An absence from school—whether it be excused, unexcused, or due to disciplinary actions—affects a student's ability to learn and meet educational benchmarks. Students are identified as chronically absent if they are absent for more than 10 percent of their enrolled days in school according to the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core data. 

Understanding the context in which chronic absenteeism occurs paints a bigger picture of the lived experiences of students across our nation. Students that are chronically absent typically are not absent due to a lack of desire to go to school. Students can become chronically absent for many reasons, including but not limited to if they do not have reliable means of transportation to school, are dealing with mental health issues, or they have chronic health conditions. Looking at National Equity Atlas data on policing in schools, school poverty, and car access alongside chronic absenteeism rates offers a fuller picture of the structural barriers that may prevent students from getting to school.  

Our new Chronic Absenteeism Indicator is based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data and EDFACTS, a US Department of Education initiative that focuses on high-quality data collection about students in pre-kindergarten to grade 12 for the 2022–23 school year. Students are considered absent if they attend less than half of the day's instructional time. 
 

How to Use This Data

You can use this Indicator to explore questions such as:

How has this Data Informed Decision Making  

Chronic absenteeism data has been used across the nation to support efforts among education advocates to: 

• Advance labor protection laws for minors in Alabama: In 2024, the Alabama State Senate introduced a bill to eliminate the requirement for students aged 14 or 15 to receive certification from their school administrators in order to work. Previously, if a student had unsatisfactory attendance or performance their employment could be revoked. The introduction of this bill alarmed child education advocates in Alabama, who feared that getting rid of attendance requirements for minors would incentivize students to work instead of attending school. Using data on chronic absenteeism, and emphasizing the connection between attendance and academic performance, advocates like VOICES for Albama’s Children successfully pushed for an amendment to the bill that requires employers to obtain a certificate before hiring minors aged 14 or 15. The certificate can be revoked if the employee's school attendance and performance is deemed unsatisfactory, shifting the punishment of poor attendance from the student to the business.  
• Reduce chronic absenteeism in California after the pandemic with community schools: Student absenteeism skyrocketed following the pandemic. Many students that had spent pivotal learning years at home on their computers no longer saw attending school in-person as a given. In response to the rise in absenteeism, community schools, especially in California, have emerged as an engaging learning environment. Through a $4.1 billion investment in the California Community Schools Partnership Program, districts and schools partnered with community agencies to create resources both inside and outside the classroom. Strategies used in community schools to increase engagement include building relationships with families to involve them in attendance efforts, engaging students with mentorship programs and extracurricular activities, and leveraging partnerships like housing supports and mental health services. 

Key Data Considerations for This Indicator 

Due to the linking of two datasets from EdFacts and CCD there are some key data considerations to keep in mind when using this Indicator. For more detailed descriptions of data limitations, please refer to the methodology page.  

• Several states did not consistently report data for all students within both the EdFacts and CCD datasets. In both cases, the total number of students enrolled and chronically absent at a school was sometimes larger than the sum of students reported by race/ethnicity and gender. This difference can be attributed to students with missing gender information at each school. While many states collected data on non-binary students, neither the CCD nor EdFacts provided reporting categories for these students. As a result, they are not included in the sex-by-race/ethnicity categories, but are counted in the overall enrollment and chronic absenteeism totals for each school. To address the inconsistency, we calculated new enrollment and chronic absenteeism counts by race/ethnicity and gender using only the male and female categories. This ensured that school-level chronic absenteeism and student enrollment totals matched the sum of the demographic breakdowns.
• Despite efforts to ensure the accuracy and consistency of the data we report, there are many known issues with EdFacts data that are worth highlighting. These include differences across states in their definitions and reporting standards of chronic absenteeism. One notable example is the data reported in Wisconsin. The Department of Public Instruction did not always receive complete student demographic data from districts and schools, despite numerous errors and warnings that notified local educational agencies of missing data. In this case, the number of students marked here corresponds to the number of students with an attendance rate of less than 90 percent who had an "unknown" race/ethnicity identifier for the 2022–2023 school year.
• No data is reported by school poverty level for Washington, DC, Delaware, Massachusetts, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia. These jurisdictions have implemented the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a federal option for high-poverty schools to offer breakfast and lunch at no charge to all students without requiring school meal applications. These localities no longer report school poverty data for free and reduced-price lunch programs. Instead, they identify qualifying students using “direct certification,” an administrative process that links students to their families’ participation in means-tested benefits programs.^1,2,3,4,5

1.  Direct Certification Demonstration Project Fact Sheet 
2. Tennessee Economically Disadvantaged Students Guidance
3. Moving Direct Certification Will Help Better Fund Low Income Students
4. Delaware Low Income Measure and Title 1 Schools 
5. Washington D.C Process for Qualifying Students for Free and Reduced Lunch