Missing School, Missing Opportunity

Whether it’s illness, appointments, or just playing hooky, there are many reasons students miss school. However, chronic absenteeism—when a student misses 10% or more school days for any reason—among K–12 students has reached a record high. While 10% may seem small, it amounts to missing at least 18-20 days of school, or nearly a full month over the course of a school year. This trend of low attendance coincides with historic declines in student achievement.

Regular school attendance is critical for academic success and long-term well-being. Consistent attendance gives students sustained access to instruction, classroom discussion, and peer interaction, allowing them to build skills and master core content over time.

In contrast, absenteeism disrupts learning and weakens students’ connections with teachers and classmates, hindering social and psychosocial development. Even modest absences are linked to lower educational attainment, poorer employment outcomes, and long-term labor force disengagement. When absenteeism disproportionately affects students with marginalized identities, it reinforces socioeconomic disadvantage and widens achievement gaps across the life course.

Since absenteeism often reflects underlying health and structural inequities, its consequences contribute to a cycle of socioeconomic disadvantage. But the reasons behind the increase in absenteeism are not fully understood. Given the widespread disruptions to schooling, health, and family stability during COVID-19, the pandemic has emerged as a plausible and widely cited explanation for rising absenteeism.

To study the effect of the pandemic on chronic absenteeism, Thomas S. Dee compared chronic absenteeism rates from the last pre-pandemic school year (2018-2019) with those from when most schools had returned to in-person instruction (2021-2022). The data came from 40 states and Washington, D.C, and represented about 93% of all K–12 public school students in the United States.

Since absenteeism often reflects underlying health and structural inequities, its consequences contribute to a cycle of socioeconomic disadvantage.

Chronic absenteeism increased sharply after the pandemic. The share of affected students rose from about 15% to more than one in four, representing an additional 6.5 million students nationwide. Every state examined experienced increases, ranging from 4% to 23% of students missing almost a month of school.

Remote instruction during the 2020-2021 school year was strongly associated with larger increases in absenteeism. However, several commonly cited explanations were ruled out. No connection was found between rising absenteeism and youth mental health concerns, COVID-19 case rates, or attendance definitions.

Increases in absentee rates were similar across male and female students, though there was a disproportionately large increase among Black and Hispanic students.

Chronic absenteeism persisting beyond 2022 suggests other factors may be at play. One potential contributing factor may be the growing number of students in the U.S. balancing school with the responsibility of caring for aging, chronically ill, or disabled family members.

Emma Armstrong-Carter and colleagues surveyed more than 55,000 middle and high school students across Rhode Island public schools in 2022 to determine how many students miss school to fulfill caregiving duties. Caregiving-related absences were most common among female, nonbinary, transgender students, and students from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups (i.e., Latinx, Multiracial, Native American, Pacific Islander, Asian, and Black or African American students).

About 13.8% of students reported missing school to take care of someone else, with rates reaching as high as 35% in certain districts. Even though the number of students affected is relatively small, the findings highlight a source of chronic absenteeism that primarily affects marginalized students and is widening absenteeism and education gaps.

Without systemic changes, students will continue to risk falling behind academically through no fault of their own.

Students in urban districts were also more likely to miss school for caregiving than their suburban peers. These patterns highlight how caregiving contributes to absenteeism and, by extension, educational and socioeconomic disparities. Although their academic sacrifice is vital for their families, additional support is needed to address the negative academic effects on caregiving students. Countries such as the UK and Australia have formal systems to identify and assist caregiving youth, while the United States does not.

Takeaways from both studies highlight absenteeism as a critical barrier to student success, disproportionately affecting historically marginalized groups. Both studies call for stronger data collection to better identify the drivers of absenteeism and stress the urgency of targeted, evidence-based interventions.

Without systemic changes, students will continue to risk falling behind academically through no fault of their own. We can start by improving existing systems rather than creating entirely new programs. For example, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—which requires states to track chronic absenteeism, but offers no solutions—could be revised to ease chronic absenteeism by shifting from a compliance-focused framework to a supportive, solution-driven model.