Bouncing Back from Chronic Absenteeism

What’s been learned from the experiences of school districts that have restored student attendance to near pre-pandemic levels.

School districts are bouncing back from the unprecedented levels of chronic absence during the COVID-19 pandemic. A research report issued in June by the Everyone Graduates Center titled “Can School Districts Bounce Back from Large Pandemic-Era Chronic Absenteeism Increases?” found that 13 percent of the school districts that had experienced a 10 percentage point or greater rise in chronic absenteeism were able to return to near pre-pandemic levels by 2024-25. These districts were large and small, urban, rural and suburban.

The solution to chronic absenteeism is not about adopting just one or two interventions. Rather, it requires taking a team approach to implement a multicomponent, layered and comprehensive approach that begins with prevention.

This effort must be informed by ready access to actionable data at the school and district levels and a deep local understanding of the underlying reasons students are missing school regularly. It means engaging the entire school community in improving attendance among the large numbers of students now missing a few more school days than they were pre-pandemic. It means forging partnerships to address the needs of students missing excessive amounts of school.

District Actions

At the peak of this problem in 2021-22, nearly one out of three students nationwide was chronically absent (meaning they missed at least 10 percent of school time) compared to one out of six students prior to the pandemic. A stunning 63 percent of students attended a school where 20 percent or more of the students were chronically absent.

The sheer magnitude overwhelmed existing student support systems that were not designed to respond to such large numbers. When chronic absences reach such high levels, the disruption affects learning for all students.

Many school systems have taken action. Drawing from stories shared by seven bounceback districts, we highlight three strategies that yield significant improvements when implemented with fidelity over time.

No. 1: Begin with engagement and relationship- building.

A sense of belonging and trust at school is more essential than ever. A January 2026 report issued by the University of Chicago’s Consortium on School Research titled “Connection, Trust, and Learning” found that attendance was higher when students felt safe in and around their school, felt connected to the school and their peers, had rigorous work in their classrooms and teachers reported more trust and collaboration with parents. School climate mattered more than the neighborhood of residence and had a greater impact on attendance post-pandemic.

A strong connection helps students push through small barriers to attendance. Positive relationships encourage students and families to feel comfortable discussing barriers and accepting help. This approach recognizes that responding to absences with blame and threats of legal action can undermine the ability of schools and community partners to establish the trust needed to understand and address the underlying causes of absences.

Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools organized a districtwide initiative to move away from a punitive approach and engage all staff in creating a welcoming environment that nurtures connectedness. Each of its 50 schools is required to implement an attendance plan that includes a morning meeting or restorative practice circles and relationship mapping to ensure all students, especially those struggling with attendance, are connected to a caring adult. Buildings then select one of three optional strategies: positive calls home, student celebrations or mentoring.

In the rural Bancroft-Rosalie Community School District in Nebraska, relationships evolved more organically between staff, many with a long tenure, and their 280 students. As Karin Vogt, director of elementary education, explains: “A few years ago, we had a student who started to be tardy. So I started picking him up. At the end of the school year, the mom thanked me with a plant, saying she was going through a rough time.”

The ability to maintain strong connections to families helps to explain why the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University found that small and rural districts were typically better positioned to bounce back after experiencing large increases in chronic absenteeism.

No. 2: Invest in actionable data.

Data are actionable when they are available in real time and in formats that are easy to understand and analyze. Actionable data are essential because the data:

• Prompt educators and community partners to notice as early as possible that a student or group of students is missing too many days of school.
• Help determine where attendance improvement efforts are getting results and worth expansion.
• Support identifying strategies that work for particular student populations. (Weekly check-ins with a caring adult may improve attendance for students hovering at the cusp of chronic absence while more intensive support may be needed for students with a longer history of chronic absence. Students missing extreme amounts of school may require in-depth interagency case management and resources to resolve challenging family and community conditions.)
• Promote realistic short- and long-term goal setting.
• Support attention to the underlying reasons students miss school.

Compton Unified School District in California attributes its success in reducing its chronic absenteeism rate to 5 percent to its ability to align leadership expectations, data routines, family outreach and student support into one coherent strategy.

