Evidence · Chronic absenteeism
Why are so many children missing school?
More than one in five U.S. students still misses a tenth of the school year, far more than before the pandemic, and simple notes to families can help.
The short answer
A student is chronically absent after missing 10 percent or more of the school year. Before the pandemic, about 15 percent of U.S. students fit that definition. The rate peaked at 28.3 percent in 2021-22 and stood at 22.6 percent in 2024-25. Students who miss more school tend to score lower, and careful studies find that absences themselves cost learning. Illness explains part of the rise, but research also points to weaker habits and lower expectations about attendance since the closures. Randomized trials show that mailing families accurate absence totals reduces chronic absence at very low cost.
How many children are chronically absent?
There is no single federal definition. A common definition counts a student as chronically absent after missing 10 percent or more of the school year. In a 180-day year, that comes to 18 or more days.
Chronic absence was a problem before the pandemic. In 2013-14, federal civil rights data showed that more than 6 million students, or 14 percent, missed 15 or more days. High schools had the highest rate, at almost 20 percent.
Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute tracks state education department data each year. In his count, chronic absenteeism averaged 15 percent in 2017-18 and 2018-19. It reached a peak of 28.3 percent in 2021-22. It then fell to 25.7 percent in 2022-23, 23.5 percent in 2023-24 and 22.6 percent in 2024-25.
Progress has slowed. The 2024-25 rate remains almost 50 percent higher than before the pandemic. In the states Malkus tracked, no state had fully returned to its pre-pandemic baseline.
A peer-reviewed study in PNAS measured the first jump. From 2018-19 to 2021-22, the chronically absent share rose 13.5 percentage points, a 91 percent increase. That works out to about 6.5 million additional chronically absent students.
How does missing school relate to learning?
The Nation's Report Card asks students how many days they missed in the month before the test. In 2024, 45 percent of lower-scoring 4th graders in math reported missing 3 or more days. Only 19 percent of higher-scoring 4th graders said the same. Nearly half of higher scorers, 49 percent, missed no days at all.
Heavy absence among 4th graders rose and has only partly come down. The share who missed 5 or more days in that month was 11 percent in 2019, 21 percent in 2022 and 15 percent in 2024. Among 12th graders, 31 percent missed 3 or more days in 2024, up from 25 percent in 2019.
The National Center for Education Statistics compared absence trends with the 2019 to 2022 score drop. Rising absence was associated with 45 percent of the 4th grade reading decline and 27 percent of the 4th grade math decline. NCES describes this as an association, not a causal relationship. Our page on learning loss after school closures covers the score drop in full.
Other studies try to isolate the effect of the absences themselves. A 2017 study in Education Finance and Policy linked absences to modest but statistically significant drops in achievement in the early grades. In North Carolina, unexcused absences were twice as harmful as excused ones. Low-income students and English learners lost more, especially in reading.
A 2021 study in the Journal of Public Economics compared the same student's absences across different classes. Missing 10 classes lowered test scores by 3 to 4 percent of a standard deviation in that subject. It lowered course grades by 17 to 18 percent of a standard deviation. Ten absences in 9th grade reduced the chance of on-time graduation and of ever enrolling in college by 2 percent. Each absence costs a little, and the cost adds up.
Why are children missing more school?
Illness is one reason. A CDC survey found that 5.8 percent of children ages 5 to 17 missed 15 or more days for illness, injury or disability in 2022. The rate was 14.8 percent for children with disabilities and 4.4 percent for children without. This health measure uses a different threshold from state attendance data, so the two figures do not compare directly. Still, the health-related rate sits far below the overall chronic absence rate.
A 2026 national survey from the University of Southern California asked teens and adults why teens miss school. About 80 percent of teens missed at least one day for physical health reasons. About one in four reported missing school for mental health, transportation or school-related reasons. Half of teens said they had missed school for fun reasons, while parents reported this for 38 percent of teens. Teens who said they struggled with mental health missed 12 more days on average. That finding is an association. Our page on children's mental health reviews the wider trend.
Attitudes about attendance matter too. In the same survey, adults with teens said about 11 days a year are fine to miss, and teens said 15. In homes with a chronically absent teen, both adults and teens put the number at 17 days. That is close to the 18-day line for chronic absence.
Many families also see the problem as someone else's. In 2025, over 60 percent of parents said absenteeism was a problem in other schools, but less than 28 percent said so about their own school. Earlier research found that parents of high-absence students estimated 9.6 absences when the true average was 17.8. Those parents also tended to believe their child missed fewer days than the average student.
The rise also reaches children with good records. A 2025 AEI study of student-level data from four states found that one in four students is now chronically absent. The typical student in those states missed 31 to 55 percent more school than before the pandemic. Even students with the most consistent attendance before 2020 now miss more school.
What do school closures have to do with it?
The PNAS study looked at differences between states. States with more school closures in 2020-21 saw larger increases in chronic absenteeism. The increases did not clearly track enrollment loss, COVID-19 case rates, school mask policies or declines in youth mental health. This is a state-level association. It does not prove that closures caused the rise in any one school.
Grade-level data point in the same direction. In 2025, kindergarten chronic absenteeism ran 48 percent above the 2019 baseline. The kindergarten through 3rd grade band ran about 59 percent above 2019 levels. These children started school after the closures ended. Malkus argues that the pandemic changed how families and schools approach attendance. In his view, the closures damaged shared norms about school, not only one group of students.
Long closures cut off the daily routine of going to school. The data above suggest that the routine has not fully returned. Our pages on learning loss and children's mental health cover other costs of that period.
What brings children back to school?
Some of the strongest evidence comes from randomized trials of simple mailings to families. In one trial, families of 28,080 high-risk students in kindergarten through 12th grade received personalized letters during the school year. One version reminded families about attendance. Other versions also listed the child's total absences, alone or next to classmates' absences. The most effective versions reduced chronic absenteeism by 10 percent or more. They worked partly by correcting parents' mistaken beliefs about how many days their child had missed. Absences also fell among brothers and sisters in the same homes who did not receive letters.
The federal What Works Clearinghouse rates this trial as meeting its standards without reservations. The trial ran in 203 schools in the School District of Philadelphia. In the comparison group, 36.0 percent of students were chronically absent. When families saw their child's absences next to classmates' absences, the rate fell to 31.9 percent. The authors report that the approach is more than ten times as cost effective as standard absence programs.
A second trial tested six mailings for families of children in kindergarten through 5th grade. It ran in ten school districts in California. The authors report that the mailings decreased chronic absenteeism by 15 percent. The What Works Clearinghouse found the clearest effect in one version. Letters that also encouraged families to enlist an attendance supporter cut chronic absence from 5.45 percent to 4.09 percent. For the pooled sample, the Clearinghouse found the difference not statistically significant.
These trials do not solve chronic absence alone. They show that accurate, regular information changes what families do. A school can start this kind of outreach quickly and at little cost.
What Restore Childhood is doing
Restore Childhood is a 501(c)(3) that makes films, reporting and tools for everyone who cares about children. Its film 15 DAYS covers America's pandemic school closures. It publishes reporting on its Substack. This page is part of a series of plain evidence pages on childhood and school.
What you can do now
- Ask the school for a child's total absences so far this year. Compare that number with your own estimate.
- Keep the threshold in mind: 18 missed days in a 180-day year counts as chronic absence in many states.
- Talk with older children about how many days they think are fine to miss.
- Ask your school whether it sends families regular absence totals by mail or text.
- Look up your state's chronic absence rate on its education department website.
- Share this page with a principal, school board member or teacher you trust.
Related
We update this page as new data comes out. If you see an error, please contact us.