“The nation’s school principals show that reducing chronic absenteeism is a challenging task  but it can be done. Doing so requires weaving together and successfully implementing multiple evidence-based strategies aligned to the specific reasons driving absenteeism in each school.” 

Robert Balfanz, Director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University

The nation’s chronic absenteeism rate doubled in the aftermath of the pandemic. As a result, in at least half of the nation’s school districts, chronic absenteeism rates increased by 10 percentage points or more from 2017-18 to 2021-22. Schools that had not previously experienced high rates of chronic absenteeism suddenly found themselves addressing a new problem. Schools that had faced high rates of chronic absenteeism before the pandemic found themselves confronting an even greater challenge, with the number of chronically absent students climbing to more than 100 in some elementary schools and 200 in some high schools.

Some states and districts have responded with guidance and support. Ultimately, it falls to the nation’s school principals to determine how their schools can respond effectively to historically high levels of chronic absenteeism.

Understanding how the nation’s school principals have responded to the rise in chronic absenteeism is crucial to understanding the mixed pace of improvement to date, as well as the actions which could accelerate declines in chronic absenteeism more broadly. Chronic Absenteeism Is a Hard but Addressable Problem: Findings from Surveys of School Principals takes a step in that direction by analyzing findings of two nationally representative surveys of school principals conducted during the 2024-25 school year. Principals were queried on their understanding of the causes of the rise in chronic absenteeism, the actions their schools have taken to address it, and their views on what has and has not been effective. Principals’ self-reports on their schools’ post-pandemic attendance improvements are then used to analyze what distinguishes schools that have seen significant reductions in chronic absenteeism from those that have not.