Student Chronic Absenteeism Growing Worse Post-Pandemic

Summertime means that most schools across the country are empty, by design. But recently, many students across the country have functionally just stopped showing up to school during the school year. Chronic absenteeism, generally defined as missing 10 percent of school days in a year, has long been a problem plaguing American education, but after the pandemic, this malady has turned septic.

In my own state, the rate of absenteeism nearly doubled since the pandemic, from 12.9 to 22.7 percent. Some districts, such as Milwaukee public schools, are seeing rates as high as 58 percent. At the high-school level, 26 percent of students missed a month or more of school.

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Daniel Buck

Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Summertime means that most schools across the country are empty, by design. But recently, many students across the country have functionally just stopped showing up to school during the school year. Chronic absenteeism, generally defined as missing 10 percent of school days in a year, has long been a problem plaguing American education, but after the pandemic, this malady has turned septic.

In my own state, the rate of absenteeism nearly doubled since the pandemic, from 12.9 to 22.7 percent. Some districts, such as Milwaukee public schools, are seeing rates as high as 58 percent. At the high-school level, 26 percent of students missed a month or more of school.