32 Million Students Were in Schools With Severe Attendance Problem: Report

Two-thirds of American students attended schools that had high or extreme levels of chronic absenteeism during the 2021-2022 school year, a recent analysis of federal data suggested. Students are deemed chronically absent when they miss 10 percent of school days or more. Absenteeism numbers are separate from students who stopped attending school and never re-enrolled. Nationwide, 29.7 percent of students, or nearly 14.7 million, were chronically absent in the 2021-2022 school year, marked by on-and-off school closures, remote learning, and social lockdowns, according to the analysis conducted by the non-profit research group Attendance Works. Overall, the 2021-2022 school year saw two-thirds of enrolled students, or 32.25 million, attending a school where at least 20 percent of students were chronically absent. This is a dramatic increase from the pre-COVID 2017-18 school year when only a quarter (25 percent) of all enrolled students attended a school with such high levels of chronic absenteeism....