grade level, from a pre-K classroom to a high school senior's last semester.

How bad is it right now?

Two credible tallies, using different methods and different sets of states, tell a similar story from different angles. The Department of Education reported that chronic absenteeism reached about 31 percent nationally in 2021-22, the first full year back from pandemic disruptions, before easing to 28 percent in 2022-23. AEI senior fellow Nat Malkus, tracking absenteeism across 45 states with data through 2025, estimated the rate at 28.3 percent in 2022, 25.7 percent in 2023, 23.5 percent in 2024, and 22.6 percent in 2025.

The two data sets aren't measuring the exact same set of states or years the same way, so the raw numbers won't match line for line — but the trend lines agree: a steep pandemic-era spike, a real decline afterward, and a leveling-off well above where things stood before 2020. Malkus's analysis found the year-over-year improvement itself shrinking — a 2.7 percentage-point drop in 2023, 2.1 points in 2024, and less than 1 point in 2025 — which is a different problem than the absenteeism rate simply staying high.

Which students are missing the most school?

Reporting from the Hechinger Report, drawing on researchers at Texas Tech University, UC Davis, the University of North Carolina, USC, and American University, found the burden isn't spread evenly. Chronic absenteeism was highest in low-income districts, at roughly 30 percent, and some high-poverty districts saw rates climb by more than half compared with before the pandemic. Even top-performing districts weren't untouched — absenteeism there rose from about 10 percent to more than 15 percent. By race, the same reporting cited chronic absenteeism rates of 36 percent for Black students, 33 percent for Hispanic students, 22 percent for white students, and 15 percent for Asian students, while noting that researchers attribute much of that gap to income differences rather than race itself.

Nationally, the Department of Education has also flagged the stakes of those gaps: students who are chronically absent from preschool through second grade are significantly less likely to be reading at grade level by third grade, and face roughly four times the risk of not graduating high school. That's the kind of number this site treats as a family-facing translation, not an abstraction — a student's attendance in the earliest grades is doing real work toward a third-grade reading benchmark most parents have heard of but may not connect to daily attendance.

Why hasn't the recovery finished?

Researchers cited by the Hechinger Report point to a behavioral shift rather than a single cause. Moderate absenteeism — a few extra missed days scattered through the year, not a chronic pattern — has become more common broadly, meaning "a lot of students who used to miss no school are now missing a couple days," in the words of researchers the outlet interviewed. Elementary-age students are increasingly citing boredom as a reason for missing school, and mental health challenges and trauma correlate strongly with chronic absence. Remote-learning habits also outlasted remote learning itself: online assignments and virtual meeting options made it easier to make up missed work, softening the academic consequence of a day off.

AEI's Malkus offered a related finding worth flagging for families with younger children: students now in kindergarten through third grade — meaning they entered school entirely after the pandemic disrupted routines — are showing absenteeism rates similar to those of students who lived through the disruption directly. That suggests school attendance norms shifted for an entire generation of students, not just the ones who experienced 2020 and 2021 firsthand, and that the problem may not fade on its own as pandemic memory recedes.

What can families and schools actually do?

The Department of Education points families and districts toward a few concrete, evidence-based resources rather than a single fix. Its Institute of Education Sciences has published guidance on strategies to address chronic absenteeism, and the department highlights an evidence-based approach to text-message outreach to parents as one of the more effective, low-cost interventions districts have tested. A no-cost Attendance Solutions Network is also available to districts for technical assistance, and a joint resource with the Department of Transportation addresses transportation barriers — a factor that disproportionately affects the low-income districts where absenteeism runs highest.

None of that amounts to a promise that any single step will fix a student's attendance — the causes documented in this reporting range from illness and transportation to boredom and mental health, and they differ by student and by district. But the data is consistent on one point: attendance in the earliest grades carries outsized weight for later reading and graduation outcomes, which makes it one of the more concrete levers a family has, even amid a national trend that researchers themselves say hasn't finished playing out.

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