Before the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in schools — defined as when a student misses 10 percent or more of the school year — was considered a crisis. But COVID pushed chronic absentee numbers into a catastrophe.
The pandemic destroyed traditional norms and practices regarding school attendance. Students and teachers found themselves abruptly pushed online, struggling to maintain consistency. Many school policies were brushed to the sidelines in favor of procedures that could keep classrooms afloat. But now that the process of rebuilding has begun, the social standards that once kept students in schools have washed away in a process some scholars call norm erosion.
“One very prominent explanation here that meets the evidence,” Stanford education professor Thomas Dee says, “is that during the pandemic many children and parents simply began to see less value in regular school attendance.”
Chronically absent students struggle to perform well in school and face higher dropout rates. Students who don’t attend class regularly affect their classmates, too. When students return, they must be caught up on missed material — slowing the entire class’ progress. If multiple students are chronically absent within the same classroom, the effect multiplies. Research has shown that the peers of chronically absent students have lower test scores.
The state of the nation
As of June 2025, with 44 states reporting data, the national absentee rate for the 23-24 school year was a staggering 23.5 percent, meaning that almost one in four of the nation’s students was chronically absent from class.
(Minnesota has not yet published full absentee data from the 23-24 or the 24-25 school years.)
While all types of school districts have been affected by chronic absenteeism, urban and low-income schools face the highest challenges. Researcher Nat Malkus writes in a recent report that
Chronic absenteeism has risen severely and almost universally: No district type saw an increase of less than 70 percent relative to its 2019 baseline. At the same time, however, chronic absenteeism has risen most, in absolute terms, among disadvantaged students—the very groups that suffered the greatest learning losses during the pandemic and can least afford the additional harms of chronic absenteeism. Although the subsequent declines are somewhat larger in the districts that experienced the biggest spikes, those declines are proportional to pre-pandemic levels, meaning that gaps between district types remain substantial.
Student race also plays a role, with Black and Hispanic students most likely to be considered a chronically absent student.
There are already consequences to these trends. Generally, chronically absent students have been able to graduate high school, despite the detractions to themselves and their classmates. High school seniors report feeling prepared for college admittance amidst some of the worst national scores on traditional benchmarks for college readiness that America has ever seen. Students that aren’t college bound will struggle, perhaps for the rest of their lives, with poor reading comprehension, mathematical abilities, and financial literacy. Just over a fifth (21 percent) of American adults read at or below a fifth grade reading level. Without intervention, the future seems bleak for many of these students, as poor literacy rates are connected with poverty and incarceration rates. High absentee rates are also linked with lifetime income loss.
The state of Minnesota
While Minnesota faced levels of chronic absenteeism consistent with national averages pre-COVID (14 percent in the 2018 and 2019 school years) levels of chronic absenteeism are now above national averages. The most recent data available, from the 2022-2023 school year, puts Minnesota’s absentee rates at 25 percent. One in four Minnesota students are considered chronically absent from school.
Chronic absenteeism affects the majority of the districts in Minnesota. The organization AttendanceWorks found that in the 21-22 school year, a shocking 71 percent of school districts in Minnesota had both high and extreme chronic absence levels. (Extreme chronic absence is defined as missing 20 percent or more of the academic year.)
Students of color are disproportionately affected by chronic absenteeism. In 2022, 73 percent of Minnesota schools that were largely composed with nonwhite students (75 percent or more of the school population) faced extreme chronic absences. Additionally, students who qualify for free or reduced lunch were more likely to be chronically absent. Some researchers have argued that these students often face structural barriers for school attendance, and absence rates could be improved by community-specific, targeted interventions.
One would expect the effects of chronic absenteeism to be reflected in high school graduation rates. After all, students who learn less, struggle to perform well on tests, and do not attend the majority of their classes should, in theory, also struggle to graduate. Yet, the data shows no real correlation between absentee ratings and Minnesota’s high school graduation rates. Nationally, the high school graduation rate rose during the COVID era. Minnesota’s graduation rate rose post- COVID. In 2019, Minnesota reached a then-record-high graduation rate of 83.7 percent. During 2020, that rate rose to 83.8 percent, capping at 2024’s 84.2 percent. Despite these high graduation rates, the class of 2024 had record-breaking low proficiency standards. Somewhere, there is a disconnect. Students do not feel as if their chronic absenteeism will affect their graduation chances. By looking at the numbers, they’re probably right in that assessment.
Specific Minnesota school district information regarding chronic absenteeism can be easily found on the Return to Learn data tracker.
Future areas of study
In Minnesota, innovation is always at the forefront of education. 12 school districts in Minnesota received grant money this year as part of a pilot program to combat truancy. The Columbia Heights school district will be using the money to establish employee teams who will review attendance data and reach out to families directly. Additionally, lawmakers hope to more clearly define truancy and lay out concrete consequences for truancy.
Students and families must be convinced that attending school is a worthy use of their time. As the pandemic washed away public trust and social norms surrounding the school system, the post-pandemic rebuilding effort must strive for accountability, quality, and openness. States like Ohio have seen attendance rates increase after creating policy initiatives that enhance family engagement.
Educators must find the line between overly harsh punishments and overpermissiveness. If the Minnesota Class of 2024 had high rates of chronic absenteeism and historically low test scores, why did they graduate high school in record-breaking numbers? Conflicting expectations, outcomes, and consequences only serve to further confuse students and families. The American Enterprise Institute’s Nat Malkus argues that
[S]chool districts will need to use both carrots and sticks to address the problem. Surely that means adding supports targeting student belonging, transportation challenges, communication efforts, and positive reinforcements, but those inducements should be supported with expectations and appropriate consequences for both truant students and parents who prove unwilling to fulfill their moral and legal obligations to make sure their child attends school regularly. This generation of students already faces setbacks too large to be satisfied with marginal interventions, however well-intentioned.
Minnesota’s weather also poses a challenge, especially when rural districts are hit with large amounts of snow. Ensuring that all students have consistent transportation access promotes their school attendance. If weather forces classes online, coursework must be meaningful in the eyes of students and families.
After the pilot program designed to increase school attendance concludes, educators and lawmakers will hopefully have more information about Minnesota’s unique challenges regarding chronic absenteeism and which policies can be put in place to lower these high rates.