Attendance data are updated daily and reviewed regularly at both the school and district levels. Principals participate in monthly data conversations with the superintendent, during which they discuss trends, identify students in need of support and flag barriers that require district-level action. This visibility reinforces attendance as a standing priority rather than a seasonal concern.

All schools in Iowa have access to a data dashboard available through a state investment in a proprietary program. The 7,400-student Southeast Polk Community Schools in Pleasant Hill, Iowa, has made equipping staff to use this dashboard a top priority. Updated daily, the dashboard allows for viewing data by district, school, grade and student. It shows whether attendance is improving or getting worse and allows for analysis by demographic group and academic performance.

Staff in the Southeast Polk district are encouraged to use the dashboard to create groups of students based on their attendance, assign interventions (including nudges, letters, family engagement and attendance success plans) and use the real-time information to determine if outcomes are improving. The district reduced chronic absence by 7 percentage points, resulting in a chronic absence rate of 18.6 percent.

In the Mobile County Public Schools in Alabama, principals review similar data about student attendance every month with one of the district’s 12 attendance officers who help analyze trends and ensure support for struggling students.

“We want to ensure that attendance data is not just put on the shelf somewhere, because in the run of the day so many other things can happen,” says assistant superintendent Terrence Mixon. “So we try to keep attendance at the forefront and as a priority for the principals.”

No. 3: Cultivate shared responsibility.

Absenteeism is a cross-cutting issue that cannot be solved by one person, department or agency. Everyone has a role to play: students, families, schools, districts and community partners ranging from nonprofits to state agencies. District leaders nurture shared responsibility when they create systems and structures for people to work together at the school, district and community levels across disciplines and departments. Engaging teachers who are especially trusted by families is critical.

Sharing responsibility through teams helps schools with high rates and large numbers of chronically absent students have the capacity to get the right supports to the right students at the scale and intensity required.

A survey of school principals analyzed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center found that principals who reported having teams in place were more likely to say that their schools implemented four or more evidence-based strategies and that they were seeing large attendance gains. Conversely, schools without teams were more likely to report a focus on one or two strategies and only small improvements.

The 2,500-student Chattooga County School District in Summerville, Ga., established a districtwide attendance committee. Rather than taking a top-down approach, superintendent Michelle Helie surveyed staff and asked if it would be helpful to form the committee. When the feedback was positive, she asked principals to invite staff members to join. Getting commitments wasn’t hard, Helie says, because staff rallied behind the view “We’ve got to get kids back into the buildings. We need them to come regularly.”

The committee implemented these strategies: communicating about attendance, lifting up student voices and creating school-level teams. The need to build a communitywide culture of regular attendance motivated the Wicomico County Schools in Maryland to establish the Arrive to Thrive campaign. Using roadside billboards, promotion cards distributed at schools and community agencies frequented by families, public service announcements and healthy attendance competitions, Arrive to Thrive helped ensure everyone heard the same message about why showing up to school matters.

The district also required schools to create a cross-functional team that met weekly or biweekly to monitor trends, identify students at risk of chronic absence, understand root causes and adopt a multitiered attendance approach. The efforts resulted in a 42 percent drop in chronic absence from pandemic highs.

Shared responsibility also helps forge strategic partnerships that allow for accessing resources across departments and from the community. To keep high school students engaged, both Bancroft- Rosalie and Mobile County districts have dual-enrollment programs supported by strong partnerships with local institutions of higher education.

Most of these districts that have built back their attendance have found ways to expand access to health and mental health services to support student well-being. In Mobile, the district draws on the expertise of its state-funded mental health services coordinator whose responsibility includes improving attendance. In Kansas City, Kan., attendance staff work with school nurses to counter the misperception that students with minor signs of illness should stay home from school. They also work with McKinney-Vento Act liaisons to address the needs of students struggling with homelessness.

Multiple Prongs

These bounceback districts offer concrete evidence that reducing chronic absence remains within reach and can be achieved in any type of community with dedicated leadership, actionable data and a deep commitment to implementing a multi-pronged strategy that begins with prevention.

Their recent experiences also suggest that states can play a crucial role in accelerating change by investing in actionable data, encouraging teams, providing guidance and peer learning opportunities and making available resources that address underlying barriers to attendance.