More than five years after the pandemic threw schools off course, the latest evidence suggests that progress toward solving the nation’s attendance problem is slowing down well short of the finish line. Indeed, with 2024–25 chronic absenteeism data now available in 39 states and the District of Columbia, the emerging picture is troubling for America’s students.
After reaching a high of 29% in the 2021–22 school year, the chronic absenteeism rate in these states fell by 2.6 percentage points the following school year, and by 2.2 percentage points the school year after that. This progress was encouraging, but it stalled last school year, with rates falling by just over 1 percentage point on average. This leaves the average chronic absenteeism rate for these states and the nation’s capital at 23%, roughly 50% higher than their pre-pandemic baseline.
Pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism was a problem at 15%, but it was a relatively stable problem. Based on the data from these states, it looks like we could stabilize at a new normal where roughly 1 in 5 students misses a tenth or more of school each year. This isn’t just a lingering nuisance—it’s public education’s own case of long COVID. Chronically absent students are far less likely to perform on grade level, graduate from high school, and enroll in college.
But recent attendance trends aren’t just a problem for the 23% students who are chronically absent. New research shows that even regular attendees are missing more days following the pandemic compared with before it, and that every day of missed school matters—regardless of whether students reach the chronic absenteeism threshold, which works out to 18 days in a typical, 180-day school year. In fact, the relationship between days absent and student achievement is roughly linear, meaning that even students who aren’t chronically absent are missing out on more learning.
It’s hard to look at recent attendance numbers and not think that something fundamental has changed about schooling. For example, it makes sense that older students who experienced lockdowns, quarantines, and remote schooling might be absent more frequently five years after schools shut down; but across the eight states where I could examine grade-level absenteeism, all of them showed that last year’s kindergartners and 1st graders, who weren’t in school during the pandemic, have higher rates of absenteeism post-pandemic than children their age did before the pandemic. Is there any reason to suppose that future cohorts of students will do much better?
Early post-pandemic progress on chronic absenteeism came easily. When the spike in absenteeism rates was still fresh and pandemic recovery was on everyone’s minds, it was simpler to make progress just by raising awareness and letting the return to normal life work its magic. But now that the pandemic—and pandemic recovery in general—is in the rearview mirror, the easy progress is over, and the fight to define the new “normal” for attendance enters a more challenging, and dangerous, phase.
Fortunately, there are some bright spots. Last year, Iowa cut chronic absenteeism by 6 percentage points, and Delaware, Nevada, and Kentucky had the next largest declines, each by more than 3 percentage points. States can reset expectations around behavior and attendance if they make—and keep—fighting absenteeism is a priority. Nonetheless, these four states are the exception: Over half the states that have released 2025 data saw chronic absenteeism rates drop by less than 1 percentage point last year, and six even saw rates increase.
Determining how to turn attendance around hinges on identifying what changed during the pandemic that drove absenteeism up. Research on this question has failed to identify a particular culprit. Instead, today’s absenteeism looks much like it did pre-pandemic—similar subgroup differences, reasons given, and daily trends in absences persist—it’s just far more prevalent.
These patterns suggest that the across-the-board increases in post-pandemic absenteeism are largely a matter of across-the-board shifts in attitudes and behavior. Six years after the start of the pandemic, students and their parents simply place less value on going to school each day.
If this is correct, then the solution is to shift attitudes and behaviors back before these patterns become the new normal. This huge task doesn’t come with a simple recipe for success, but any plausible attempt will require states to employ three strategies: a sustained pressure campaign, targeted supports for attendance challenges, and consequences for unnecessary absences.
Durable and dramatic reductions in absences will require a sustained pressure campaign to encourage students to attend school. That starts with state leadership, which is necessary to compel action by districts and schools. This pressure must be a constant drumbeat, not a momentary shout. Only sustained state focus can provide the accountability—and political cover—district leaders need to push families to change behaviors.
Of course, schools must effectively communicate the importance of consistent attendance to families and support those facing concrete barriers from transportation gaps to health crises to trauma. But while supports are necessary, they are insufficient. If a sustained increase in such logistical hurdles did not drive the post-pandemic surge, we would be foolish to hope merely removing them will turn it around.
Consequences for students and families are essential, rather than optional, for any serious attempt to dramatically improve attendance. The pandemic opened the door for students to miss school for reasons that would not have been condoned six years ago. Reasonable consequences—loss of privileges, school-based detentions, or mandatory parent conferences—are essential to both communicate the expectation of consistent attendance and the disincentives to breaking it. Discussing supports for families is popular while talk of consequences is often not, but acknowledging how tough the fight to change attendance behaviors at scale is requires recognition that we will not reverse this trend with one hand tied behind our backs.
Reestablishing these norms is difficult work, but unless we fight chronic absenteeism now, the problem won’t go away. Instead, it will likely settle to a new normal of around 20%—meaning 2.5 million more chronically absent students each year compared with pre-pandemic levels.
This is a number worth taking seriously. After all, chronic absenteeism is not just a school statistic—it’s a measure of whether millions of kids are still connected to the promise of public education. We can’t let “better than 2022,” the nation’s absenteeism peak, be good enough.
